The Best Documentaries of 2023
variety.comrange of nonfiction film — the subjects, the styles, the voices — is extraordinary in its reach. Does that mean that we’re in a renaissance era?
You might say that. But you could also say that when it comes to this form of filmmaking, the art of reality knows no season.
To see Variety’s collection of the best films of the year, read here. In Matthew Heineman’s lovely portrait of an artist and a marriage, Jon Batiste, with his inner light that doesn’t seem to have an off switch, comes across as the most ebullient performer in all of popular music.
Yet he’s dealing with grim stuff behind the grin. His wife, Suleika Jaouad, is waging a war against recurring leukemia, and Batiste is having his own skirmishes with anxiety and panic attacks related to her illness, even as he’s making headlines as the surprise Grammy hoarder of 2022. “American Symphony” gets into some of the lesser battles Batiste is facing, like resentment from the classical world as he prepares the film’s title work for its world premiere at Carnegie Hall.
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