JEFFREY EPSTEIN: FILTHY RICH (2020)
Director: Lisa Bryant Netflix
It’s a must-watch because?
Photo: AFP via Netflix
An ongoing scandal of unchecked power and abuse is explored with emotional urgency.
This four-hour inquiry from Netflix, currently lapping its competitors in the non-fiction miniseries department, is surely not the last documentary we’ll see on the late American financier and his horrific history of underage sexual abuse. After all, it’s a story that is still unfolding, with his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell recently taken into custody.
But there’s power in being the first, and Lisa Bryant’s project — which entered production, securely under wraps, while Epstein was still alive — valuably amplifies the voices of victims who were unheard for too long.
After 25 years as a showrunner and producer, Lisa Bryant’s first documentary series as a director was Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, which premiered on Netflix in May. Originally based on James Patterson’s 2016 book of the same name, the four-parter developed the story of Epstein’s life, his court cases and his death.
TG: Why did you decide to make Filthy Rich?
LB: To show how our justice system was broken, expose Epstein’s abuse of wealth and power, and most importantly, to give the survivors a platform to get their voices heard.
TG: When did you start working on it?
LB: Long before Epstein was arrested and dead, when he was still powerful, wealthy and intimidating, in November 2018.
TG: What problems did you have getting it made?
LB: We had to get a private room locked in our production offices for interviews, and encrypted communications to make sure no one hacked in. We had to protect everything we had, then the story started changing overnight.
TG: And it’s still changing. How did you react to Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest?
LB: I hope our documentary played some part in putting pressure on the FBI to act quickly. Ghislaine will be the first of many arrests.
TG: Do you think Prince Andrew will speak?
LB: It’s interesting that the US is saying “We’re asking him for answers,” and he’s saying “I’m offering them up, but no one wants them.” I hope for the women’s sakes he does offer answers. I don’t know if he’ll ever fully come clean, but I think the survivors would still respect him if he spoke to the FBI.
TG: What can’t you live without while you’re working?
LB: Good co-workers, and two cups of coffee before 10am, or else I get a headache!
TG: How would you sell documentary films to someone who says they’re not into factual films?
LB: I’d tell them documentaries use lots of techniques from other films, so are more intriguing and entertaining than one would think.
TG: What has stayed with you since you finished Filthy Rich?
LB: Survivors saying how being involved has changed their lives for the better. It’s especially gratifying when it’s people that hadn’t spoken before. One woman started a Facebook group for Epstein survivors.
TG: What do you think about the current state of the documentary industry?
LB: It’s a very good storytelling time. Documentaries now start worldwide conversations.
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (2016)
Director: Raoul Peck Mubi
A must-watch because?
The Black Lives Matter movement has put James Baldwin on everyone’s reading list: this doc perfectly complements his writing.
It’s a couple of years since Haiti-born filmmaker Peck won a Bafta, and earned an Oscar nomination, for this fervid, fiery tribute to James Baldwin — but with the black American author’s work surging in popularity amid the BLM protests, it feels due another celebration. This isn’t a drably standard biographical documentary: instead, it engages imaginatively with Baldwin’s political ideas and convictions, emerging as a rousing work of activism in its own right.
OUR PLANET (2019)
Produced by Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill
A must-watch because?
Some climate-change docs can be on the dour side, but this offers a bright, accessible conversation starter on the subject.
For many of us, it feels as if David Attenborough has narrated our entire life in some capacity. That voice is a reassuring brand in itself, making us listen more attentively to the specifics of his nature documentaries than we might do otherwise, particularly with such reliably ravishing visuals to contend with. That’s of particular value in his high-gloss Netflix series made last year, given its particular focus on climate change as propagated by humans and experienced by all organisms.
TIGER KING (2020)
Directors: Rebecca Chaikin and Eric Goode Netflix
A must-watch because?
A wild ride any way you slice it, this is documentary-making for the post-truth era, inviting us to decide how we consume and believe its information.
Yes, this compulsive Netflix miniseries — a viral obsession in the early days of lockdown — is unabashed trash, to the extent that it’s being adapted into a narrative film starring Nicolas Cage. Viewers got hooked on the lurid tale of eccentric gay zookeeper and convicted felon Joe Exotic and his escalating feud with conservationist Carole Baskin; critics expressed increasing skepticism over the film’s pile-up of tall stories and allegations, presented in equal, credulous fashion for the internet to pore over.
FOR SAMA (2019)
Directors: Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts Amazon
A must-watch because?
A rare female perspective on the Syrian civil war, the worst humanitarian crisis of our age.
The Syrian conflict has inspired a steady stream of documentaries on its fighters and casualties — most of them can hardly fail to be moving, but it takes a unique point of view to cut through the numbing noise.
The most-nominated documentary in Bafta history, this has that: taking the form of a video diary by co-director Al-Kateab as she weathers the conflict in Aleppo over six years, first as a student and eventually as a young mother, it’s an extraordinary ground-level chronicle.
HAIL SATAN? (2019)
Director: Penny Lane Multiple platforms
A must-watch because?
You won’t see a more pointed inquiry into religious freedom at the moment — or a funnier one.
The question mark in Penny Lane’s puckish, perceptive, sometimes riotous documentary about the Satanic Temple and its followers in the US may seem like a trollish affectation, but there’s a reason for it: by the time it’s finished, what these self-styled satanists stand for isn’t as clear-cut as you might think.
Lane seeks the lighter, more humane side of a dark movement, but also a politically canny one: devil worship here emerges principally as a weapon in a culture war against the Christian right.
THE GREAT HACK (2019)
Directors: Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim Netflix
A must-watch because?
While we’re still living with the consequences of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, this is the clearest primer on how it all went down.
We’re still awaiting a definitive documentary on the whole national catastrophe of the Brexit referendum, but this engrossing Netflix effort offers essential insight into the adjacent matter of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Centred on whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, academic David Carroll and Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, the film overlaps their observations and experiences to unpack the far-reaching influence of the data research company, from Brexit to the last US presidential election and beyond.
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