SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
The documentary industry is big business, bigger than ever, by some estimates. We've got celebrity docuseries, true crime tales and gorgeous nature films narrated by folks like David Attenborough. And as always, documentarians are also tackling thornier stories about geopolitics and history, as well as pop culture. 2025 alone brought new documentaries about grappling with terminal illness...
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT")
ANDREA GIBSON: This is the beginning of a nightmare, I thought. But stay with me, y'all, because my story is one about happiness.
MCCAMMON: ...The burden of Black genius...
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SLY LIVES! (AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS)")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Sly and The Family Stone, it can't be overstated how massively popular they were.
MCCAMMON: ...And a reexamination of the TV show "To Catch A Predator."
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "PREDATORS")
DAVID OSIT: Some people watching this may feel like you have something to answer for. What do you say to that?
MCCAMMON: Those were clips from "Come See Me In The Good Light," "Sly Lives!" and "Predators," just for a sense of the breadth of documentaries being produced. So today, we're talking about documentaries that have stood out to us in recent years, and I'm joined by Pop Culture Happy Hour host Linda Holmes and Sarah Handel, an editor on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Thanks to you both.
SARAH HANDEL, BYLINE: Thank you.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: Thank you.
MCCAMMON: Linda, I'll start with you. When you're looking to watch a documentary, what grabs you?
HOLMES: You know, a lot of award-winning documentaries, in particular, are about big news stories like, as you mentioned, geopolitics, wars and, you know, deservedly so. But when I'm watching just for myself, I often gravitate toward kind of niche topics, people I've never heard of or hobbies that small communities are very, very passionate about, people who are trying to answer some sort of obscure question about the world. And so I look for ones that are going to teach me something, but it doesn't have to be a big important thing. It can be something small, like something I didn't even know that I didn't know.
MCCAMMON: Sarah, what about you? When you watch a documentary, what are you looking for?
HANDEL: For me, I'm nosy, and I think that's probably why I became a journalist. I love hearing other people's stories. I want to know about the ways they live. And so when I watch a documentary, I'm usually trying to gain entrance to a world that normally I would have absolutely no access to. And at the end of said documentary, whatever kind of world I've entered, I want to learn something about how people operate, what makes them tick, what they're passionate about, the things that matter to them and the way those preferences connect to the larger picture of humanity.
MCCAMMON: Sounds familiar, that opportunity to be nosy or to peer into a space that you wouldn't otherwise get to see. You know, with that in mind, what are some recent documentaries that have resonated with you?
HANDEL: For me, the one that I immediately thought of when I realized we were going to have this conversation was a documentary from 2023. It's called "The Stroll."
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE STROLL")
TABYTHA GONZALEZ: The minute I got off on 14th Street, you could hear the clickety-clack of the heels.
HANDEL: It's the story of the mostly Black trans women of color who used to walk what they called The Stroll in The Meatpacking District before that area of New York got gentrified. And they did sex work on those streets, and she has incredible archives of that work. And she talks with four or five other women from that time, and they're all still connected. And while it's certainly a story of hardship, it's really a story about sisterhood and love and activism, and it just - I wasn't there. I couldn't have been there. And now I feel like I know these people. And that's just such a special feeling, I think, that you can get through documentary that it's rare to get elsewhere.
MCCAMMON: You know, there are some documentaries that almost seem like you have to see them because they just become such a big part of the zeitgeist and the conversation. I'm thinking, again, going back a bit to "An Inconvenient Truth," the climate change documentary by former Vice President Al Gore.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH")
AL GORE: Our ability to live is what is at stake.
MCCAMMON: That one's 20 years old this year - or Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine," which is even a little bit older, about America's gun crisis.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE")
MICHAEL MOORE: Why do you think we have so many gun murders in America?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: 'Cause everybody's first reaction is pull the gun out.
MCCAMMON: Are there any documentaries - in this more diffuse era of streaming where there are so many options out there, are there any that kind of hold that same status today, do you think?
HANDEL: I think Linda and I both think of - and let me know if I'm speaking out of turn, Linda (laughter). We both think of "20 Days In Mariupol" as one of those.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL")
MSTYSLAV CHERNOV: Russians have entered the city. The war has begun, and we have to tell its story.
HANDEL: This was in 2023. It's a team of Ukrainian journalists who are trapped in Mariupol, working for the AP as the Russians invaded. It's astonishing footage of the country and the conflict.
HOLMES: Yeah, I agree. I think that's probably my vote for the most essential. Another one that I really think a lot of people saw because it ended up being nominated for a couple of Oscars was "Flee"...
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "FLEE")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: (Non-English language spoken).
HOLMES: ...Which was a few years ago, and it was an animated documentary, which is really - it's a fascinating experiment with form, about a guy who left Afghanistan as a refugee. And it's an absolutely riveting film, and I think it's absolutely something everybody should see both because of the subject matter and because it's very important if you care about documentaries to prioritize and think about and value the filmmaking and not just the transfer of information. And so I love that film partly because it is so different from so many other ones in the way that it's presented.
MCCAMMON: You mentioned animated documentaries, which is, you know, not a technique that - it sort of sounds counterintuitive - right? - animation in a documentary. But one film that I saw this past year from a couple years ago was a documentary about the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, "Soul On Fire."
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "ELIE WIESEL: SOUL ON FIRE")
ELIE WIESEL: One of the things that every survivor has to face and does face today is the fact of its own survival. He somehow is ashamed of still being here.
MCCAMMON: It used animation really to take people back to scenes from the camps, which, you know, again, very counterintuitive. I wouldn't have ever imagined it, but I thought it was really effective and really profound, and it kind of depicts something that we've all seen images of in a way that's fresh.
HOLMES: Yeah.
MCCAMMON: So it's interesting to see the techniques that some of these documentarians employ to tell their stories.
HOLMES: For sure. I think about the films that the wonderful filmmaker Raoul Peck makes, including one that came out recently called "Orwell: 2+2=5," which is really just a combination of the writings of George Orwell, particularly "1984," and footage of often unrelated things or seemingly unrelated things, including things from kind of present day. And it's really the juxtaposition that does all the work.
MCCAMMON: Finally, is there any documentary that either one of you have seen that maybe was a little off the radar that you think people should just check out if they've missed it in recent years, something that deserved a wider audience?
HANDEL: OK, for me, this documentary is "Midnight Family." I feel like nobody saw it, and I just was riveted. It came out in 2019, and it's about the world of for-profit private ambulance drivers in Mexico City.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "MIDNIGHT FAMILY")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking Spanish).
HANDEL: It profiles this one family who's in this business and the relationships that they have to have with the hospitals so that they get the call to go get the person who needs to be moved. And they're performing this service, and they're barely getting by. And it's just so exciting and propulsive, and I was fascinated.
HOLMES: I would call out a 2025 film that has certainly gotten a certain amount of attention, but I really hope people will continue to watch it. And that's "The Perfect Neighbor," which is about...
HANDEL: Yes.
HOLMES: ...A Black woman who was shot and killed by a white woman in her neighborhood.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR")
UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER: Nine-one-one, what is the address of the emergency?
SUSAN LORINCZ: Several kids out here...
HOLMES: And most of it is made up of police body camera footage responding to reports of incidents between the two of them. And you see how this develops over time and how it kind of moves toward this terrible conclusion. And I think it's extremely hard to watch, but I think it's a very...
HANDEL: Yes.
HOLMES: ...Very good movie.
MCCAMMON: That was in NPR's Sarah Handel and Linda Holmes. Thank you so much for joining me.
HANDEL: Thanks, Sarah.
HOLMES: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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