documentary review

In 2019, Nirmal “Nimsdai” (or Nims) Purja set out to summit all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks in seven months, smashing the prior world record of seven years held by Jerzy Kukuczka in 1987. In total, forty climbers have done it over…

Chinese director Nanfu Wang’s newest documentary, In the Same Breath, follows the unfolding chaos, fear and misinformation of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China and the United States, beginning on New Year’s 2020. Known for One Child…

Shows like Planet Earth and Blue Planet do many things. From informing us about nature's delicate balance to offering therapeutic and often transcendent entertainment they have become the peak of wildlife documentaries and rightly so.…

Life, Animated is a documentary portrait of one man’s life on the autistic spectrum from Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams. Owen Suskind was thought to be non-verbal autistic until Disney’s catalogue of animated…

Gimme Danger, Jim Jarmusch’s new documentary about the feral proto-punk act The Stooges, opens with some of the only televised footage that exists of The Stooges in their prime. Playing the Cincinnati Pop Festival saw the band unleashed for…

Zhao Liang’s Behemoth is less a fact based documentary on its subject, then a poetic meditation. Beginning with a portion of a mountain being blown-up, the film details the destruction of Mongolian grasslands by coal mining companies. It…

Mom & Me, by the Irish director Ken Wardrop, revolves around men in Oklahoma - apparently the U.S’s 'manliest' state - and the relationships they share with their mothers. Despite coming from all walks of life (Army vets, barbers,…

Despite its seemingly provocative title, Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Where to Invade Next, is maybe the most deceptively innocuous piece he’s released to date. Instead of following the right-on crusader around Washington pondering…

The scene has become horribly familiar: an expanse of blue ocean, overarching blue sky, and a slight, inadequate vessel overflowing – literally – with human beings. The craft is sinking, people are screaming and waving their hands as dark…