I know that at the end of the year there is an overwhelming mass of ‘Best of’ lists to work through, so as I gradually work my way up to my ‘Best Films of 2018’ list, I thought I’d throw another select list onto the pile. With over 500 films being released in Australia in 2018, it’s easy to lose track of what films are worthwhile seeking out. That’s why I wrote up a ‘Best Australian Films of 2018’ list, and why as the minutes tick down on 2018, I want to shine a light on documentary films.
Over the past few years, the documentary genre has really taken off with audiences around the world. In 2018 alone, four documentaries jumped into the highest grossing documentaries of all time – Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, RBG, Three Identical Strangers, and Free Solo – taking in a combined effort of $US58,592,835. Sure, it’s not Black Panther numbers, but it’s still a huge amount.
Over on Netflix, the documentary format continues to thrive, with films like Shirkers, The Bleeding Edge, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, and Quincy, all proving that Netflix is one of the best places to dig into documentaries around the world. Meanwhile, for those who want a slightly different fare than what Netflix offers, another subscription service exists purely for the documentary format alone – DocPlay – where films like Living the Change, My Year With Helen, Jill Bilcock: Dancing the Invisibleand Mountain, can all safely be discovered, alongside a huge wealth of other great documentaries from around the world.
Closer to home, the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival celebrated its third year with a truly phenomenal line-up of films. With sell out sessions and a huge variety of content, there is clearly an appetite for documentaries, and documentary focused festivals. Notable films screened at the 2018 festival include Finding the Line, Big in Japan, Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story, and Black Anzac.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out Perth’s finest film festival – the Revelation Film Festival – for being the place where a lot of my favourite documentaries of the year have come from. Everything from The Cleaners, to A Woman Captured, to RocKabul, to I Used to Be Normal, to McQueen, and many, many more, screened at this years Revelation Film Festival. Sure, it’s not easy to get to Perth just for a film festival, so with that in mind, keep an eye on your local film festivals throughout the year as that’s one way to catch documentaries that may usually slip through the cracks.
All of those films mentioned are worthwhile seeking out, and while I would love to do a top fifty documentaries list, I have to cut it off somewhere. With that in mind, here is an additional handful of documentaries worthwhile seeking out:
Have You Seen the Listers?, Border Politics, Gurrumul, Living Universe, The Road Movie, Jane, and The Coming Back Out Ball Movie
As with all of these 'Best of' lists, these films are selected as per Australian film release dates.
For now though, here are ten of my favourite documentaries from 2018.
10. Jill Bilcock: Dancing the Invisible
Director: Axel Grigor
Over the years, I’ve been gradually keeping track of documentaries that look at the creative process of filmmaking. In 2018 we were fortunate enough to get a few films that looked at the filmmaking process – They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, and notably, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda. They’re solid films, but for me the one that takes the cake is Jill Bilcock: Dancing the Invisible.
Axel Grigor’s documentary shines a light on the role of the film editor – the person who helps turn the hours of footage into the feature film. Grigor and subject Jill Bilcock help explain how important the role of editing is by showcasing the most obvious presence of editing in cinema – Baz Luhrmann’s filmography. Without Jill Bilcock, there would be no Baz Luhrmann. And, in turn, we realise that without Sally Menke there would have been no Quentin Tarantino, or without Thelma Schoonmaker there would be no Martin Scorsese. Essentially stuff for film lovers.
Directors: Dana Nachman, Don Hardy
On the surface, Pick of the Litter looks like it’s going to be a simple, sweet flick about puppies growing up. And, sure, it’s full of that kind of sweetness – it’s positively dripping in it – but there’s a lot more going on in this wonderful film. In short, Pick of the Litter is about the amount of people who come together and work to make peoples lives better and easier.
So, yes, there’s cute dogs, but these are cute dogs with a job to do – they need to become guide dogs and be the eyes for vision impaired people. And heck, if there’s one thing that we need at the end of 2018, it’s more inspirational stories about people working to help other people. And dogs with jobs.
8. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Director: Morgan Neville
Going into Won’t You Be My Neighbor? I had no idea who Fred Rogers was. Growing up in Australia, my diet of kids entertainment consisted of shows like Play School, Mulligrubs (this is what Mulligrubs was, sorry you’re not sleeping tonight), Lift Off, and The Raggy Dolls. While they all had their benefits, it’s clear after watching this immensely beautiful documentary that there was nobody like Fred Rogers in Australia, and possibly anywhere else in the world. To have grown up with a figure like Fred Rogers would have been a powerfully educational thing to have.
And, most importantly, it would have been a deeply necessary thing for kids who felt alone, different, unique, or just ‘not right’, to have a voice tell them that they were ok. While a documentary on Fred Rogers alone would have been sweet and nice, what director Morgan Neville does is manage to bring in the surrounding discussions and events of the era of Fred to provide extra context as to why someone like Fred was important. On top of this, there’s the criticism directed at the generation grew up with Fred’s voice guiding them.
Heading in, I thought this could be a slight, twee documentary, but instead, I felt moved, and glad that there was a generation that had the fortunate luck of knowing a voice like Fred Rogers and having him guide their formative years. Genuinely one of the sweetest films of 2018.
7. Shirkers
Director: Sandi Tan
Sandi Tan’s film about a film is a fascinating dive into a world of ‘what could have been’. I first came to know of Shirkers thanks to Dave White and Alonso Duralde on their podcast Linoleum Knife (give that show a listen folks, you’ll find out about a lot of great films on there). On it, they hypothesised about what the world would have been like if Sandi Tan’s original film, Shirkers (not this documentary, but the film the documentary is about), had been completed and released. They talk about the missed opportunities, about the careers cut off before they even started, about the paths that lives take us down.
While we were robbed of a unique voice of Singaporean cinema (of which the world knows so little about), Shirkersmanages to explore the resilience of friendships and family. Sure, Sandi Tan and her friends are defeated, but they persist and push on with their interests and their lives, given no other option but to do exactly that. While Shirkers is a film about filmmaking, it’s also a film about the past and what memories can do to us. A Netflix film that is definitely worth digging into – and one that you should go in knowing as little as possible.
6. Faces Places
Director: Agnes Varda
Look, if cinema simply consisted of friends JR and Agnes Varda travelling around Europe putting giant pictures on buildings and talking about life and the past and goats, well, we’d be really lucky and fortunate. As it is, cinema isn’t that, which is a bit of a shame, but at least we have Faces Places to warm out hearts a little.
Agnes Varda is one of the most vibrant, beautiful, sweet, joyous people you could ever expect to spend ninety minutes with. So much so, that come the end of the film, you can’t help but reach for the pen and paper to write Jean-Luc Godard a stern letter for being a dick to Agnes Varda. In my review of Hearts Beat Loud, I mention how that film is like chicken soup for the soul, and sure, it is, but Faces Places is a warm bath, a grandmother’s hug, and a kiss on the forehead. It’s simply beautiful stuff.
5. [censored]
Director: Sari Braithwaite
Sari Braithwaite’s [censored] is a cinematic essay about the act of censorship, and what it means to remove footage from a film. Braithwaite focuses on the section of the Australian film archive that has almost 2,000 clips of footage cut from films between 1958 and 1971, and presents the footage with the guiding question of ‘why was this footage cut?’ By focusing on what is omitted, we – the viewer – are forced to reckon with the footage, all the while leaving us asking, what about the footage that remains?
I hadn’t intended to have three documentaries about cinema on this list – after all, the joy of documentaries is the way it can explore all manner of subjects – but Jill Bilcock: Dancing the Invisible, Shirkers and [censored] all tell a uniting story. The story of the power of cinema, with its ability to inform, entertain, educate, and guide viewers into behaving or reacting a certain way. In this regard, [censored] is a film that is focused on the hands that try to guide cinema (the censor), and in turn, it interrogates the role of someone who intends to shape culture.
Director: Catherine Scott
I adore this film. As I mentioned in my review, I was crying within the first few minutes and didn’t stop until the end. But, Backtrack Boys is not a sad film. Quite the opposite. It’s a film about jackaroo Bernie Shakeshaft and the youth program that he runs to help wayward kids get back on track. He does this with the help of his working dogs.
Catherine Scott’s film is a truly joyous film, and one that shows the efforts of the many out there who (like Fred Rogers) are trying to make the lives of kids in the world just that little bit easier. Bernie is a genuine character who recognises the value of having a guiding hand for these young rural based kids, and when the kids succeed, you see the joy he has for them, but when they fail, it hits him hard. Just like Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and Fred Rogers, I’m grateful for the fact that Backtrack Boys shows that there are people like Bernie Shakeshaft in the world.
Director: Bernadett Tuza-Ritter
No film left me more conflicted and upset in 2018 than A Woman Captured. At first, I felt I was complicit with the domestic slavery that the ‘captured woman’ – Edith – is subjected to, with the director, Bernadett Tuza-Ritter paying the person who keeps Edith captive for the privilege to film Edith as she ‘works’ in her domestic prison. But, gradually, as the film unfurls, we see that it’s necessary to expose the devastating aspect of domestic slavery around the world.
A Woman Captured is not an easy sit. It’s uncomfortable, and disturbing, and exceptionally unsettling. It’s also a film that looks at the role of the filmmaker and questions their relationship with the subject. Free Solo also grappled with the notion of what does ‘the subject’ mean to a filmmaker. With that film, the filmmakers realise that they could possibly be working on a snuff film. With A Woman Captured, we realise that without Bernadett, Edith would never be free at the end.
2. The Cleaners
Directors: Hans Block, Moritz Riesewick
Facebook has had a pretty average year – as it should. Remember how way back at the beginning of 2018 the Cambridge Analytica scandal hit? Yeah, that was this year. While The Cleaners isn’t about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it does raise a question about the role of social media in todays society, and in turn, it asks about the role that services like Facebook, YouTube, and Google, play in this world when it comes to contentious material.
The Cleaners looks at the outsourced workers who ‘cleanse’ the internet of images and material that violates the ‘terms and conditions’ of the platform. Whether that be a painting of a naked Donald Trump, or victims who have been decapitated, all these images are purged from the internet. The Cleaners touches on this, and a heck of a lot more, in a deep dive into the frightening reach of the internet and how insidious it has becomes in our lives. While not all questions are answered, they at least ring loud in our minds.
Director: Gabrielle Brady
Island of the Hungry Ghosts is a lyrical film about a scar that remains open in the realm of Australian history. Gabrielle Brady takes us to a remote island in the middle of nowhere called Christmas Island. Her camera follows three different worlds running in harmony in this unique world. The people who call the island home, the red crabs that also call the island home, as well as Poh Lin Lee, a trauma counsellor who lives on the island with her family to help the asylum seekers who are awaiting processing on the camp that has been established there.
Island of the Hungry Ghosts doesn’t aim to infuriate or to antagonise you, but it’s hard not to leave the film feeling furious. Gabrielle Brady is a lot like Poh Lin Lee, patient, calm, and measured, always capturing the situation as it happens without alarm. In a year full of great documentaries, this is the finest one of the year.
As I look back on this list, I see the work of many great women directors. This is not by design that I’ve chosen these films, but by mere happenstance. I’ve long found that the documentary genre is a field where women directors have flourished, and the output in 2018 is a testament to the work of many great directors.
So that's it! The best documentaries of 2018. Let me know below what you enjoyed from the world of documentary cinema below.