Best Documentary Films of 2022
Here’s my annual list of some of the great documentary films I’ve seen this year. I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention a few and a number of these actually came out a few years ago, but here goes…
Graham Boyd: A Life In Colour | Goldmark Films
So I have to plug one of my films first of course. Graham Boyd: A Life In Colour, is a documentary I made with Jay Goldmark for Goldmark Films, and it was shortlisted for a Royal Television Society Award this year. Sadly we lost to a small company called the BBC.
The film finds 93 year old veteran of abstraction Graham Boyd at work in his Hertfordshire studio. He talks about his life and inspiration; the early development of his painting into pure abstraction, the impact on his work of his time spent in Africa and America and his continuing artistic journey
“Standing in front of his paintings we might feel just such variegations of mood and feeling. They are so alive, so unpredictable, so disconcerting, and, yes, so beautiful if we make them so.”
The Filmmaker's House | BFI Player
In protest against sensationalism in the documentary industry, Marc Isaacs makes a film in his own home. Blending fact and fiction, he explores the theme of hospitality and indirectly asks questions about authorship.
Shirkers | Netflix
Biographical Documentaries In 1992, Sandi Tan and her friends shot a quirky film on the streets of Singapore. Then the footage disappeared, sending her on a hunt for answers.
Storyville: The Teo Escobar | BBC iPlayer
When Andres was murdered 10 days after scoring an own goal against the USA in the first round of the 1994 World Cup, it cost the country more than a shot at the title.
Apple - Lincoln’s Dilemma |Apple TV+
Discover a side of Abraham Lincoln you’ve never seen before. Inspired by David S. Reynolds’s book “Abe: Abraham, Lincoln in his Times.” In this four-part docuseries, a diverse panel of historians and rare archival materials offer a more nuanced look into Abraham Lincoln's presidency.
Storyville - Misha and the Wolves | BBC iPlayer
A woman's Holocaust memoir takes the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher-turned-detective reveals her as an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth.
Storyville -The Price of Gold | BBC iPlayer
A Storyville documentary that revisits the 1994 scandal that embroiled competing US Olympic figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.
The Big Conn | Apple TV+
The true story of how Eric C. Conn pulled off one of the largest government frauds in U.S. history. The Big Conn uncovers how two whistleblowers realized Conn was living a little too large in eastern Kentucky.
Make or Break | Apple TV+
From pure elation to devastating heartbreak, follow the world’s best surfers as they fight for the championship title. Watch Make or Break now on Apple TV+ https://apple.co/_MakeOrBreak Dive into the world of pro surfing as the best in the sport travel the globe to compete for the World Championship title. With unprecedented access, this docuseries captures the athletes’ lives on tour and the sacrifices they make to get to the top.
Storyville - Afghan Cricket Club - Out of the Ashes | BBC iPlayer
Documentary which traces the journey of a team of young Afghan cricketers as they chase an unlikely dream, shedding light on a nation beyond burqas, bombs, drugs and devastation.
Hunting Nepal’s Mad Honey That Makes You Hallucinate - HONEY HUNTERS
The Honey Hunters of Nepal have a 260 year-old tradition of scaling mountains in search for a rare honey only found in the Himalayas that makes people hallucinate. We travel to the depths of the country of Nepal in search for these brave people and capture their story.
On the Morning You Wake (to the End of the World)
On January 13th 2018, 1.4m people across Hawai’i received an SMS from the state’s Emergency Management Agency: BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. In the minutes that followed, they were forced to confront existential questions that had been unthinkable just moments before: where could they go for shelter? What would remain of their communities if they survived a nuclear blast? How could they explain to their children why we live in a world where such unimaginable destruction was possible? And how could their own Government continue to pursue nuclear policies that threaten the entire global population every day? By the time FEMA managed to retract the incorrect warning message, it was too late to pretend that normality would resume. Their collective experience had laid bare the growing threat that nuclear weapons pose to the world. In the words of Kauai resident Cynthia Lazaroff, ‘Nothing happened, but everything changed’.
Orion: The Man Who Would Be King | BBC iPlayer
Following the death of Elvis Presley in 1977, a masked mystery man with the voice of The King emerged. Who was Orion? Where did he come from? And was he really the second coming of Elvis? At once a stranger-than-fiction music industry mystery and a poignant investigation of fame, identity, and destiny, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King gets the wild, behind-the-scenes story of a talented but overlooked artist who sold his soul for pop stardom—and wound up paying the price.
Light and Magic | Disney Plus
Showcasing the people of Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects division of Lucasfilm, this series takes us back in time as they create the effects for some of the biggest and most successful films of the last 45 years.
RECORDER: The Marion Stokes Project | BFI Player
For over 30 years, Marion Stokes obsessively and privately recorded American television news twenty-four hours a day. A civil rights-era radical who became fabulously wealthy and reclusive later in life, her obsession started with the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979—at the dawn of the twenty-four hour news cycle. It ended on December 14, 2012 as the Sandy Hook massacre played on television while Marion passed away. In between, Marion filled 70,000 VHS tapes, capturing revolutions, wars, triumphs, catastrophes, bloopers, talk shows and commercials that show us how television shaped the world of today and in the process tell us who we were. A mystery in the form of a time capsule, RECORDER delves into the strange life of a woman for whom home taping was a form of activism to protect the truth (the public didn’t know it, but the networks had been disposing their archives for decades into the trashcan of history) and though her visionary and maddening project nearly tore her family apart, her extraordinary legacy is priceless.
Welcome to Wrexham | Disney Plus
: Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool) navigate running the third oldest professional football club in the world. Welcome to Wrexham is a docuseries tracking the dreams and worries of Wrexham, a working-class town in North Wales, UK, as two Hollywood stars take ownership of the town’s historic yet struggling football club. In 2020, Rob and Ryan teamed up to purchase the 5th tier Red Dragons in the hopes of turning the club into an underdog story the whole world could root for. The worry? Rob and Ryan have no experience in football or working with each other. From Hollywood to Wales, from the pitch to the locker room, the front office to the pub, Welcome to Wrexham will track Rob and Ryan’s crash course in football club ownership and the inextricably connected fates of a team and a town counting on two actors to bring some serious hope and change to a community that could use it.
Days That Shook The BBC with David Dimbleby | BBC iPlayer
Focusing on controversies from the recent past, David Dimbleby examines the way the BBC has dealt with power and how it has preserved its independence.
Sidney | Apple TV+
An inspirational story honoring the life and legacy of Hollywood legend, Sidney Poitier. Watch Sidney now on Apple TV+ https://apple.co/_Sidney From producer Oprah Winfrey and directed by Reginald Hudlin, this revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier and his legacy as an iconic actor, filmmaker and activist at the center of Hollywood and the Civil Rights Movement. Featuring candid interviews with Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Robert Redford, Lenny Kravitz, Barbra Streisand, Spike Lee and many more, the film is also produced by Derik Murray, in close collaboration with the Poitier family.
The Great Mountain Sheep Gather | BBC iPlayer
Scafell Pike is England’s tallest mountain and home to a flock of native Herdwick sheep. Every summer their shepherd must gather these notoriously hardy sheep and bring them down to the farm for shearing. The Great Mountain Sheep Gather charts this journey across the fells with epic bird’s-eye view drone photography descending into the valley below. This timeless event has taken place in the Lake District for over a thousand years. Opening at dawn with the shepherd blindly navigating the foggy peaks and crags, this film reveals the skill, knowledge and bravery needed to care for his flock in this rugged land. As the fog lifts to expose the breath-taking landscape and the small pockets of sheep merge into one big group, the voice of Lakeland shepherd, Andrew Harrison, allows us to see this unique world through his eyes – the knowledge of the dogs, farmers and sheep passed down from generation to generation for centuries; the challenges of life in the fells; and the conflict posed by visitors and the 21st Century. Specially commissioned poetry written by Mark Pajak, and read by Maxine Peake, provides a counterpoint to the shepherd’s insights throughout this slow TV film. The programme’s unique visual perspective includes riding along on a dog, a sheep, and the shepherd himself. The bleats, barks and birdsong echoing down the valley create an evocative natural soundtrack. Once the flock has assembled as one, this immersive chronicle follows the group as they descend and are greeted by sunshine and a sense of relief as they arrive at the farm. Five hundred sheep must now be sheared – the tale of a shepherd’s life.
The Elon Musk Show | BBC iPlayer
"From the age of three, I thought he was a genius" The Elon Musk Show gets to the heart of who Elon Musk really is, by interviewing the people that know him best. Family members, employees, close friends and enemies tell the intimate story of Elon Musk’s incredible journey to become the world’s richest man. Using extensive archive footage taken throughout his life, from South Africa to Silicon Valley, the series analyses the key moments in Elon’s career, from his first tech start-ups through to Tesla and SpaceX.
Aquarela | BBC iPlayer
AQUARELA takes audiences on a deeply cinematic journey through the transformative beauty and raw power of water. Captured at a rare 96 frames-per-second, the film is a visceral wake-up call that humans are no match for the sheer force and capricious will of Earth’s most precious element. From the precarious frozen waters of Russia’s Lake Baikal to Miami in the throes of Hurricane Irma to Venezuela’s mighty Angel Falls, water is AQUARELA’s main character, with director Victor Kossakovsky capturing her many personalities in startling cinematic clarity. The film will be shown in theaters at 48 frames-per-second, double the typical 24 frames-per-second, as projectors with the ability to project at 96-frames-per-second are extremely rare today, but when the timecomes that the capacity is there, AQUARELA will be one of the first films to be shown at that speed.
Louise Armstrong | Apple TV+
You’ve heard his influential music, now hear his incredible story. Get to know Louis Armstrong through never-before-heard home recordings, archival footage, and personal conversations. Stream Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues now on Apple TV+ https://apple.co/_BlackAndBlues_ This definitive documentary, directed by Sacha Jenkins, honors Armstrong's legacy as a founding father of jazz, one of the first internationally known and beloved stars, and a cultural ambassador of the United States. The film shows how Armstrong’s own life spans the shift from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement, and how he became a lightning rod figure in that turbulent era. With the full support of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, the filmmakers have access to a treasure trove of rare archival materials, including hundreds of hours of audio recordings, film footage, photographs, personal diaries, and a life’s worth of ephemera for exclusive use in the first significant documentary dedicated entirely to his life.
Pepsi, Where's My Jet? | Netflix
The year was 1996, and the cola wars were raging. Pepsi needed something huge to compete with Coke so they rolled out their biggest campaign ever: “Pepsi Stuff” It featured a soon-to-be infamous commercial that claimed for 7,000,000 Pepsi points you could win a Harrier Jet (one of the most advanced military jets of the time). Pepsi execs assumed the astronomical “price” of the military plane was set high enough to indicate it was a joke, but ambitious & cunning college student John Leonard saw it as a challenge. Enlisting the help (and funding) of mountaineering buddy Todd Hoffman, the 21-year old hashed out a plan to score the grandest prize of all. What ensues is an outrageous goose chase for the infamous Harrier Jet and a legal battle with Pepsi that changed advertising forever.