In the wake of the recent DOC NYC 2002 is heating up with some amazing documentaries. Whether available on demand on one of the major players or otherwise, these docs do what the best of the genre do: observe and uncover truth. "Life of Crime 1984-2020" (director: Jon Alpert) Jon Alpert has made the most extraordinary documentary of the year, which is only fitting

The Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s film “There Is No Evil” (Golden Bear Award, Berlin Festival, 2021) is extraordinary on a number of levels—political daring in a country where dissent or criticism is harshly punished, as well as narrative. Four chapters or stories, unrelated, maintain throughout a profound tension, not with special effects or major reveals but by dint of taking us deep into what a brutal regime does to its people and how these

“tick tick… BOOM!” is the name of the musical Jonathan Larson wrote and performed about the failure of “Superbia,” his rock-opera adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 that was to be his ticket to Broadway. Sadly, this didn’t happen. If something good came out of that piece’s failure, it would be the powerfully personal follow up that would lead to the legendary Broadway groundbreaker “Rent.”

This past week marked eighty years since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, which lured the United States into WWII. Sixteen million Americans answered the call to join the armed forces against the Axis of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan and fascist Italy. Over 400,000 servicemen lost their lives in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters, with approximately 80,000 more still classified as missing in action, their final resting places unknown.

Throughout the centuries philosophers have responded to the idea of death in many ways. Kierkegaard saw grief as a door to faith while Heidegger found it a way to give deeper meaning to one’s life. It was Camus who found the absurdity in it all.

As adults, grief exists as an emotional conglomerate and people from all walks of life deal with it in different manners.

“Satanic Panic” is a very real fear that gripped the United States in the eighties and nineties.

Over those decades, there existed over 10,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse and death. By the late nineties the panic began to spread to other countries. The media and the church unleashed a terror campaign. Though not as large an issue as it once was, the fear persists to this day.

Dozens of amazing films once again show us the value of hewing to truth when so many seek to create their own alternative reality. This year’s DOC NYC demonstrated how truly talented are documentary filmmakers the world over, many of whom aren’t household names but nonetheless continue the search for truth in a world less and less interested in it. 

Here are some of the major offerings