Believe it or not, folks, this is the end of my backlog! At long last, every feature I saw for the 2024 canon will get its proper review, and I can move on to 2025 stuff (I already have four new releases in my back pocket, and I plan on two more before the week is out). With tonight’s post, polishing off the last four films on the Documentary Feature shortlist, I have finally caught up. I love the overall process of the Oscar Blitz, but please, for the love of GOD, stagger the fucking releases for this year so that I don’t end up a MONTH behind on basic critiquing again.
Still, that’s neither here nor there. What matters is this final quartet of nonfiction works, three of which were ultimately nominated by the Academy. In the previous installments, we took a look at Artists and cold-blooded Killers, but now, it’s all about fighting for survival. Each of these four films exemplifies what it really means to be brave, without ever having to use a weapon or hurt another person. These are people standing up for themselves, for their rights, and the prosperity of their respective communities, knowing the difficulties of the struggle and the consequences of failure. It’s about endurance, overcoming trauma, and persevering, and I’m grateful for all their stories.
Black Box Diaries
Shiori Itō is a well-known investigative journalist in Japan, though sadly she became famous for all the wrong reasons. In 2015, while interning for Reuters, she got drunk at a bar and was subsequently raped by prominent TV journalist Noriyuki Yamaguchi, who at the time was the Washington, DC bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting System (known in the U.S. as “TBS, no not that one, the other TBS”). Surveillance footage of the hotel where the assault took place shows Yamaguchi essentially dragging her out of a car, with her clearly trying to resist.
In the days since, Itō got a very unfortunate look at how outdated Japan’s laws about rape were, as she was discouraged at every turn from filing a police report, she had to go through multiple humiliating and traumatic interviews reliving the incident just to get access to a rape kit, all to be told that there wasn’t enough proof and that she’d be ruining both hers and Yamaguchi’s lives if she pressed on. When an arrest warrant was finally issued, it was mysteriously canceled at the last minute due to interventions from the highest levels, as Yamaguchi is a very well-connected man, including being friends with the late Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. In 2017, Itō wrote a memoir about her experience called Black Box, describing the term used for women in her situation, made a public accusation, filed a lawsuit against Yamaguchi, and became the face of Japan’s #MeToo movement, garnering praise and death threats in equal measure.
The film, Black Box Diaries, is a chronicle of this journey towards healing and justice done the only way she knows how, through hard-hitting journalism. She maintains a friendly relationship over the phone with one of the police investigators who handled her case, a man who started out trying to close things as quickly as possible, but through her persistence gained sympathy and respect for Itō, eventually working to help her navigate the system and gather evidence, though he noted it was more than his career on the line if he revealed his name for the film. She keeps meticulous notes, lives with a friend in case her address gets doxed, and struggles with her own emotional recovery. Meanwhile, advocates in Japan’s parliament work on her behalf to finally update the century-old laws that work against victims. When she finally gets her day in court and someone finally listens to her truth, we feel the catharsis through the screen.
This is some powerful stuff, and it’s a testament to just how strong this year’s Documentary Feature field was that it wouldn’t have made my top five. In fact, it’s barely in my top 10. I yearn for the day where stories like this no longer need to be told, and hopefully, this is a crucial step in the right direction. Put simply, Shiori Itō is a hero.
Grade: B
Union
The only one of the four here tonight to not get nominated, it most certainly would have gotten my vote for the finals, as it’s my #2 overall. Given the myriad social and political problems plaguing this country, the right of workers to organize and bargain for decent wages and benefits is more important than ever. The new administration has taken a sledgehammer to federal employment, firing career workers left and right with no regard for their contracts or their civil rights, all in the name of enriching themselves and purging all non-loyalists under the guise of “efficiency,” an extension of its practices the first time around, where labor rights took an endless beating, led by a man who bragged about stiffing his employees as a private citizen.
With that backdrop, you can see why a film like Union is essential, as a group of dedicated, hard-working individuals expose the disadvantages built into the system, rally their colleagues, and defend against all the underhanded techniques of one of the world’s richest companies as it continues to exploit them. Seeing the sacrifices these people have to make just to be treated as equals is inspirational in the extreme, and an indictment on those who would create a permanent slave class to perpetuate their obscene wealth.
The film focuses on the formation of the Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, and its attempts to organize the warehouse workers at the Amazon JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island. The effort is initially led by Chris Smalls, a former employee who organized a walkout to protest Amazon’s lax protocols during the COVID pandemic, leading to his termination, with Amazon attempting to discredit him by listing a failure to comply with COVID safety rules as the reason for his firing, rather than simple retaliation. Smalls became the face of the effort to unionize, with the company going to great lengths to paint him as an uneducated troublemaker despite a five-year record of stellar work at the warehouse.
The film follows Smalls and a committed team along the two-year process of creating the union, and all the anti-labor roadblocks that are put up along the way, from mandatory meetings where third-party union busting contractors present biased propaganda about how unions are bad (with no opportunity for questioning or rebuttal), to security inspections to confiscate phones and any other devices that could record the warehouse’s exploitative and illegal practices, to half-assed concessions that prove management has no clue how bargaining works, to supervisors watching organizers like hawks so they can fire them for any minor infraction, to literally having Smalls arrested for walking on the property while talking to an active employee (the police assaulting the worker in the process). We also see official efforts to torpedo the attempt, including the National Labor Relations Board rejecting petitions for a vote twice, a lack of support from bigger nationwide unions because the ALU is trying to create their own network rather than joining a larger, higher profile one, and attempts to divide the organizers from within, convincing one member to quit and picket against the ALU because she doesn’t approve of Smalls.
Union work has been steadily declining since the Reagan administration, because the wealthy know that if they have to treat their employees as human beings and compensate them appropriately, they’ll make less profit for themselves. It’s not that they won’t profit, just that they’ll profit slightly less, and in their eyes, they’d sooner see their children killed. I’ve had a lot of experience in this area over the course of my life, whether I was doing blue collar work (factories and warehouses, including Amazon), white collar (school faculty), and no collar (TV production). I’ve been in three different unions, and while they weren’t perfect, I always felt more secure in my work when I was a part of something bigger with protections in place to make sure I was treated fairly. I’ve also seen the efforts to deny labor rights and collective bargaining, including leaflets on workers’ cars about how a union would lead to layoffs, and a directive to call the police if we ever saw anyone on the premises who looked like they may be from a union. When one was attempted at a factory I was working at as a temp, we had to meet in secret outside of our shifts, and I was actually seen as part of the problem, as each station I worked at for $7.50 an hour was a permanent job that the full-timers couldn’t apply for which paid much higher. By hiring me and others through a temp agency, knowing they’d be laying us off within a few months, the company was not only denying me my proper wages, but denying opportunities for the people on their payroll. They also stiffed me on Workers’ Comp when I had to go to the ER after chemical exposure.
So believe me, when I see these people fighting the good fight, I know what they’re going through. The fact that it took two years is disgusting, and it’s even worse that several good people still lost their jobs as retaliation for standing up for themselves, because when a select few have all the resources, they will use every lever of power to maintain that status quo, no matter who they hurt. The American public will never stop using Amazon because it’s convenient. The trick is keeping them aware of what actually goes on to allow for that oh-so-nice two-day delivery, and hope that they join the crusade to give the people facilitating it what they have truly earned.
Grade: A
Sugarcane
One of the most unique films of 2024, Nickel Boys, was an adaptation of a novel that dramatizes the actual abuse and murder of young men, mostly black and brown, in so-called reform schools during the Jim Crow era. The documentary, Sugarcane, covers very similar ground, only in Canada, and as it relates to indigenous peoples. Beginning in the 1870s and ending with the last facility closure in 1997, the Canadian Indian Residential School System was a network of boarding schools run by various churches – particularly the Catholic Church – that was designed to forcibly assimilate natives into a European sensibility by removing them from their tribal homes and reservations, a practice that has since been recognized as cultural genocide. Hundreds and thousands of children died on these campuses, while survivors have dealt with generations of PTSD, especially since very few of the clergy involved were ever punished.
This is a very deep and intimate film, showing the effects of the program on various people in the titular community in British Columbia, and their attempts to heal and regain their heritage and identity. There’s a lot to celebrate here, from those who can finally muster the courage to confront their elders about it, to a new wave of young leadership pushing for an official reckoning. Co-director Julian Brave NoiseCat accompanies his father Ed on a trip of self-therapy, hoping to get answers out of Ed’s mother, who has always avoided the issue. Willie Sellers, the new chief of the Lake Williams First Nation, seeks the best way forward to make his people more resilient. Investigators Charlene Belleau and Whitney Spearing work tirelessly, searching through whatever records they can find, to help identify and restore the remains and belongings of those who were tragically lost, in hopes of letting the families have closure.
If there’s a complaint to be had, it’s that a lot of these storylines are disjointed, and we jump between them so often it feels like whiplash. I’d say that Nickel Boys was a lot smoother, but that’s a dramatic production, and you can easily argue that the confusion here is the point. This is a film that commands your attention, so if you let it stray for even a second, you’ll lose the thread. Watching this on a streamer unfortunately contributes to that ability to be distracted, though, so the primary outlet for viewers to see this only exacerbates the issue.
There was one more side plot that intrigued but also kind of angered me. Former chief Rick Gilbert (who sadly passed away in 2023), along with his wife Anna, journey to Vatican City with survivors from several other communities, to plead with Pope Francis for resources to combat this sinful past and reconcile the Church’s misdeeds. The pontiff did eventually acknowledge the schools as a form of genocide in 2022, but all we see in the movie is a brief meeting with a bishop who says all the right things, but you can tell he has neither the authority nor the inclination to affect any real change.
What makes it stick out to me is a conundrum I’ve always had when it comes to religion. This institution, this faith, was used as a tool to destroy these people’s heritage, to end their cultural existence. And yet the Gilberts, along with many more in the Lake Williams community and millions of people the world over who were conquered and nearly eradicated in God’s name, are not only devout followers, but defenders of the faith. I’ve never understood this. These are dots that simply cannot connect in my brain. “It’s not Jesus’ fault,” opines Anna early in the film. Maybe not directly, assuming Jesus even existed, but the structure he created is at fault, so why would you openly embrace it? I get it if there are lessons and morals from scripture that you find valuable – I certainly do – but why is it so hard to make the leap to finding another path, or to create a new religion that incorporates all the good things while vehemently rejecting the racist and misogynistic tenets that directly oppressed your people for centuries? I admit to some personal bias, but this is why the film doesn’t even rank in the top 10 for me in this category. I applaud these people for confronting their demons, but you need to confront ALL of them.
Grade: B
No Other Land
This was the hardest film on the shortlist to track down, as it was the last to get any kind of domestic distribution. If you live outside the U.S., you can literally watch it on any number of streaming services for free, but here in the States, money always comes first, so we had to wait. It did pick up a distributor, and is currently on a limited theatrical run. I was able to see it because I got a screener through Film Independent, as it’s nominated for the Independent Spirit Award in this same field, but even that was delayed for a few weeks into the voting window.
This is the only major film about Palestine that got an Oscar nomination, as The Bibi Files was left off the final list for Documentary Feature, and From Ground Zero didn’t make the last cut for International Feature. So it’s got a lot riding on it as far as the Academy making a statement about the genocide (and it is genocide) being perpetrated by the Israeli government (to be clear, the GOVERNMENT, not the PEOPLE of Israel; we have to be able to make that distinction without shame), and while most of the attention is on Gaza, this film is focused on the West Bank, which is largely removed from the current violence, though given recent developments, the bigoted attempts to destroy Palestine as an entity are as pronounced as ever.
In Masafer Yatta, a collection of about 19 small hamlets and villages with very little in terms of technology or infrastructure, Basel Adra has witnessed the attempts of his people to resist eviction since he was a child. His father is something of a local celebrity, because he owns the only gas station in his hometown. There have always been campaigns from the Israeli government to grab the land and further encroach on Palestinian territory, but since 2019, the practices have been even more aggressive. This latest incursion by the military is meant to force all of the locals out of their homes (largely huts dug into hillsides and constantly being rebuilt by residents when they’re destroyed), and convert the area into a massive artillery testing ground. So not only are people being displaced, but the aim is to use their land to make even deadlier weapons so they can be fully eradicated later with no means to defend themselves. Basel’s small act of rebellion is to use his camera and phone to document the advancements, confront the soldiers carrying them out, and broadcast it to the world on social media as a means to expose what are literal crimes against humanity, gleefully executed by those trained to believe that Palestinians are either culturally and ethnically inferior, terrorists, or both.
Joining Basel is an unlikely ally, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist who helps out where he can and advocates on behalf of the community, earning labels of “traitor,” “fake Jew,” and “terrorist sympathizer” for his troubles. He’s in a very unenvious position, because he gets flack from his own people and government for daring question their actions, and he has to reconcile his own privilege with the locals, as no matter what happens, he gets to go home every night in safety and security, while Basel and the others have to navigate daily and nightly raids where military officials seek to arrest or kill those who resist.
Basel and Yuval’s growing friendship is the core of this film’s central message of hope. While those in charge can be monsters, everyday people can find common ground. And it’s only through these rapports and deeper understandings that any true progress can be made. It’s a poignant and necessary exploration of how a culture survives even in the most dire of circumstances. No better is this exemplified than by a heartbreaking sequence where we see Tony Blair touring a newly-built school in Masafer Yatta during his U.K. premiership, talking about how essential it is to have a solid educational system for Palestinians to thrive, only for it to be destroyed during the current campaign, children and teachers running screaming from the building as the tanks roll in. Benjamin Netanyahu and his cronies know all too well how important education is to preserve culture, so they’re only too happy to watch it burn, because the point is to extinguish any remaining hope of an independent Palestinian state. You need more proof? He’s actually entertaining a proposal for Donald Trump to buy Gaza, evict all the residents, and turn it into a discount Dubai. The world needs people like Basel and Yuval constantly fighting for human rights in order to prevent these atrocities from continuing.
Grade: A-
***
That’s it, we did it! I took in 130 films as part of the 2024 canon, and have now successfully reviewed all of them. All that remains is to complete the Oscar Blitz over the next two weeks, and we can turn the page into a whole new year of content! God I miss sleep!
Join the conversation in the comments below! Have you seen these films? Which ones would you nominate? Have you ever tried to form a union, and what did your bosses do to try and stop you? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!
I Actually Paid To See This 