HtN’s 15 Most Anticipated at DOC NYC ’24

By The Editorial Staff

DOC NYC, the world’s largest documentary film festival, is making its return to NYC from November 13 through December 1 (in-person and online) for its 15th edition. It will screen more than 200 films, 110 of which are feature-length. Many of these docs emphasize current events, especially warzone conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, and Armenia. Three members of our team, lead film critic Christopher Llewellyn Reed, editor-at-large Matt Delman, and news editor M.J. O’Toole have chosen five titles each that should be on your watchlist.

Gaucho Gaucho (Gregory Kershaw & Michael Dweck)
Critics have praised Gaucho Gaucho as one of the most visually stunning documentaries of the year, but it also should be highly commended for its enveloping sound design (which it won an award for at Sundance). The heartwarming story of a young woman training to become a Gaucha (or Cowgirl) in a male-dominated tradition won the Letterboxd Piazza Grande Award at the Locarno Film Festival. The duo’s last film, The Truffle Hunters, was recently cited by Tom Hanks and Robert Zemeckis as the inspiration for their new film Here. It also inspired a whole category of viral videos of people putting go-pros on animals–here they attach one to a bucking horse. If you liked The Truffle Hunters, you’re going to love Gaucho Gaucho. (MD)

The Bibi Files (Alexis Bloom)
How many people need to die to feed one man’s ego? In human history, that question has been answered many times, and the body count is usually quite high. Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu—aka “Bibi”—is neither the first nor last, nor (yet) most murderous leader to foment violence against an “other.” He’s also not the only politician who mixes business with pleasure and thereby breaks the law. But unlike some of his predecessors—and very much like the USA’s Donald Trump—he refuses to back down, as he becomes ever-more unhinged. In The Bibi Files, from director Alexis Bloom (Divide and Conquer), and executive producer Alex Gibney (Totally Under Control), the viewer is treated to recently leaked police interrogation tapes from the lengthy corruption investigation into Netanyahu’s shady dealings that resulted in his 2019 indictment. All of it serves as context for his extreme-right turn and willingness to bomb Gaza into smithereens after the horrific October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. There are many more disturbing facts within, including how Netanyahu is himself responsible for funding Hamas. Strongmen are on the rise everywhere. Watch and fume. (Christopher Llewellyn Reed)

After The Rain: Putin’s Stolen Children Come Home (Sarah McCarthy)
One of the many war crimes of the ongoing War in Ukraine that has not gotten enough focus is the Ukrainian children who were abducted by the Russian Army. Under Putin’s orders, Russia forcibly transferred nearly 20,000 children to areas under its control, forcibly adopting them into Russian families and assigning them Russian citizenship. Director Sarah McCarthy’s documentary After The Rain: Putin’s Stolen Children Come Home focuses on the children who were rescued and returned home to their families, but are still carrying the trauma from this unthinkable ordeal. Through the help of an animal therapy farm in Estonia, these children and their families begin their journey to healing – even as the war continues around them. Given the sensitive and emotional nature of this documentary’s subject, it would be a safe bet to bring tissues. (M.J. O’Toole)

Dahomey (Mati Diop)
If you haven’t seen Mati Diop’s Atlantics, I highly recommend checking that out before watching Dahomey. There is a clear progression of ghostly growth in her work that transcends Hollywood storytelling. Diop packs a lot into a brisk 68 minutes, but still allows each section to breathe. The restitution of priceless artifacts to Benin is told through multiple stylistic flourishes. A demonic voiceover is reminiscent of a griot, telling the story from the perspective of one of the statues. The fastidious shipping process is followed by a public forum, which reminded me of the long public debate scene in Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist. If you need even more convincing, Dahomey is also Senegal’s Official Selection for the 97th Academy Awards. (Matt Delman)

My Sweet Land (Sareen Hairabedian)
Whenever nations decide to attack neighbors, it is the average people who suffer the most. The disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, currently part of Azerbaijan, was governed by ethnic Armenians from shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union until 2023, when Azerbaijan took control. Known as Artsakh to its residents, the land has been the site of many armed conflicts in the past decade. Armies fight, populations die. In Armenian-Jordanian director Sareen Hairabedian’s feature debut, My Sweet Land, we spend time with those displaced when conflict starts, seeing the devastating impact it has on one family in particular; 11-year-old Vrej is our primary guide. Just last week, Deadline reported that the Jordanian government withdrew its selection as their Oscar entry due to diplomatic pressures. Even more reason to watch it. There are few sights sadder, short of actual death, than watching children practice military drills to do battle. (CLR)

Architection (Viktor Kossakovsky)
Viktor Kossakovsky, who stunned audiences with his black-and-white farm animal documentary Gunda, is back with his newest visually breathtaking film. With Architection, Kossakovsky shifts his focus to humanity’s relationship with architecture and the environment through the perspective of Italian architect Michele De Lucchi. By filming around ancient ruins, modern-day cityscapes, and natural landscapes, Kossakovsky takes us on a journey through time that has us ponder not only how structural form has changed throughout history, but also the environmental impact of architecture on the world. The director likes taking us on a journey through unique, nature-based perspectives. By the end, we may ask ourselves how we will inherit the unknown world of tomorrow. A24 co-financed the film and is set to release it next year, a potential spiritual sequel to The Brutalist. (MJ)

Forest (Lidia Duda)
In Poland, the remote forest near the border was paradise for Asia, Marek, and their three young children. That is until migrants from Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and the Congo came streaming through their backyard. The family treats them kindly, offering them blankets, soup, and energy bars, and Duda chooses not to show their faces until the very end. Immigration is an issue without a single solution, and it’s artfully and achingly depicted in Forest from a human perspective, which elevates the film above political rhetoric. (MD)

No Other Land (Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, & Hamdan Ballal) 
In No Other Land, a new documentary from a collective of four Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, we take a front-row seat at the destruction of a village in the West Bank, Masafer Yatta. The reason for its razing? The Israeli army ostensibly needs the land for training grounds. The fact that people have been living there for generations is immaterial. We’ll learn at the end of the film that the real motivation is far more sinister. At the center of the story is the friendship of two of the directors, Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham, the one from Masafer Yatta, and the other from Israel proper. The situation in the Middle East is complex. Antisemitism is a very real phenomenon, with deep historical, and murderous, roots. Nevertheless, it’s a very difficult movie to watch, given how the villagers are targeted when they resist. The truth doesn’t always set you free, but it can at least make one question the narrative. No Other Land does that quite well, and the result is gripping and extremely disturbing. (CLR)

Mistress Dispeller (Elizabeth Lo) 
Elizabeth Lo, the Hong Kong-born filmmaker behind the 2020 documentary Stray, shifts her attention from the streets of Istanbul to a very unique industry in modern China – where the rate of marital infidelity is as high as in numerous developed countries. In her Venice and TIFF selection Mistress Dispeller, Lo observes a love triangle from all perspectives and the sly, yet empathetic entrepreneur who tries to help them get their affairs in order. The titular dispeller is a woman hired to break up extramarital affairs by going undercover and befriending wife, husband, and then mistress. From there, she pulls a vast bag of tricks to end the affair as amicably as possible. For such a revealing documentary that gets up close and personal to the vulnerability and complexities of its subjects, trust is a big factor for this kind of access – especially as each individual consented to be filmed beforehand. The trust these subjects put into Lo beautifully culminates into a compassionate look at the difficulties and strength of love. We are left to ponder our preconceptions regarding fidelity and devotion. It is a rare, unbiased look at modern love in another society that’s a must-see for any couple or romantic. (MJ)

Space Cowboy (Bryce Leavitt/Marah Strauch)
What fun it is to throw large objects out of an airplane and then jump after them to photograph their tumbling descent! If one plans it well enough, said objects may not, in fact, tumble, but could float gently in the sky, ready for their majestic close-ups. Such is the life of one Joe Jennings, the protagonist of Space Cowboy, from directors Bryce Leavitt and Marah Strauch (Sunshine Superman). Jennings, with his late partner Rob Harris, took the sky-surfing world by storm in the 1990s with feats of incredible (and very cinematic) derring-do. The filmmakers show us all the stunning footage Joe has captured over the years—and give us many details, sad and happy, from his personal life—and bring us up to the present, where he continues to shoot commercial footage and pursue passion projects. The one that bookends the movie is his desire to outfit a car with the perfect devices to stabilize its freefall and allow for four skydivers to sit it in while Joe films the whole thing. Who wants to be a passenger in that vehicle? I’ll stick to watching it on screen, thank you very much. (CLR)

Slumlord Millionaire (Steph Ching & Ellen Martinez)
Gentrification is an ever-rising issue in New York City. It’s been reported that 8% of low-income households in the metro region are living in moderate to high-income neighborhoods experiencing advanced stages of urban development that result in raising rent and pushing tenants out. Directors Steph Ching and Ellen Martinez’s Slumlord Millionaire explore the David vs. Goliath battle between urban developers and the everyday renters fighting to remain in their homes. Set in neighborhoods all across the five boroughs, the filmmakers capture this fight through the eyes of both the tenants and the developers, much similar to this year’s Tribeca selection Emergent City. The film uncovers the harsh realities of unsafe housing, iniquitous landlords, and a housing court system that’s overwhelmed with numerous cases. It will undoubtedly resonate with numerous NYC residents who are already in this fight, and hopefully will inspire those facing these issues to join it. (MJ)

There Was, There Was Not (Emily Mkrtichian)
Gaza and Ukraine take up most of the mainstream media coverage of foreign wars, but Armenians have similarly been under attack, living in constant fear of missile attacks and the blaring sirens that signal their impending devastation. While it is swept under the rug by corporate news channels, you may have noticed ‘Artsakh’ trending on social media, which is the conflict zone between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Told through the eyes of four different women defending their homeland–one whose job is to literally disarm landmines–-Mkritchian’s doc is a fiery, feminist wartime fable. (MD)

Yalla Parkour (Areeb Zuaiter)
Director Areeb Zuaiter makes her feature debut with Yalla Parkour, a movie that begins with conversations from 2015. It was then that she started speaking, virtually, with the not-yet-20 Ahmed Matar, a parkour specialist living in Gaza. A video he shot earlier caught her attention because of the joy on the faces of the participants, and Zuaiter sought him out to learn more. She has Palestinian roots, and sees in the young men’s energy a mirror of her own now-deceased mother’s tales of earlier happiness in Gaza and the West Bank. The film showcases many of Matar’s videos, the acrobatics set against bombed-out structures in a land with little hope. Parkour could be his ticket out, but that would mean leaving his family behind, since it is increasingly hard for Palestinians to obtain travel visas. Thanks to a 7-year ellipsis, we learn the current status of Matar’s story (you can follow him on Instagram at @matargaza). His fate offers hope, but Zuaiter reminds us, through word and image, of the vast despair for most everyone else. (CLR)

Sudan, Remember Us (Hind Meddeb)
Director Hind Meddeb’s TIFF-selected doc Sudan, Remember Us captures a period of defiance among young Sudanese activists rallying for a citizen’s government. It was filmed in the Spring of 2019, when the country’s longtime dictator Omar Al-Bashir was overthrown after a 30-year regime that led to hundreds of thousands of genocidal deaths and millions of civilians being displaced. Meddeb captures the bold, young activists who stage sit-ins and create revolutionary art, as the country descends into a civil war and famine that lasts about 18 months. But through the eyes of these activists who still hope and fight for a better future in their homeland, Meddeb captures the fight in a way that will hopefully inspire other countries facing uncertain futures of their own. (MJ)

Motorcycle Mary (short) (Haley Watson)
Don’t forget the short films! Though I haven’t seen this one yet, it caught my eye because it’s executive produced by Ben Proudfoot, who has produced two of the last three short documentary Oscar winners in The Last Repair Shop (2024) and The Queen of Basketball (2022). The latter was apparently made at the suggestion of Haley Watson, who has now directed her own short biopic about another little-known trailblazer named Mary McGee. Mary was the first American woman to race motorcycles, so basically a badass. It’s screening as part of the ‘Shortlist Shorts: Extraordinary People” section. (MD)

You can get tickets for all these films now at docnyc.net