This Week In Documentary - Theatrical & Streaming Releases - New & Recommended - Nov 29-Dec 5, 2024

This is a light week for new documentary highlights, which is good because I’m writing this during Thanksgiving break and have less time to prep, watch, and review. However, it’s not a light week for documentary news, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences revealed the list of 169 films eligible for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Given all that I track and see for the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, that seems like a small number of contenders. Also, from our list of the best docs of 2024 (so far), where’s Ennio, Pictures of Ghosts, and Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus?

Take the extra time this weekend to shop for documentaries — in stores, online, wherever — to give as gifts this holiday season. As I recognized years ago, documentaries make the best gifts because there’s something for everyone, whether it’s a film or series focused on the person’s interests or they would like to learn or appreciate something new. There are even documentaries about documentaries. You can also give the gift of a subscription to a streaming service. Or, how about this: give the gift of a year’s paid subscription to Nonfics! Thank you very much in advance if you take that last idea.

Without further ado, here are this week’s highlights, listings, and coming attractions, including our Pick of the Week. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to receive more in-depth highlights and reviews in the future.

Nonfics Pick Of The Week: Gaucho Gaucho (2024)
This nonfiction Western from the directors of The Truffle Hunters transports viewers to Argentina’s pampas to showcase modern gauchos. Through beautiful black-and-white cinematography, Gaucho Gaucho follows a handful of characters, most notably a teenage girl bucking tradition to take on the sport and lifestyle of the local cowboys. Will she ever be a true gaucho — or “gaucho gaucho,” as one boy calls the real men of this legendary culture? She’s driven and passionate to at least do the work, even if it makes her an outcast among other gauchos (though none seem to mind her joining in, even when she performs better at the rodeo) or others at her school, where she gets in trouble for wearing gaucho clothes instead of her assigned uniform.

The irony of this girl, Guada’s narrative is that the film initially seems to want to be old-fashioned, hence the black and white and the general interest in gauchos (as well as the film’s poster). Yet this isn’t a history lesson or celebration of the past. Similar to their cowboy counterpart in the U.S., the gaucho is not what it once was because the world is different today. Not that we see any context of modernity encroaching on this culture. We just have that naturally in the back of our minds. Some of the intertwined stories in Gaucho Gaucho could probably have been captured a century ago, such as one about condors killing cattle, but we know we’re watching the gaucho life of today.

Gaucho Gaucho begins exclusively streaming on Jolt on Sunday, December 1.