Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

Who really took the photo widely known as “Napalm Girl”?  And does it really matter over a half-century later?   In his new Netflix documentary “The Stringer”, Bao Nguyen (“The Greatest Night in Pop”) follows a journalistic team lead by Anglo-American Gary Knight as they seek to show that the real photographer on that day in 1972 in Trang Bang was not the renowned and fêted Pulitzer Prize-winning Nick Ut, of the Saigon AP Bureau, but a “stringer”, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, paid $20 flat and subsequently denied all credit.  And Nguyen argues as well that it does matter not only to Nghe and his family, but also to: the Vietnamese people; the Vietnamese diaspora (who had long lionized Ut); to an America that has still not fully dealt with the war; and to the very nature of truth in an era when technology can both clarify and complicate provenance.   You can stream “The Stringer” on Netflix.   Follow: @baomnguyen on Instagram and X @topdocspod on Instagram and X    The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

The main protagonist of Tamara Kotevska’s (“Honeyland”) enchanting new documentary “The Tale of Silyan” is a lovable farmer named Nikola. But as compelling a screen presence as he is, Nikola can’t hold a candle to the film’s real stars, the gorgeous, majestic — and even more lovable — white storks who steal the show.   Producer/Director Tamara Kotevska and Cinematographer/Producer Jean Dakar join Ken on the pod to discuss these incredible birds, the legend of Silyan (a boy who was turned into a stork), and the North Macedonian rural community that the storks, Nikola, and his family call home. Having lived side-by-side in harmony for centuries, both storks and humans are now facing dire economic forces that make farming unsustainable and lead to landfills, rather than fertile fields, becoming the storks’ feeding grounds. As she did with her magical, multiple Oscar-nominated “Honeylands,” also set in her native Macedonia, Tamara manages to spin a tale of her own that seamlessly combines elements of narrative storytelling and observational documentary. Jean’s gorgeous and multifaceted cinematography elevates the film even further. “The Tale of Silyan” is a beautiful love story, too. It turns out that storks are just as lovable to Nikola as to the rest of us.   “The Tale of Silyan” is North Macedonia’s official submission for Best International Feature and is being released by National Geographic Documentary Films in select theaters.   Hidden Gems: Tamara: “Midnight Family” Jean: “Riders on the Storm”   Follow: @tamarakotevska and @jeandakar on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X     The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

Elvis. The Beatles. Madonna… Selena. Selena Quintanilla was a huge star on the cusp of becoming an international superstar when she was tragically killed in 1995 at just 23 years old. Filmmaker Isabel Castro (“Mija”) explores the life, music and legacy of this incredibly talented and beloved musician in her exceptional Netflix documentary portrait “Selena y Los Dinos.” As the film’s title implies, Selena’s story goes deeper than that of a singular star to include the central role played by her tightknit musical family who made up the band Los Dinos.   Isabel joins Ken on the pod to discuss the profound impact that Selena, as a symbol of bicultural identity and possibility, had on her own life growing up Mexican American in the U.S. When the Quintanilla family approached her to make a documentary about Selena, Isabel was immensely honored. But along with that privilege came the immense weight of doing justice to the “Queen of Tejano Music.” Taking her cue from the family’s treasure trove of archival material, Isabel reveals a young woman with extraordinary talent, a supportive but disciplined father determined to see his family achieve musical success, and a fan base that went from indifferent to rapturous in just a few short years. Watching Selena and the band find hard-earned success in Mexico and the U.S. and seeing her in the studio recording an all-English language crossover album, the tragedy of what could have been is all too apparent. But the enduring appeal of the music and the symbolism of this strong woman who became equally revered on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border lives on, now more than ever.   “Selena y Los Dinos” is released by and available for streaming on Netflix.   Follow: @ isabelcastropics on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X    Hidden Gem: “The Bend in the River”   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

Whether you are a fan of motorcycles or not, it’s hard to dispute that riding one down an open stretch of road delivers an intoxicating sense of freedom. As filmmakers Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni make clear in their extraordinary documentary “Cutting Through Rocks,” the motorcycle can also be a powerful — and threatening — symbol of female empowerment and independence.   Sara and Mohammadreza join Ken on the pod to discuss the remarkable woman at the center of their film, Sara Shahverdi, whose motorcycle rides through the countryside of rural northwest Iran have drawn the ire of the patriarchal defenders of traditional gender roles and the curiosity of a group of young women inspired by Sara’s free spirit and unwavering determination. Over the course of the film, we see Sara take the unprecedented step of running for the local council. To the amazement of all, Sara wins, becoming the first woman elected to council throughout the entire region. It’s an inspiring victory that comes with a huge sense of responsibility — and an all-too-expected backlash. What transpires is a tale that, through various twists and turns, ultimately leads back to that open road and to the boundless sense of possibility and joy that is just a motorcycle ride away.   Follow: @sarakhakifilms and @mohammadrezaeynifilms on Instagram and X @topdocspod on Instagram and X    Hidden Gem: Sara: ”The Salesman” Mohammadreza: the documentary films of Krzysztof Kieslowski   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

For filmmaker Petra Costa, democracy in her native country of Brazil is personal. Two years after Petra was born, the country returned to democratic rule after more than twenty years of military dictatorship. As Petra grew up, so, too, did the country’s democracy. But, in more recent years, as she has meticulously documented in two densely layered and highly personal documentaries — first, in her Academy Award-nominated “The Edge of Democracy,” and now, with her riveting new Netflix documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics” — Brazil has seen its democratic institutions undermined by a potent mix of right-wing politics and evangelical Christianity.   Petra joins Ken on the pod to discuss the close ties between the right-wing former military officer Jair Bolsonaro, who was elected Brazil’s president in 2018, and the highly influential evangelical pastor Silas Malafaia. Witnessing the dissolution of the line between church and state, Petra describes her own deep dive into the Bible to try to explain where the country’s apocalyptic turn may have come from — and where it may be headed. Told with a poetical and penetrating narration, this chilling tale of Brazil’s teetering democracy has clear resonances with events taking place in the U.S.   Follow: @petracostal on Instagram and X @topdocspod on Instagram and X    Hidden Gem: “El Campeón del Mundo (The Champion of the World)”   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

The version of the American Revolution many of us were taught was focussed on the ideals and principles of the revolution:  Independence, democracy, liberty guaranteed by enumerated rights.  And if we were taught about the actual conflict, we maybe heard of a few battles in New England and the mid-Atlantic– maybe there was a setback here and there.  But the whole thing was presented as basically inevitable:  Because of those ideals and principles, and maybe a dose of Providence (as some then thought as well.)     By focusing on the actual conflicts of the era, and the consequences thereof for the greatly divided populace of the Eastern Seaboard of North America in their new 6-part series for PBS, The American Revolution, Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein (Jazz, The Vietnam War, The US and the Holocaust) complicate all of this.  While paying proper attention to the motivating ideals, they delineate the role the desire for the lands of Native Americans played in the war, and they show how the conflicts moved–often via waterways, and usually internecine–from New England, to the Mid-Atlantic, to the South.  And throughout, victory was not just not preordained, but in fact very contingent on the actions both of some outstanding individuals such as Washington (and yes, Arnold), as well as the strategies and agendas of nations as diverse as the Cayuga and Oneida (and yes, The French).   You can watch The American Revolution on PBS starting November 16th.   Follow: @kenlburns on Instagram & @KenBurns on X @sarahbotstein on Instagram & @sbotstein on X @topdocspod on Instagram and X    The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

Today we feature a live event that Top Docs held a few weeks ago at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (where our co-host Ken Jacobson serves as Executive Director).  After Ken and Mike talk about the origins of Top Docs and some of the memorable moments over the years, Joshua Seftel, who has previously appeared on the pod for his Oscar-nominated “Stranger at the Gate,”  joins them to discuss his new short for Netflix, “All the Empty Rooms.”  Joshua followed CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp as they spent 7 years documenting the bedrooms of children killed in school shootings, rooms their parents have preserved over as many as 17 years as they were on the day of the tragedy.  The film reveals that rather than just memorials to the past, the rooms provide solace mingled with ongoing pain in the present, and intimate the possible lost futures of the victims.   You can watch “All the Empty Rooms” on Netflix starting December 2nd.   Follow: @jrseftel on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter     The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

Mr. Scorsese is “Marty” to his friends and “Legend” to admirers and imitators.  But he’s also still that kid, the "minuscule asthmatic”--as lovingly described by his ex-wife, Isabella Rossellini--who fervently loved both the movies he watched in Times Square as well as the characters that populated the Little Italy of his youth.  The results were "Mean Streets", "Taxi Driver", "Raging Bull", and "Goodfellas".     But as Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”, “Maggie’s Plan”, “Arthur Miller: Writer”) compellingly shows, Scorsese’s triumph was not inevitable, nor is it simply the inevitable result of personal history yoked to directorial will. For while Scorsese has an anthropologist’s eye, his films are not documentaries (except for the documentaries, of course!)  Rather, they are the product of his own prodigious preparation combined with a willingness to trust his actors (notably, DiNero and DiCaprio) to improvise–and, in the end, phenomenal editing shaped by deep learning from the French New Wave as well as his decades-long professional relationship with Thelma Schoonmaker.  While his films are often grounded in fully formed literary works, he makes of them what director Ari Aster calls “total cinema”.  And while the visuals putatively reign, the music often seems to take the lead, almost directing the camera’s movements.  And in the end, in complicating the work of what may seem to be one of our most personal filmmakers, Miller suggests that Scorsese's wider purpose is to chronicle “the American project.”    You can watch the 5-part series “Mr. Scorcese” on Apple+   Follow: @rebeccamillerstoryteller on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter     The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

It’s easy to glibly identify what’s happening as “Orwellian”:  that we live in an era of “newspeak,” that we have reached the point at which the depths of the surveillance state of 1984 seems all too possible, maybe even already here. But in his new “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5”, Raoul Peck (“I am Not Your Negro”, “Exterminate All the Brutes”, “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”) digs much deeper into these possibilities, demonstrating how Orwell’s words resonated throughout the first half of the 20th century, only to become all that much relevant in our own day.   Drawing widely from Orwell’s corpus--not just the later novels, 1984 and Animal Farm but from earlier work and Orwell’s essays as well--Peck gives us a sense of a mind at work, seeking to bring together art and politics to reveal his world’s contradictions.  And by fashioning as a spine to the film Orwell’s final months on the remote island of Jura as well as in sanitariums and hospitals and tuberculosis destroyed his lungs, all while striving to finish his final novel, 1984, Peck creates a sense of the mortal urgency facing Orwell then and us now.   “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5” is now playing in theaters.   Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

It’s that time of the year! The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2025 runs from October 10-18th.  Ken, who, in addition to his Top Docs duties serves as the Executive Director of the Festival, joins Mike to talk about some of his picks for the Festival including: “Lost Wolves of Yellowstone” “The Cowboy” “Move Ya Body:  The Birth of House” “Armed Only With a Camera:  The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” “The Perfect Neighbor” “Welded Together” “The Baloonists”   And… On October 12th at 2:30, Join Ken and Mike and director Joshua Seftel for a very special live Top Docs featuring Johua’s short, “All the Empty Rooms.”   For more info:  https://hsdfi.org/   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.