This roundup of selections from the DOC NYC documentary festival contains a diverse set of extraordinarily urgent stories. They deal with what it means to be first- and second-generation American, resistance against xenophobia, those suffering from environmental racism, the search for one’s complicated roots, and the fall of a humanitarian icon and the rising tide of ethno-nationalism. These films provide important perspectives that are crucial to understanding vulnerable communities, and are also indicative of the vital responsibilities of documentary filmmakers and journalists in our current times.

American Muslim

Adam Zucker’s film is a timely and urgent portrait of a community seeking to combat hate with love. Set in New York City, the film follows five Muslim American activists, each of whom engage in community and advocacy projects to challenge Trump’s travel ban, as well as exploring Muslim American identity. It chronicles the lives of Indonesian, Yemeni, Palestinian, Bengali, and Algerian community organizers, each struggling with their own identities while trying to carve out meaningful resistance, education, and activism.

In light of the disturbing rise in Islamophobia across the nation, American Muslim is an important film. It sheds light on the various misconceptions some of us may have toward a community long homogenized in media and popular culture. Moreover, the film is about the absolute vitality of solidarity, especially interfaith and intercommunal solidarity. As such, one opportunity Zucker may have missed would’ve been to explore the vast Muslim communities outside New York City, from Dearborn, Michigan and Paterson, New Jersey, to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Detroit. Nevertheless, his film succeeds in portraying, without the ever-so-common cynicism, the current state of Muslim Americans.

Brooklyn Inshallah

Ahmed Mansour’s portrait paints a rivetingly pressing and microcosmic picture of what it means to be Arab American in the age of Trump. The main subject is Palestinian American and Lutheran pastor Khader El-Yateem, who is running to become the first Arab American to sit on the New York City Council. Mansour documents El-Yateem’s vigorous and, at times, debilitating campaigning, where he tries to spread his name and progressive message throughout the working-class immigrant enclave of Bay Ridge, Queens. El-Yateem’s determined passion and unrelenting resolve make him a hard man to root against, and his various tribulations not only illuminate his personal political struggles but also the struggles of a community long-maligned in post-9/11 America.

Mansour also follows other activists and campaign organizers associated with El-Yateem, including the famed Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour. While the film may at first feel like a well-narrated campaign ad, it quickly becomes something more. Though it is mainly about El-Yateem’s campaign, it is also a telling, shocking, and compelling snapshot of the racial obstacles many people of color have to face in order to be recognized. It also reveals how even in one of the most diverse cities in the country, there are still many who begrudgingly view non-whites as the “other.”

Daddy and the Warlord

How does one react to the unresolved crimes of an ancestor or kin? Daddy and the Warlord is a haunting and eerily shot film that seeks to explore the contradictions of identity, family, and morality through its co-director Clarice Gargard’s journey back to her native country of Liberia. It is here where Gargard seeks to discover the truth about her estranged father, a small, unassuming, and gentle-looking man who is alleged to have aided the ruthless warlord Charles Taylor in the Liberian civil wars.

Between Gargard’s investigative interviews with those involved in the war’s aftermath and who knew her father are the ominous narrations of Taylor’s victims, each one describing in violent and disturbing detail the atrocities they bared witness to. Gargard and director Shamira Raphaëla’s film is impeccably shot, and at times feels like visual poetry rather than a documentary. Rooms are darkly lit, blanketed in a warm array of neon purple and midnight blue, and there are long contemplative takes of Gargard’s blank and lost gaze as she hears for the first time how her father may have been a monster.

But it’s at times hard to tell what this film wants us to take away and feel. At 52 minutes, it deserves a longer running time and deeper investigation into what really went down between the co-director’s allegedly criminal father and the warlords he supposedly helped. One hopes that she continues this project and finds a clearer path toward the truth and, perhaps, toward reconciliation with herself.

Mossville: When the Great Trees Fall

This is the story of a once-thriving community on the brink of extinction. Built and settled by ex-slaves in the late 18th century, the hamlet of Mossville, in rural Louisiana, represents generations of black families looking for peace and community. But as petrochemical plants started being built there, a wave of death and illnesses descended upon the town. This is a somber and tragic tale about the last of Mossville’s residents and the lengths some of them are willing to go to keep their home. 

Filmmaker Alexander John Glustrom captures the slow and literally cancerous dying breaths of the mostly black and brown victims whose existence continues to be neglected by the state. Ominously, aerial shots scan the vast, decaying, and industrial-poisoned landscapes and are coupled with the haunting and pervading sounds of machinery crowding out the once quiet rural ambiance. Mossville isn’t just about the deleterious effects of corporate negligence on small communities but a macrocosmic exploration on systemic racism that extends beyond the borders of Louisiana and the country. It’s a tale that needs to be told, and it should leave viewers disheartened and incredibly angry.

On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship

This is a limited albeit straightforward and accessible documentary on present-day Myanmar and of its once-revered and now-disgraced president Aung San Suu Kyi. Following the transition from military dictatorship to social democracy in 2011, the country has been racked with ethnic strife and political tensions between the newly formed democratic government, led by Aung, and remnants of the military leadership that refuses to give up power. It is estimated that in 2017, the military massacred tens of thousands of Muslims in northern Myanmar and displaced hundreds of thousands more. The persecution continues today, and Aung has yet to formerly condemn those responsible, thus eliciting widespread international condemnation.

For those unfamiliar with the story, this documentary will surely bring them up-to-date. But those who are familiar will find a neatly packaged but ultimately redundant recap. Filmmaker Karen Stokkendal Poulsen has been given a wealth of access to the top brass of the Myanmar military, as well as Aung herself and her administration. It’s unfortunate that much of that is squandered for a simplistic narrative that has already been summed up in a few New York Times articles.

This is an incredibly important story, and a much deeper investigation (as well as introspection) on the colonial history of Myanmar might’ve illuminated something about the current crisis—there is no mention of the impacts of British colonialism nor are there any interviews of Burmese citizens outside of political, media, or academic circles. Hence, we have a very narrow view on what kind of country Myanmar is. Instead, it is reduced to the usual individualist narrative centered on one person—Aung San Suu Kyi—as if she, and only she, were the nation’s sole conscience, and not the myriad of other important voices—Muslim clerics, Buddhist monks, truck and taxi drivers, farmers, domestic workers—whose lives surely deserve equal attention and that may also give us a more on-the-ground look into a grave ethnic strife that may only get worse.