2018: Reviews in Review

This year I read 90 books, watched 49 movies, and 32 documentaries.  Here are the best of the best and the worst of the worst.  Enjoy!

The Books

My overall pick for best book of the year is Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet by Oliver Morton.  Far more than a book about photosynthesis, biochemistry, molecular biology, carbon cycles, the life spans of stars (although it is all that, too!), Eating the Sun is a rigourous and awe-inspiring overview of the history of life.  I found it intellectually stimulating and profoundly moving.  Not only did it teach me new information, it also helped foster a new attitude within me of wonder, curiosity, excitement, and gratitude.  That’s the best kind of book.  A lot of the “science and nature” books I read this year contributed to this feeling and I expanded my readings in that area a fair bit in 2018.  My other top picks from that genre are One Plus One Equals One: symbiosis and the evolution of complex life by John Archibald and The Songs of Trees: Stories From Nature’s Great Connectors by David George Haskell.  A lot of my readings relate to ecological development evolutionary biology, which stresses the interconnectedness of life and the blurring of boundaries between organisms and environments.  I think this is one way of re-sacralizing a world that has been transformed into a lifeless thing full of stuff strictly defined by use- or dollar-value.

Here, I think, I am learning from the best traditions related to my people (folks from Europe) and listening to the voices of Indigenous peoples who both urge me to relearn my own traditions and who have similar things to say about the interconnectedness of life.  Not surprisingly, within the category of Indigenous studies, one of my favourite books that I read in 2018 was Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer (I have also started, but not yet completed, her book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants).  I really like the way in which Kimmerer blends European scientific traditions with Indigenous teachings and her own life experiences.  She is brilliant and gentle and proof that love changes things for the better.  Layli Long Soldier is also brilliant and loving but her heart is breaking and once you chip into the density of the poems collected in Whereas, you mind find your heart breaking, too.  This book is my second pick for top mentions from the category of Indigenous studies but the book that stands out most to me in this genre is Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.  I feel that my readings in Indigenous studies will be tapering off a bit next year (mostly because I have read quite a lot in that genre over the last few years and am increasingly trying to heed the call to go back to digging out the liberating elements of my own traditions), but I fully intend to continue reading Simpson in 2019.

In terms of history, politics, and social theory, I did a lot of reading about or around fascism in 2018.  Given the unveiling of the fascism of capitalism that is taking place in our context, I wanted to get more of a historical sense for what fascism is, how it emerges, how it is successfully countered or overthrown (although more of my readings in antifascism took place in 2017 – and more of my thoughts on that were developed in grassroots struggles against fascism or quasi-fascist groups), and why it continues to appeal to people.  Of all the readings in this area, I think Roger Griffin’s Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of  a Beginning Under Mussolini and Hitler was the book that stood out the most and which I would recommend to anyone else who wants to explore this area.  I think it provides an invaluable lens through which we can view and explore our own context.

As for all the fiction, which is always the category containing the most books (which is as it should be, regardless of your area of expertise… at least that’s what I think!), two books stand out more than all the others.  These are: Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera and Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino (honourable mention goes to The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson, but I’ve ranted and raved about how brilliant Nelson is and, yeah, The Argonauts remains one of my all-time favourites).  On the surface, in terms of the content of their stories, Signs Preceding the End of the World and Mr. Palomar couldn’t be more different – the first is about a young Mexican woman illegally crossing into the territories occupied by the USofA (with a little help from organized crime), and the second is about an old Italian man who does things like work on his garden, go to the beach, or visit the zoo.  However, structurally, they are similar.  Both are short, with tightly woven sections and multi-layered themes.  And both possess a very distinctive voice and are so bursting with talent that it’s hard not to laugh while reading them because, holy moley, where have these stories been all my life?  If you want to learn how to write the perfect story, read these two over and over again.

As for the worst, well, I was disappointed by the final volume of Knausgaard’s series (perhaps the two year interlude between translations caused my expectations to rise unreasonably high) but, hands down the worst books I read in 2018 were the Ice Trilogy by Vladimir Sorokin.  I was so bummed I picked this book to read on the plane back from Iceland instead of something else by Italo Calvino.  When I first heard about the series, I decided to not pick it up because it smelled like something that was being over-hyped by the NYRB.  But then a review from another source, mixed with my desire to and find something decent in the science fiction genre, got me to pick it up.  At least Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy is scratching that itch at the moment.

The Movies

I was really happy with a lot of the films I picked to watch this year.  I continue to be drawn to a lot of things from Eastern Europe (expanding beyond the confines of Russia), enjoyed my initial foray into African cinema, and seem to have a new crush on stop motion animation films, even though I continue to indulge my old crush on al-horror films.  It’s hard to pick out my favourites, but I think the films of Sean Baker (Tangerine and The Florida Project) deserve to be mentioned first.  In my opinion, few efforts in any medium do as good a job as Baker does in showing the humanity, complexity, mundaneness, and extraordinariness, of some of the people whom I have known and loved (and be known and loved by) over the years—from gender non-conforming sex workers to single parents living in poverty and running whatever hustle they can to try, try, try to make a better lives for themselves and their children.  It’s hard (nearly impossible, in my opinion) to turn a camera onto people like these without immediately becoming exploitative or voyeuristic but Baker accomplishes this and he accomplishes it marvelously well.  Furthermore, given Baker’s casting and setting choices, they are akin to Sebald’s novels, and  blur the line between documentary and fiction.

Eighth Grade was another film that seemed to blur that line and succeeded in creating something that makes the critics search for synonyms for words like “raw” and “real” since they are so played out.  Like Baker, part of Director Bo Burnham’s strength is not only casting people who are genuinely living through what is portrayed in the film, but also listening to his cast when they tell him he needs to change a scene to make it more like the world they know (this, too, is the strength of A Fantastic Woman, which deserves an honourable mention here).  In film, as everywhere else, it’s people with lived experience who are the proper experts.  I wish that people in my field would take that thesis seriously instead of always just gesturing tokenistically in its direction.

Eighth Grade ends on a somewhat optimistic note, so for soul-crushing, hope-annihilating pessimism, one must turn to the Russians.  Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless was one of my top film picks for 2017, and this year Sergei Loznitsa’s A Gentle Creature is my choice for the film most likely to blow your mind while simultaneously making you want to blow your brains out (even more so than Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy, although Cosmatos gives Loznitsa a run for his money).  I hopped around with Czech and Estonian and Hungarian and Romanian Directors this year, but it seems that Mother Russia keeps calling me back.

In terms of the African cinema, I was really blown away by The Silences of the Palace.  Given the powerful but never preachy feminist perspective of the film, given the subtle and well-developed female characters (who are all the main characters), and given the ways in which it criticizes the interconnected elements of of patriarchy, class, and colonialism, I was amazed that movies like this were being made in 1994.  Shows what I know.  No wonder Tunisia was at the front-line of the Arab Spring (and came out of it much better than a lot of other countries as well).  I’ve really wanted to watch Tlatli Moufida’s other films (especially The Season of Men) since watching this one but, alas, I haven’t been able to find them.

Finally, my ongoing exploration of alt-horror films, turned up the beautiful black and white mess of oh-my-god-Jesus-Christ-what-the-fuck-yes-yes-yes that is November—Rainer Sarnet’s contemporary take on Estonian folk and fairy tales.  This movie is everything you want to find when rooting around in odd foreign films, questionable basements of folk horror, and an art thouse full of film reels.  It’s so, so good.  Finding it makes all the others I watched searching for it worthwhile.

In terms of the not so good, I think Phantom Thread was the most disappointing film I watched this year (technically, okay, sure, it was solid but I really am digging P. T. Anderson less and less with every film).  However, the worst film I watched this year, which is probably one of the crappiest films I’ve watched any year, is We Need to Talk about Kevin.  If I were to design a course about how not to make a film about school shootings, this would be the only source I would need on the syllabus.  I was surprised by this, given both the praise Lynne Ramsay has received for her earlier films, and given that You Were Never Really Here was one of the buzziest films at the start of 2018.  There was nothing about the content of You Were Never Really Here that made me want to watch it (it sounded derivative of Ben Wheatley’s Kill List [which, full disclosure, I also hated] or of any other movie about a tortured violent man who sets out to save sexually exploited young women or girls [which is then presented to viewers who totally get off on watching that violence and sexual exploitation] and a super great performance by Joaquin Phoenix did not suddenly make me interested in watching all that).  But it did make me curious about Ramsay’s earlier work.  Given how crummy We Need to Talk about Kevin was, I’m not sure if I’ll get to her other stuff.

The Documentaries

I was expecting to view more documentaries and less movies this year but, hey, that didn’t happen.  I felt like I saw a lot of good but not great documentaries in 2018.  Some were just a lot of fun—like all the climbing one’s I watched with Jess—and probably the one that was the most fun of all, because it was hard to believe that a strip club owner in Florida who went by the name of Tarzan was actually able to buy military submarines from Russia for a Latin American drug cartel (and that’s just part of the story!), was Operation Odessa.  Scorsese couldn’t come up with a crime romp this wild, with characters this bonkers, but, hey, that’s life.  However, this documentary also stayed with me because it made me think not only about the so-called seductiveness of evil but about the observation that people who are really successful because they do really terrible things to other people (from one percenters to mob bosses to pimps and contract killers) are often successful, in part, because they are really likeable people.  They’re charismatic, affable, charming – they make you want to like them.  Speaking of the seductiveness of evil misrepresents this because it has a sexualized component to it – like Anne Rice’s vampire Lestat or like the idea of the Rock God (now reinterpreted as someone form high finance, as in Leonardo DiCaprio’s love-to-hate/hate-to-love him character in The Wolf of Wall Street).  What we’re dealing with here is the evil of people who can meet your mother and have her walk away think, “well, he’s a bit wild on the outside but inside I bet he’s a sweet man.”  Here evil remains evil but it is neither sexy, monstrous, or banal.  It’s charming.  It’s nice.

Much, much less fun but all too tragically relevant to our times, were the documentaries of Claude Lanzmann that I finally finished watching in 2018.  I prefer Marcel Ophuls’s form of story-telling when it comes to these things, but there is no denying the significance of what is shown in both Shoah and The Last of the Unjust.  What Lanzmann lacks in technical prowess, he makes up for in content.  And with certain subjects – like the Holocaust – there is something to be said for piling on the content for hours and hours and hours and hours because something happens (something breaks?) when this is how the subject is presented, instead of offering it in a ninety minute more tightly structured piece.

The other two documentaries I want to highlight are Angry Inuk and HyperNormalization.  First, in Angry Inuk, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril does an excellent job of bring an Inuit perspective to the ways in which white supremacy, colonization, capitalism, and bougie animal rights activism work together to devastate Inuit community, politics, economics, and culture.  However, given the ways in which Inuit people are taught to process anger, there is a distinctive Inuit feel to Arnaquq-Baril’s presentation which, in turn, actually makes her documentary not only a cry for the preservation of the Inuit world but an part of extending that world as well.  Second, HyperNormalization was my first (and long overdue) exposure to the films of Adam Curtis.  It’s sprawling and smart and makes the world at large feel more three dimensional (if that makes sense to others).  It’s also the kind of film that makes a person think, dang, I should try to make a documentary from youtube clips… but I feel my own efforts would end up being much closer to Dimitrii Kalashnikov’s disappointing Road Movie than they would be to Curtis’s wonderful blend of brilliance.  I’ll be checking out more by him in 2019.

Lastly, apart from the aforementioned film by Kalashnikov, the two most disappointing documentaries I watched in 2018 were London in the Raw (far from being a glimpse into the underbelly of London, England, in the ‘60s, it was actually just an excuse to film scantily clad woman dancing in seductive ways) and, worst of the worst, The Devil and Father Amorth.  Not sure how I ended up wasting time on that one.

And 2019?

Looking forward to this year, I plan to wrap a few major writing projects (which will cut into my reading and viewing time), as well as start one major new one.  In terms of books, I plan to continue to explore some African literature and hope to finally start reading something from South East Asia that it’s Japanese.  I want to read everything by Yuri Herrera and go back to Clarice Lispector’s novels now that I’ve recovered from the omnibus collection of her short stories.  I’m also excited to read László Krasznahorkai’s latest novel.

In terms of philosophy and social theory, I plan to continue with my more sustained engagement of feminist literature.  I’m also tempted to read more of what is coming out of Mexico given the ways in which Herrera and Valencia have whetted my interest.  I’d also like to go back to some founding texts in phenomenology and pick up some Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.  I want to start working through Foucault’s lectures at the College of France and maybe go back and reread Wittgenstein.

For science and nature, I have a list as long as my arm to work through.  It should keep me going for a few years.  I plan to continue reading things related to ecological development evolutionary biology, as well as microbiology, biochemistry, and epigenetics.  Really, anything that extends our conception of life and interconnectedness.  I’d also like to learn more about electromagnetism, given that it dominates, well, everything that we know of (especially if one sees the strong and weak nuclear forces as elements of electromagnetism).  I’d like to go back to reading more about quantum mechanics, especially in relation to particle theory.  Oh, and I’d really like to read more about lichens, fungi, diatoms, and dinoflagellates.  We’ll see how that goes.

Below is the list of what I worked through in 2018.  I’m happy to hear what others enjoyed (or didn’t) over the last twelve months.  We press on!

Books [90]

Fiction and Literature [32]

• Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half a Yellow Sun.
• Aira, César. Three Novels by César Aira.
• ________. Ema, The Captive.
• ________. How I Became a Nun.
• Bellatin, Mario. The Large Glass.
• Bouazza, Hafid. Abdullah’s Feet.
• Calvino, Italo. Mr. Palomar.
• Carrión, Jorge. Bookshops: A Reader’s History.
• Casares, Adolfo Bioy. The Invention of Morel.
• Chejfec, Sergio. The Planets.
• Cole, Teju. Open City.
• Colette, The Pure and the Impure.
• Duras, Marguerite. The Lover.
• Herrera, Yuri. Signs Preceding the End of the World.
• Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God.
• Jansson, Tove. The Summer Book.
• Kitamura, Katie. A Separation.
• Knausgaard, Karl Ove. The End (My Struggle Vol. 6).
• Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
• Le Carré, John. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.
• Lispector, Clarice. The Complete Stories.
• Lovecraft, H. P. At the Mountains of Madness & other novels.
• Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books.
• Nelson, Maggie. The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning.
• Petrushevskaya, Ludmilla. The Girl from the Metropol Hotel.
• ________. There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales.
• Schwartz, Lynne Sharon (ed.). The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W. G. Sebald.
• Sorokin, Vladimir. Bro.
• ________. Ice.
• Walser, Robert. The Tanners.
• ________. The Assistant.
• Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own.

Poetry [6]

• kaur, rupi. milk and honey.
• lovelace, amanda. the princess saves herself in this one.
• ________. the witch doesn’t burn in this one.
• Rilke, Rainer Maria. New Poems.
• Sin, r. h. I hope this reaches her in time.
• ________. rest in the mourning.

Graphic Novels [4]

• B., David. Hasib & the Queen of Serpents: A Tale of a Thousand and One Nights.
• Chabouté. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.
• Delisle, Guy. Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City.
• Drnaso, Nick. Sabrina.

Science and Nature [11]

• Archibald, John. One Plus One Equals One: symbiosis and the evolution of complex life.
• Bailey, Elisabeth Tova. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.
• Clegg, Brian. A Brief History of Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable.
• Davies, Paul. The Eerie Silence: Searching for Ourselves in the Universe.
• DeSalle, Rob and Susan L. Perkins. Welcome to the Microbiome: Getting to Know the Trillions of Bacteria In, On, and Around You.
• Gissis, Snait B., Ehud Lamm, and Ayelet Shavit (eds). Landscapes of Collectivity in the Life Sciences.
• Haskell, David George.The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors.
• Laland, Kevin N. Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind.
• McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
• Mitchell, Alanna. The Spinning Magnet: The Force that Created the Modern World and Could Destroy It.
• Morton, Oliver. Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet.

Indigenous Studies [9]

• Goetz, Delia and Sylvanus G. Morley (English Version from the translation of Adrián Recinos). Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiché Maya.
• Kay, Julie. Responding to Human Trafficking: Dispossession, Colonial Violence, and Resistance among Indigenous and Racialized Women.
• Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses.
• Legarde Grover, Linda. Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year.
• Long Soldier, Layli. Whereas.
• Mackey, Eva. Unsettled Expectations: Uncertainty, Land and Settler Decolonization.
• Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence.
• Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples.
• Tagaq, Tanya. Split Tooth.

Philosophy [6]

• Adorno, Theodor. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life.
• Agamben, Giorgio. Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive.
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
• de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex.
• Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology.
• Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals.

History and Politics [9]

• Bangstad, Sindre. Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia.
• Clark, Christopher. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.
• Connolly, William E. Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism.
• Cusset, François. How the World Swung to the Right: Fifty Years of Counterrevolutions.
• Griffin Roger. Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler.
• Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: 1889­­-1936 Hubris.
• Miéville, China. October: The Story of the Russian Revolution.
• Pauley, Bruce E. Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century.
• Valencia, Sayak. Gore Capitalism.

Sociology [10]

• Eubanks, Virginia. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor.
• Federici, Silvia. Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women.
• ________. Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons.
• Hart, Carl. High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society.
• hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions.
• Kardashian, Kim. Selfish.
• Kimmel, Michael. Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era.
• Sass, Louis A. Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought.
• Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World.
• Willse, Craig. The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United Stated.

Psychology, Counseling [3]

• Hanh, Thich Nhat. Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames.
• Jung, C. G. The Undiscovered Self.
• Maltz, Wendy. The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivor’s of Sexual Abuse.

Movies [49]

• Anderson, P. T. Phantom Thread (2017).
• Anderson, Wes. Isle of Dogs (2018).
• Aster, Ari. Hereditary (2018).
• Bailey, Fenton and Randy Barbato. Every Brilliant Thing (2016).
• Baker, Sean. Tangerine (2015).
• ________. The Florida Project (2017).
• Barras, Claude. My Life as a Zucchini (2016).
• Bier, Susanne. Bird Box (2018).
• Burnham, Bo. Eighth Grade (2018).
• Coen, Joel and Ethan. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).
• Cosmatos, Panos. Mandy (2018).
• Cuarón, Alfonso Roma (2018).
• del Toro, Guillermo. The Shape of Water (2017).
• Eggers, Robert. The Witch (2015).
• Enyedi, Eldikó. On Body and Soul (2017).
• Finley, Cory. Thoroughbreds (2017).
• František, Vláčil. Marketa Lazarova (1967).
• Fremon Craig, Kelly. The Edge of Seventeen (2016).
• Garland, Alex. Annihilation (2018).
• Gerwig, Greta. Lady Bird (2017).
• Gillespie, Craig. I, Tonya (2017).
• Goldhaber, Daniel. Cam (2018).
• Guadagnino, Luca. Call Me By Your Name (2017).
• Haneke, Michael. The White Ribbon (2009).
• ________. Happy End (2017).
• Harvey, Herk. Carnival of Souls (1962).
• Kaufman, Charlie and Duke Johnson. Anomalisa (2015).
• Kore-eda, Hirokazu. After the Storm (2016).
• Krasinski, John. A Quiet Place (2018).
• Lelio, Sebastián. A Fantastic Woman (2017).
• Loznitsa, Sergei. A Gentle Creature (2017).
• Maldoror, Sarah. Sambizanga (1972).
• Mambéty, Djibril Diop. Hyenas (1992).
• Martel, Lucrecia. Zama (2017).
• McG. The Babysitter (2017).
• McKenzie, Ashley. Werewolf (2016).
• Mungiu, Cristian. Graduation (2016).
• Nyoni, Rungano. I Am Not a Witch (2017).
• O’Malley, Brian. The Lodgers (2017).
• Papadimitropoulos, Argyris. Suntan (2016).
• Ramsay, Lynne. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011).
• Sanchez, Sergio G. Marrowbone (2017).
• Sarnet, Rainer. November (2017).
• Scott, Ridley. Thelma and Louise (1991).
• Spielmann, Götz. Revanche (2008).
• Tarr, Béla and Ágnes Hranitzky. Werckmeister Harmonies (2000).
• Tlatli, Moufida. The Silences of the Palace (1994).
• Trnka, Jiri. Old Czech Legends (1953).
• Zelenka, Petr. The Karamazovs (2008).

Documentaries [32]

• Antonioni, Michelangelo. People of the Po Valley (1947).
• Arnaquq-Baril, Alethea. Angry Inuk (2016).
• Cheney, Ian. The Most Unknown (2018).
• Curtis, Adam. HyperNormalisation (2016).
• Evans, Mari-Lynn and Jordan Freeman. Blood on the Mountain (2016).
• Ewing, Heidi and Rachel Grady. One of Us (2017).
• Ford, Yance. Strong Island (2017).
• Friedkin, William. The Devil and Father Amorth (2017).
• Gibney, Alex. No Stone Unturned (2017).
• Greenfield, Lauren. Generation Wealth (2018).
• Herzog, Werner. Into the Inferno (2016).
• Jenkins, Sacha. Burn Motherfucker, Burn (2017).
• Kalashnikov, Dimitrii. The Road Movie (2017).
• Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah (1985).
• ________. The Last of the Unjust (2013).
• Lindsay, Daniel and T. J. Martin. LA 92 (2017).
• Lowell, Josh and Peter Mortimer. The Dawn Wall (2017).
• Mansky, Vitaly. Under the Sun (2015).
• Marcus, Bert. The American Meme (2018).
• Miller, Arnold L. and Norman Cohen. London in the Raw (1964).
• Miyake, Kyoko. Tokyo Idols (2017).
• Morgen, Brett. Jane (2017).
• Orlowski, Jeff. Chasing Coral (2017).
• Ovidie. Pornocracy: The New Sex Multinationals (2017).
• Parry, Bruce. Tawai: A Voice from the Forest (2017).
• Peedom, Jennifer. Mountain (2017).
• Russell, Tiller. Operation Odessa (2018).
• Schauder, Till. When God Sleeps (2017).
• Stone, Robert. Radio Bikini (1988).
• Tan, Sandi. Shirkers (2018).
• Vasarhelyi, Elizabeth Chai and Jimmy Chin. Free Solo (2018).
• Way, Maclain and Chapman. Wild, Wild Country (2018).