Rihanna, Nazi hunting and Tiger Woods: the top documentaries to watch in 2021

After a year that often seemed more fiction than fact, 2021 offers a slate of documentaries that, like many of us, had different plans for 2020. Films scheduled for release last year on superstars such as Rihanna, Billie Eilish and the Beatles are now on track for 2021 debuts. Some, such as Questlove’s film on 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival, seem fitted to the nation’s cultural reckoning with racial injustice, while Antoine Fuqua’s film on the NBA shutdown in March directly addresses the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests themselves. With many release dates still in flux due to ongoing logistical concerns, here are eight of the most anticipated documentaries of 2021:

Rihanna

The long-gestating project between the director Peter Berg and the multihyphenate pop star and beauty/fashion mogul was one of several high-profile celebrity films delayed by the pandemic. The as-yet-untitled film promises to provide an intimate, characteristically disarming look into the Barbadian star’s expansive career as she transitioned from her most critically claimed album, 2016’s Anti, to launching her own Fenty beauty line, and becoming the first black woman to head a luxury line for LMVH. Berg reportedly amassed more than 1,200 hours of footage over five years, and the cameras are still rolling – “every time we think we’re going to finish the movie and put it out, she does something like start a fashion line like Fenty, or her lingerie line, or her skin care line,” he said in an interview – but is aiming for a release date on Amazon in summer