10 Nice Documentaries About Politics

This pioneering film relentlessly transforms the political documentary into a cinema verité model, and 6 years later it remains surprisingly, seeing two very different Democratic candidates on the marketing campaign trail. Producer Robert Drew had cameramen along with DA Pennebaker and Albert Maysles follow Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy while they were cutting meat in Wisconsin, choosing ambient sounds, closeups and on-the-cuff interviews over static photos of the talking heads for the next hour. – long program. Drew has the complexity of the main network to convince, but the group of documentaries quickly adopt a distinctive model.

“Navalny” behaves like a thriller but with greater stakes because the individual at the heart of Daniel Roher’s documentary is in great danger. “Come on, Daniel,” protests Russian dissident Alexei Navalny when the director questions his potential death early in the film. “It’s like you made a film for my death case.” “Navalny,” which won an Oscar for documentary after its release in 2022, is bravura filmmaking, all the more so when a political supporter died earlier this year while in prison.

“The Warfare Room” opens amid allegations of Clinton’s infidelity invoice in early 1992, and the subsequent furor seems almost strange after all the drama surrounding political candidates in recent times. Married administrator Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker considered the colorful marketing campaign strategy of James Carville and baby George Stephanopoulos, then Clinton’s communications director, and earned the film: Fly-on-the-wall interaction in the war room of an animated marketing campaign. documentary.

Provocateur Michael Moore took derisive aim in the response of George W. Bush to the September 11 assaults with this record-breaking document, primarily to win the coveted Palme d’Or prize in Cannes since 1956. 20 years after the release, Moore’s connection was made between the Bush family and the Saudis presents the film’s greatest energy, along with heartbreaking footage of households affected by the US war on Iraq. “Fahrenheit 9/11” shows a documentary can reveal big money and stay visible in a difficult time for America.

Stacey Abrams is an “All In” star for a good cause: She’s a passionate advocate for honest voting practices. Directed by Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés, the film opens with Abrams initially refusing to acknowledge the first gubernatorial race because of what it characterizes as a voter suppression technique and then defining the history of acts of oppression against black voters in the South. As the latest law has proven, the fight to protect the rights of many voters from over; dedication and grit are expected – every Abrams and his team are complete.

Robert McNamara loomed so large in the nation’s consciousness as secretary of defense throughout the Vietnam War that Paul Simon sang in 1965 about McNamara’d into submission. For a long time, the clever child of the previous Kennedy administration proved to be elusive – but at all times interesting – the subject of this Errol Morris documentary, subtitled “Eleven Classes From the Age of Robert S. McNamara.” Launched shortly after the controversial 2003 invasion of Iraq, the doc went on to win Oscars.

Alternately charming and unsettling, “Please Vote for Me” documents the election for third-grade monitors in Wuhan, China. A new democracy for rambunctious 8-year-olds, but they show quick research, helped and abetted by their father and mother: Before the votes are counted, we have seen the candidates playing dirty tips on each other, bribing classmates and showing authoritarian impulses that’s annoying. Weijun Chen’s 58-minute documentary, which won a prize at SilverDocs, offers a glimpse into modern life in China, but reveals some of the thrust of marketing campaigns that originated, even in a communist society.

So pointed to America’s role in the Vietnam War, Columbia Footage refused to release it, “Hearts and Minds” aimed to humanize the outcome of the war. There are soundbites from the president’s relationship again to Truman, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and the controversial General William Westmoreland, along with vignettes of the troops below and Vietnamese individuals dealing with lack of household and housing. Warner Bros. finally released the documentary, which won an Oscar the week before the U.S. evacuated its embassy in Saigon.

This film uncovers so many unpleasant truths about the Nazi occupation of France that the state-run TV station refused to broadcast it in 1969. Through a mixture of archival footage and recent interviews, director Marcel Ophuls, who fled the country with his family throughout World War II, paints a lavish portrait of a naval occupation where some citizens collaborated with the Nazis while others resisted. It was nominated for an Oscar and additionally immortalized in “Annie Corridor,” when Woody Allen’s Alvy took Diane Keaton’s character on a date to see it.

More than half a century since Agnès Varda filmed the film, “Black Panthers” remains a powerful time capsule of politics and race relations during a particularly difficult interval in America. The godmother of the French New Wave, then living in Los Angeles with her filmmaker husband Jacques Demy, flew to Oakland to protest the release of Huey Newton’s film in the summer of 1968, taking a discourse on black beauty along with political beliefs. . The result was interestingly watched during another interval of political turmoil.