ESSENTIAL STORIES, INTENSELY TOLD

These seven films also each earned a nod from the PGA for best doc

ASCENSION Life in contemporary China — and the pursuit of “the Chinese dream” — is the subject of this fascinating documentary from director Jessica Kingdon and MTV Documentary Films, which offers an illuminating examination of consumerism, innovation and class through hypnotic, observational vignettes.

FLEE Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s internationally celebrated film tells the story of Amin, the director’s childhood friend who reveals for the first time his harrowing experience as a child refugee fleeing Afghanistan. Using hand-drawn animation to protect Amin’s anonymity, Flee also examines the subjective nature of memory.

IN THE SAME BREATH Filmmaker Nanfu Wang looks at the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic through a bureaucratic lens, examining the ways China’s staterun media controlled messaging around the virus and impacted other countries’ response to the health crisis as the coronavirus spread across the globe.

THE RESCUE Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the Oscar winners behind Free Solo, tell the intensely dramatic tale of the 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach who were trapped inside the Tham Luang Nang Non cave in 2018 — and the international rescue mission to save the group from a deadly fate as flood waters rose in the cave system.

SIMPLE AS WATER Academy Award winner Megan Mylan turns her lens to Syrian refugees who have been displaced across the globe in this meditation on the themes of family and home, uncovering the everyday acts of love and compassion that empower those who are faced with unrelenting persecution.

SUMMER OF SOUL Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s feature directorial debut unearths rarely seen footage of Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, the Staples Singers, Nina Simone and The 5th Dimension at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, and is one of the year’s biggest crowd-pleasers. WRITING WITH FIRE Filmmakers Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s powerful film follows the allfemale, all-Dalit staff of India’s Khabar Lahariya newspaper and their efforts to report on their community (the Dalit are the lowest caste in India, known as “the untouchables”). The women fight against big odds — censorship, a struggling media industry — to uplift the voices of the marginalized.