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Past and present, flesh and ash, enormity and the infinitesimal: Gianfranco Rosi’s astonishing, Venice-prizewinning documentary is a marbled study in high contrast. In bone white and velvety black, pin-sharp chiaroscuro photography screens an active volcano for the elemental geometries of life.

This beautiful, unsettling documentary from the adventurous maverick Michael Glawogger travels from Thailand to Bangladesh to Mexico to view how the oldest profession differs across cultures. The candid, intimate experiences of sex workers form the empathetic center of this remarkable film.

This collaboration between Joris Ivens and Chris Marker fascinates not just for its subject matter—daily life in the titular Chilean seaport city—but the traces of their distinct points-of-view. A fertile dynamic emerges from the realism of Ivens’ images and the fluid associations of Marker’s prose.

This observational portrait of the witty, dedicated mayor of Ramallah in the West Bank doubles as an enthralling depiction of local governance amid complex geopolitics. Infused with dark humour and compelling vigour, it’s up there with the best documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What’s in a name? Multitudes, according to this refractive portrait of the artist as an old man from avant-garde legend John Smith. Narrated with signature wit, this mischievous study of self-identity hints at the deeper mysteries beneath unassuming names and plain surfaces.

Finding unique formal constraints in the mirrored confines of the titular salon, Chez Jolie Coiffure brushes through the rhythms of hairdressing: from speedy dexterity to sporadic lulls. Observing—but catching up with her charismatic subject too—Rosine Mbakam detangles the social life of the trade.

Riar Rizaldi’s shape-shifting film burrows into colonial archives and scientific documents, excavating dormant theories and conspiracies about a radio transmitter site. Among the vast mountains and forests of West Java, remnants of past exploitation linger on, as environmental extraction continues.

Before she took the Grand Prix at Cannes for All We Imagine As Light, Payal Kapadia crafted a poetic, thought-provoking chronicle of student unrest amid the chaos of Modi’s India. Aching with the urgency of revolution, this romantic, epistolary documentary is a flickering love letter to cinema.

Bo Wang’s category-defying supernatural docufiction follows the tangled strands of the Cold War to the wig factories of British-occupied ’60s Hong Kong. Haunting the liminal space between East and West, capitalism and communism, this mischievous short unearths imperial specters with eerie humor.

Alice Rohrwacher’s lockdown film escapes the claustrophobia of video calls to seek connection through a zoom lens. The faces of her neighbors are captured on tactile 16mm film and accompanied by the director’s gentle narration in this humanist gem that sparkles with kindness under the Italian sun.

Following his Cannes win for The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmão, Karim Aïnouz returns with this intoxicating blend of travelogue, affective memoir, and personal memento mori. A poignant exploration of displacement and identity, Mariner of the Mountains shimmers with feelings of loss and longing.