Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

The premise of Rachel Grady’s and Heidi Ewing’s (“Jesus Camp”, “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You,” Endangered) new Oscar-shortlisted documentary, “Folktales” is simple enough:  They follow three students at a post-high school program in Norway’s Arctic circle as they learn survival skills and dog sledding.  But by almost literally weaving in Nordic tales of the Fates, demonstrating the healing ties that grow between the students and the dogs, and exploring the profound wisdom proffered by two capable, insightful teachers (Iselin and Thor-Atle), Ewing and Grady provide a deep meditation on coming of age in the time of putatively frictionless lives and ubiquitous cell phones.   Rachel joins Mike on the pod to explain how she found joy in the challenges of shooting in darkened forests in polar winter--how in effect she “went to Folk High School too!”   And she shares the wisdom she garnered from Iselin and Thor-Atle as well:  Throughout our lives, doors open and close.   You can watch “Folktales” on streaming platforms including Amazon.   Follow: @rachelgrady on Instagram @heidewing on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter/X   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

In his new, Oscar-shortlisted “The Alabama Solution”, which he co-directed with Charlotte Kaufman, Andrew Jarecki ("Capturing the Friedmans", "The Jinx") focusses on inmates of the Alabama Department of Corrections who use contraband phones to organize dissent within the system, even sustained labor strikes, all aimed at improving the dramatically overcrowded, squalid, abusive, and even fatal conditions within the state’s 14 prisons.   To date, Alabama’s “solution” to these problems–and the attention it has drawn from the Federal DOJ– has been to build larger prisons that promise to provide no increase in the system’s number of beds, but do promise with their massive financial overruns to feather the beds of the governor’s friends and supporters.  Jarecki and Kaufman, in league with the prisoners they depict here, hope to change that.   You can watch “The Alabama Solution” on HBO Max.   Follow: @andrew.jarecki on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter/X   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

In her Oscar-shortlisted new documentary, “Seeds”, director Brittany Shyne depicts the lives of Black farmers in the South.  In a flexible verité style in which she doesn’t fear breaking the fourth wall, Shyne pays meticulous attention to the workings of farm life, focussing, as she notes to Mike, literally on the hands that do that labor.  But she sets the entire experience with a broader framework of the “maintenance of legacy and [what] that entails” within the “political and social structures” which inform the lives of these farmers. The resulting film becomes a meditation on relationships:  Between the members of the community, of course, but also between: people and the land; people and machines; people and animals; and between people and their own bodies and mortality.   Hidden Gem: “Handsworth Songs”   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

You might assume that receiving a fellowship to Harvard University represents the culmination of a burgeoning academic career. But, as director Amber Fares (“Speed Sisters”) shows in the amusing opening scenes of her Sundance award-winning documentary “Coexistence, My Ass!,” when Noam Shuster Eliassi, the main participant in her film, receives such an honor, she has actually been invited by Harvard’s Peace and Divinity School to prepare material for her one-woman comedy show about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.     Amber joins Ken on the pod to discuss Noam’s winding path from an Israeli cooperative village that is home to both Jews and Arabs to a dream job at the UN to finding her true voice as a comedian and activist. As we see throughout the film, and in a performance of Noam’s completed show that provides the narrative spine for the film, Noam faces hard truths, both on and off the stage. She brings a fresh perspective to an age-old conflict and to the everyday realities of post-Oct 7th Israeli society.   “Coexistence, My Ass!” has been named to this year’s Oscar shortlist in the Documentary Feature Film category.   Follow: @amber_fares on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X   Hidden Gem: “We Are Pat”   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

You find out your husband of many years is cheating on you, but you still love him anddesperately want to keep your family together. What do you do? In Elizabeth Lo’s (“Stray”) remarkable documentary “Mistress Dispeller,” we are introduced to a heart broken Mrs. Li, who hires a mistress dispeller to end her husband’s affair and save her marriage.  Yes, it’s true: in modern-day China, mistress dispelling is an actual profession, and Teacher Wang has more business than she can handle.   Elizabeth joins Ken on the pod to discuss the fascinating world of mistress dispelling and how she and her creative collaborators managed to win the trust of Mrs. Li and the other players in this doomed love triangle. From the time Teacher Wang “injects herself organically” into the threesome until the film’s inevitable dénouement, we can hardly believe the access we have to such an enthralling domestic drama unfolding in real-time. But as lies and deceptions give way to a final confrontation, the filmmaking itself remains steadfast, as real and beautiful as it gets.   “Mistress Dispeller” has been named to this year’s Oscar shortlist in the Documentary Feature Film category. The film is available for rent on Apple TV.   Follow: @elizabethbklo on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X   Hidden Gem: “Gunda”    The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.