The stars and directors of “Empire of Light” held court from Los Angeles recently, following the American premiere of the new film held there. Writer-director Sam Mendes was joined by stars Olivia Coleman, Michael Ward, Toby Jones and Tanya Moodie.

The intriguing film, which comes out today, stars Coleman as Hillary, a movie theater employee experiencing mental

If only I’d had more time. It’s a common refrain I tell myself whenever a top-drawer festival such as DOC NYC comes along. I didn’t get to nearly as many films this year as I would have liked (it’s always that way), but what I did see was a firm reminder that truth is not only stranger than fiction, it’s often braver.

Here’s a look back at some stellar documentaries, which you should watch, too.

In the worst tradition of hypocrites everywhere, Jerry Falwell Jr. admonished his flock to abstain from alcohol, premarital (and certainly extramarital) sexual activity, and no dancing. But as we now know, the president of Virginia’s Liberty University was not only fond of a stiff drink, he and his wife Becki were involved in a multiyear throuple with a twentysomething pool boy they met at Miami’s swanky Fontainebleau hotel.

On March 29th, after passing overwhelmingly in both houses of Congress, President Joe Biden signed into law the Emmett Till Antilynching Act—sixty-seven years after the Black teenager was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955 by two white men angry over Till’s supposed whistling at one of their wives. He was just fourteen at the time of his murder.

An all-White Mississippi jury exonerated

On July 3rd, 2017, desperate for help and with seemingly no one taking his complaints of pain seriously, retired Marine Brian Easley walked into an Atlanta-area bank, gently informing a clerk that he had a bomb. He didn’t want to rob the bank, he insisted; he simply wanted the money he felt the VA had denied him for his own care.

He also wanted to be heard. Easley phoned both

You’ve already seen “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World: Dominion,” so while you wait with baited breath for “Bullet Train” and “Avatar: The Way of Water,” you should seek out these four intriguing films, which, unlike the slam-boom-bang of the big-screen summer tentpoles (not that we don’t love them because we do!), might actually give you something to contemplate after the credits roll.

What an amazing human is the former congresswoman from Arizona, who was shot in the head in 2011 and not only survived but has continued to serve the public. Though Gabby Giffords retired from the House after her near-fatal shooting by an angry and mentally unstable constituent, she somehow still maintains her smile, her poise, her good humor even when it would be more than understandable for her to have lost any of these.