Cannes 2023: Top 10 documentaries to keep on your Oscar radar [PHOTOS]

Ronald Meyer
·7 min read
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The 2023 Cannes Film Festival’s documentary slate featured probes into human rights abuses and profiles of unsung visionaries. At least one movie falls into both categories. This year marks the second time that the L’Œil d’or, first presented in 2015, has gone to two films. It’s also the first time in 19 years that nonfiction has competed for the Palme d’Or. Do you think any of the following titles 10 should be on our radar come Oscar season?

SEE Cannes 2023 round-up: Top 25 movies to emerge from this year’s festival [PHOTOS]

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“Anita”

Anita Pallenberg is known by a small group, and still only as a muse rather than an actress, fashion icon and writer. Laird Borrelli-Persson (Vogue) describes her as a “troubled woman who has come close to being mythologized out of existence and sidelined by the juggernaut that is The Rolling Stones.” Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill made “Anita” to “allow [Pallenberg] to emerge in our eyes…perhaps not fully out of the shadow of the Stones – that isn’t possible – but in enough light for her to shine” (Matthew Carey, Deadline).

“Anselm”

With all the excitement over “Perfect Days” and Kōji Yakusho’s award-winning performance, it was easy to forget that Wim Wenders was also at Cannes this year with “Anselm,” a 3D tour through the works and “austerely expansive mind” of German artist Anselm Kiefer. Jonathan Romney (Screen Daily) writes, “Franz Lustig’s 3D 6K camerawork is marvellous at conveying the textures, abrasive materiality and sheer scale of Kiefer’s often monumental creations – including the huge, eerie space he created in Barjac, comprising tunnels, cavernous galleries, [and] whole swathes of landscape.” He adds, “Whatever the practical challenges faced by 3D cinema in the current climate, the film’s stark beauty and cultural richness should make ‘Anselm’ a significant niche success theatrically and online.”

“Bread and Roses”

“Bread and Roses” depicts the human rights abuses that have been ongoing in Afghanistan since America’s exit in 2021 and the Taliban’s subsequent takeover. Catherine Bray (Variety) calls “Bread and Roses” a “necessary howl of rage,” and Allan Hunter (Screen Daily) says that while it “conveys the full nightmare of what has happened to women in Afghanistan…it becomes a celebration of resistance rather than a lament for what has been lost.” The film is directed by Sahra Mani (“A Thousand Girls Like Me”) and produced by Jennifer Lawrence.

“Four Daughters”

“Four Daughters” examines the disappearance and radicalization of two Tunisian girls through both dramatic reenactments and interviews with the real-life subjects. Matthew Carey praises director Kaouther Ben Hania (2021 Best International Feature nominee “The Man Who Sold His Skin”) and writes that her hybridized approach, similar to Errol Morris’ in “Wormwood” and Kitty Green’s in “Casting JonBenet,” “achieves a new level of artistry and organic relevance.” “Four Daughters” is one of two film to receive this year’s L’Œil d’or. 2022’s winner, Sundance premiere “All That Breathes,” went on to compete for the Oscar.

“Liv Ullmann: A Road Less Travelled”

Another entry that spotlights an underappreciated artist, “Liv Ullmann: A Road Less Travelled” is the latest documentary about the actress from Dheeraj Akolkar, who also directed 2012’s “Liv and Ingmar.” Like Anita Pallenberg, Liv Ullmann is a woman predominantly known in connection with male collaborators. Allan Hunter writes, “If nothing else, ‘The Road Less Travelled’ should lay to rest the lazy label perennially attached to Ullmann of being ‘[Ingmar Bergman’s] muse.’ There is an inextricable connection with Bergman that runs throughout her career, but also so much more to her life.”

“Man in Black”

Wang Bing (“The Ditch”) is another filmmaker who unveiled two projects at Cannes this year. The subject of his trimmer entry, “Man in Black,” is Chinese composer and dissident Wang Xilin, who lays himself bare quite literally while recounting years of imprisonment and torture. Matthew Carey says, “‘Man in Black’ constitutes one of the most unique ‘biographical’ documentaries I’ve ever seen. It’s not an assemblage of archive clips and interviews, the kind of stuff typically seen in films about artists. This is more like an evocative tour of a man’s mind – a man who bravely pursued his art in defiance of a regime that tried to control or silence him.” It sounds like an excellent pairing with “Anselm.”

“The Mother of All Lies”

The idea for “The Mother of All Lies” sprung from a question director Asmae El Moudir had regarding a childhood photo: Why is there only one? And why is the girl in the picture not her? The investigation delves into Morocco’s political history and her own family’s past, as well as the nature of memory and art’s function in preserving it. El Moudir, who won the Un Certain Regard section’s directing prize, said, per Deadline, “I am not trying to document the true story of my family but to make a film about the multiplicity of points of view and the plurality of interpretations that exist within one household, not only for the sake of family history but for that of national history as well.” Leslie Felperin (The Hollywood Reporter) calls “The Mother of All Lies,” which shares the 2023 L’Œil d’or with “Four Daughters,” “a sly, often playful but ultimately moving study of community, generational anguish and atrocities covered up by the state that blends documentary technique with originality and polished storytelling skill.”

“Occupied City”

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) revisits Nazi-ruled Amsterdam without a frame of archival footage in “Occupied City.” Meticulously researched and based on “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945),” an illustrated historical text written by Bianca Stigter (McQueen’s wife), “Occupied City” explores the ways in which we both commemorate and forget the past. Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian) calls the four-hour watch “monumental,” and Sheri Linden (The Hollywood Reporter) writes, “There’s nothing boilerplate about the doc.” It’s sure to make a fascinating companion piece to McQueen’s “Blitz” when that film is released in 2024.

“Room 999″

In one way or another, Wim Wenders was sort of all over this year’s Cannes. During the 1982 edition, the director interviewed several filmmakers about their feelings toward the then-current state of their mutually beloved medium. 40 years later, Lubna Playoust has done the same, interviewing, along with Wenders, president of the 2023 Main Competition jury Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”), Albert Serra (“Pacifiction”), Alice Rohrwacher (2023 Palme contender “La chimera”), Davy Chou (“Return to Seoul” and 2023 Un Certain Regard juror), Claire Denis (“Beau Travail”), Baz Luhrmann (“Elvis”) and Ashgar Farhadi (“A Separation”), to name a few. If her goal was to contemplate some of the ways cinema has changed between now and 1982, she does so in more ways than one: “The group of filmmakers…quite literally [articulates] a changing complexion for whose films and which filmmakers become part of the conversation compared to forty years ago” (Jason Gorber, RogerEbert.com).

“Youth (Spring)”

A documentary hasn’t competed for the Palme d’Or since Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” won in 2004. This year breaks that trend with not one, but two nonfiction entries – “Four Daughters” and Wang Bing’s “Youth (Spring).” The latter, a three-hour modern-day portrait of China’s garment industry, earned some of the main slate’s most positive notices. “The format of the filming pushes the documentary medium. Almost all the footage included here is filmed in extremely long, unbroken takes running multiple minutes on end on average. It truly gives a spontaneous, life-like feel to the entire film,” writes Ankit Jhunjhunwala (Screen Anarchy).

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