After another year of being inside, the documentaries of 2021 have provided us with plenty of adventure. They have inspired a sense of looking all around you, or of going back into history to understand how we got to wherever the hell we are now. With filmmaking that continues to redefine what makes a documentary, these features have given us a sense of what’s on our minds, whether it’s immediate issues like journalism, the refugee crisis, policing, the ongoing pandemic, or less immediate but timeless issues, like the chords of a band that will always inspire. Much has been said about how big-budgeted movies returned throughout 2021, and in a way also returned to the larger cultural conversation, but it’s the moments, ideas, and lives captured in this year’s documentaries—many of them celebrated on this list—that have felt the most alive.
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Below is a look at 16 of the year’s best documentaries, from all around the world, as told with different approaches. We kept the criteria to the theatrical releases—so as much as we at The Playlist love “The Beatles: Get Back” in all of its eight-hour glory, we are not counting it on this list. Many of these documentaries are also already available for streaming. And not for nothing, zero of them are about serial killers.
Follow along with the rest of our Best of 2021 coverage here.
READ MORE: The 25 Best Films Of 2021
“Not Going Quietly” (Nicholas Bruckman)
A winning crowdpleaser from SXSW 2021, Nicholas Bruckman’s “Not Going Quietly” documents the activism of Ady Barkan, who would later be called “The Most Powerful Activist in America” by Politico. The film parallels his effective activism for health care and social justice with his own recent diagnosis of ALS, a debilitating condition that makes his physical involvement more and more challenging, but is met with the deepest support from his loving family and team members. Bruckman’s film also highlights those team members, like the story of Ana Maria Archila, who later famously confronted Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator during the Brett Kavanaugh trials, creating viral attention. Mixed in between many fist-pumping scenes of Barkan and his “Be A Hero” PAC causing a ruckus and being heard, are scenes in which Barkan sits down with Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Joe Biden, spreading a message that with more support could help improve the lives of millions. “Not Going Quietly” is an inspiring profile about those who deeply care about fighting injustice, and giving it their all. – Nick Allen
“My Name is Pauli Murray” (Julie Cohen and Betsy West)
Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, “My Name is Pauli Murray” is the type of documentary that tells you about a person that you would want to have known about when studying American history, but who was left off the syllabus. Pauli Murray was a true pioneer: a gender non-conforming, inspiring lawyer, poet, Black activist, and priest, whose life story is captured with awareness by the filmmakers of “RBG” (the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg does appear in the movie, along with many other notable figures, making all the more clear the impact that Murray had). Among the many riches in this particularly fascinating biodoc, “My Name is Pauli Murray” also tracks the modern significance that Murray’s work has had on America, including work that led to landmark cases in the Supreme Court (like Brown v. Board of Education) and movements against segregation and discrimination. And we see it in the lives of other LGBTQ+ people who are interviewed in the documentary, who cite Murray’s under-discussed efforts as groundbreaking, the type of fire that many movements are fueled with to this day. – NA
“Acasa, My Home” (Radu Ciorniciuc)
From Romania, “Acasa, My Home” shows the life of a large family that has grown up in isolation, in a marsh away from modern society where you can still see the smokestacks in the distance. Director Radu Ciorniciuc follows the family as they are forced to move away from their original home, and get onto the grid, into an urban society where cell phones, schooling, sports, and other casual bits of modernity rule how people think and interact with each other. Shot with immense compassion and edited with acute narrative focus to express a life-changing evolution in under 90 minutes, the Sundance award-winning doc (for Best Cinematography in 2020), immerses the viewer into the evolution of this family and its dynamics. Ciorniciuc provides the viewer with many different arcs to follow as the children grow up in a place different than where they were born, receiving an education far more enriching than what their anti-schooling father would have given them. But you also empathize with the way that people choose to live, in a doc that poignantly wrestles with what is natural, and human, about modern life. – NA
“The Velvet Underground“
It was high time that a definitive documentary portrait of what is arguably one of the most important rock bands of all time was made, and who better to direct it than Todd Haynes? Music has been at the core of Haynes’ career since the beginning, with the unconventional/experimental Karen Carpenter doc “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” then the 1970s glam rock drama, “Velvet Goldmine,” and then the Bob Dylan movie, “I’m Not There.” So, tackling Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico, and the members of the seminal, groundbreaking art-rock group, The Velvet Underground seems like more than a natural fit. But given Haynes’ art sensibilities, history and knowledge, he doesn’t just make an engaging doc about the history of the VU but injects it with a bold, artistic insight directly ripped from the era that birthed the band. Andy Warhol and his Factory, and their musical influence on the band were always overstated (Warhol knew nothing about music and only “produced” their debut record in name), but the fertile, chaotic, anything-goes sentiment of the time was definitely feeding into the experimental, already norm-crushing band and enabling them to be even wilder. So, Haynes wraps the Warholian visual aesthetic and the avant garde “Exploding Plastic Inevitable” ideas into a psychedelic, frenetic, kinetic doc that not only needs to be cranked up to 11 but might be the closest you’ll ever get to experiencing an explosive and tumultuous Warholian sound + vision art party from the late 1960s. – Rodrigo Perez
“The Rescue”
OK, the first thing you need to know is, “The Rescue,” the new film by documentary filmmakers extraordinaire, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin is not and cannot compare with “Free Solo,” the harrowing Oscar-winning doc the duo made before this about a mountain climber on a near-suicide mountain climbing mission. That’s because the filmmaking circumstances were just much different and much more optimal in “Free Solo.” All that said, “The Rescue,” about the herculean, worldwide effort to rescue the 13 members of a Thai boy’s soccer team trapped inside miles of flooded caves is still incredibly riveting and stress-inducing. In short, it’s a miracle that anyone survived at all, the hobbyist cave divers, the true heroes of this story, basically outperformed the Navy Seals and everyone else, and it’s just an absolutely remarkable and unbelievable tale. Shot with quite a few recreated scenes with the original divers—it would have been impossible for the doc makers to shoot inside those caves—you do feel the limitations of the filmmaking to some degree, but it’s a testament to the entire affair that it’s still this goddamn nerve-wracking. – RP