After another year of being inside, the documentaries of 2021 have provided us with plenty of adventure. They have inspired a sense of looking all around you, or of going back into history to understand how we got to wherever the hell we are now. With filmmaking that continues to redefine what makes a documentary, these features have given us a sense of what’s on our minds, whether it’s immediate issues like journalism, the refugee crisis, policing, the ongoing pandemic, or less immediate but timeless issues, like the chords of a band that will always inspire.

Continue reading The Best Documentaries Of 2021 at The Playlist.

Through the decades, we’ve seen filmmakers play with the documentary genre. While there are plenty of quality docs that rely on the talking head interviews and archival footage, folks like Alonso Ruizpalacios are going for a much more inventive and bold take on the format, as seen in the new film, “A Cop Movie.”

READ MORE: ‘A Cop Movie’: An Incisive & Formally Daring Deep Dive Into Mexico City’s Police Force [Berlin Review]

The trailer for “A Cop Movie” doesn’t showcase your typical documentary.

Continue reading ‘A Cop Movie’ Trailer: Director Alonso Ruizpalacios Presents One Of The Most Inventive, Unique Docs You’ll See All Year at The Playlist.

The first thing to understand about the social dynamics in Mexico around police is that they differ greatly from how the public in the United States relates to law enforcement officers.

Stateside, both the uncritical reverence some feel toward them—namely the Blue Lives Matter crowd—and the terror they incite among BIPOC communities emanate from their violent efficaciousness and status as inflexible figures reveling in a lack of accountability. For the privileged (the wealthy and the white), their actions, even murder, are justified to “protect” the public.

Continue reading ‘A Cop Movie’: An Incisive & Formally Daring Deep Dive Into Mexico City’s Police Force [Berlin Review] at The Playlist.