REALITY: The documentary genre is experiencing a sweet moment thanks to the commitment of the major platforms, either producing new works or recovering their most acclaimed classics.
The documentary genre has
the power to subjugate
in a way that can accompany the stunned viewer for several days.
Also to move the hardest viewer to tears, or to open up new fields of study and interest.
With the definitive settlement of
streaming
platforms
and the echo that still resounds from the success of the Oscar-winning
Searching for Sugar Man
, the ill-fated
Malik Bendjelloul
, or the multi-award-winning
The Act of Killing
by
Joshua Oppenheimer
, has exponentially expanded its audience range and its theme.
Here is a varied selection of what we can find today (many productions jump from one platform to another) at the click of a button.
The social media dilemma (Netflix)
"I want people to know that everything you do on the internet is seen and tracked."
"Because of the networks there is a more anxious, more depressed generation
."
Yes, if you've heard of a documentary that leaves parents sleepless, this is it, from which we've taken two of his many chilling quotes.
Filmmaker
Jeff Orlowski
manages to bring together the masters of technology to tell themselves how their creations are eroding imposed social norms, and not for the better.
The truth, human relations and democracy are increasingly threatened by artificial intelligence and, although it seems that adults know how to
control it
(you just have to go through any Facebook group to verify the wrongness of this belief), what remains beyond all doubt, the effect on the very young can be devastating.
Your message is clearly terrifying, so we are not responsible if at the end of it a reader decides to leave any of their social networks.
Or all of them.
Grizzly Man (Amazon Prime Video)
More than one movie fan gets chills when the youngest of the place recognize
Wener Herzog
solely for being the villain of the first season of
The Mandalorian
, that perfidious high-ranking official of the Empire who wants to catch Grogu-Baby Yoda.
But before settling down in front of the spotlights, the director of
Aguirre, the wrath of God
,
Nosferatu the vampire
or
Fitzcarraldo
directed a powerful documentary (although he does not like to differentiate them from his works of fiction, since he says he seeks "the truth" in all his works) focused on the life of environmentalist
Timothy Treadwell
.
For thirteen summers, Treadwell, who also worked as a waiter and actor,
went to the Katmai National Park (Alaska) to record the lives of grizzly bears
, with whom he claimed to have a special relationship.
Herzog takes advantage of his more than 100 hours of videographic material to elaborate a work in which the unfortunate end of the ecologist and his girlfriend is especially startling.
Shoa (Filmin)
French director
Claude Lanzmann's
magnum opus
continues to shock in the same way it did on its premiere 35 years ago.
At that time, only a filmmaker with Lanzmann's arrogance and recklessness was able to embark on a 10-hour documentary long before multi-episode documentary series became fashionable.
The ability of human beings to do evil, to exterminate their fellow human beings, is defined in this portrait of the Holocaust without concessions.
Executioners, victims and accomplices are portrayed in a way that represented a revolution when it came to addressing the Jewish genocide by the Nazis.
"That was a perfect crime," said the French filmmaker at the end of the documentary.
"
For the first time, death became an industry
; an industry that burned traces. There were no traces left."
For this reason he dedicated years to what would be the production for which he would be remembered: "
The future is too bleak to allow himself the luxury of forgetting
", he concluded.
Nobody speaks (Netflix)
At its start, it seems to be a documentary dedicated to the trial between
Hulk Hogan
and the Gawker Media conglomerate following the publication of a sex video starring the veteran wrestling star, but the main objective of its director and screenwriter,
Brian Knappenberger
, it is another: pointing out the danger posed to the free press by the power of billionaires.
From
Peter Thiel
, co-founder of Paypal, to the recently deceased
Sheldon Adelson
, not to mention
Donald Trump
, this absorbing production also reflects on the controversial type of journalism developed by
Nick Denton
, owner of Gwaker or, at the other extreme, the
Las Vegas
newspaper
Review-Journal
and its long-suffering workers, devoted to the truth even if it costs them their dismissal.
The Pioneer (HBO)
Son of a ruined family, entrepreneur with a whorehouse as a base of operations, builder jailed and pardoned by Franco, president of Atlético de Madrid, mayor of Marbella, television star, owner of Imperioso ... The multifaceted figure of Jesús Gil is approached in this ambitious HBO Europe production that traces his life through his closest circle (sons, brothers ...) but also his most bitter enemies.
Enric Bach
and
Justin Webster
(creators of another prestigious documentary series,
Muerte en León
, which analyzes the murder of
Isabel Carrasco
, president of the León Provincial Council).
"His figure serves as a portrait of an era in a country like Spain, which has a lot to do with today's world. It talks about us as a society and about political phenomena that we see as new and not so new," summarizes Bach.
The toys that made us (Netflix)
It could be summarized as the
Stranger Things
of Netflix documentaries, but the truth is that this
nostalgic proposal
from
Reed Hastings' company
goes much further.
The toys most missed by those who were children in the 80s give rise to a dynamic documentary series that ends up embracing different genres thanks to its thematic variety.
No episode is similar to the other, in the same way that playing with Barbies was not the same as with Lego, Ninja Turtles, Hello Kitty or My little Pony.
The great success of this production is that, far from being anchored in the past, it updates the perspective of each toy, interviewing its creators (or descendants) and analyzing the power of its legacy, branching out on multiple fronts today.
All this watered with a lot of humor, a glue that unites entertainment with disclosure and transcendence.
616 (Disney +)
This documentary series
traces the cultural, historical and social impact of Marvel comics
(the 616 of the title refers to Earth-616, where the main continuity of its superhero universe takes place) through its lesser-known points, such as the version Japanese Spiderman completely removed from the character and that scared the American executives (and survived thanks to the support of
Stan Lee himself
) or the influence of women like
Marie Severin
,
Flo Steinberg
or
Ann Nocenti
in The House of Ideas.
But the series goes further, recovering some of its most forgotten characters from the hand of humorist
Paul Scheer
or reviewing the careers of two Spanish artists,
Javier Garrón
and
Natacha Bustos
.
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