There was a time when documentary filmmaking felt a little bit like the red-headed stepchild of the film industry, and, to be sure, they still tend not to challenge fiction features at the box office unless they’re furiously topical political manifestos like “March of the Penguins,” awe-inspiring testaments to the grandeur of nature like “Jackass 3D” or gross-out slapstick like “Fahrenheit 9/11.” But the rise of streaming services, and the fall of Western democracy, have given non-fiction filmmaking a new lease on life: not only are the incisive and dedicated perspectives of documentarians of all stripes more necessary than ever now to help us make sense of an increasingly senseless world, they also tend to be more available to us than ever before.

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57 years have passed since Alfred Hitchcock shocked audiences with “Psycho,” and while the decades since have seen plenty of iconic horror sequences, the shower scene with Janet Leigh still towers above them all. A masterclass in editing, framing, scoring and more, Hitchcock created a sequence — delivered in the middle of the film, no less — that astounds even today, and the upcoming documentary “78/52” deconstructs its genius.

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Remember when “truth is stranger than fiction” used to be a thing that boring people said to fill awkward post-anecdote gaps at dinner parties and before it became the literal truth of every waking moment living in the Western world in 2017? Yeah, us neither. But of all cinematic forms perhaps it’s our appreciation of documentary filmmaking that has been most affected by the experience of living in such unsettled times — with only a few exceptions the docs we’ve been most impressed by this year have commented on the state we’re in right now, even when they ostensibly have done nothing of the sort.

Continue reading The 20 Best Documentaries Of 2017 So Far at The Playlist.