2019 has been a difficult year. The constant barrage of sensational headlines has been exhausting. There are days when I feel like I don’t understand humanity anymore.

Documentaries can help us understand each other. They provide a framework for looking past the headlines and delving deep into contemporary issues.

Here’s a list of 10 documentary films that will help inform your political and social discourse. These films are important for the past, present, and future.

1. MIDNIGHT TRAVELER

Directed by Hassan Fazili

When the Taliban puts a bounty on Afghan director Hassan Fazili’s head, he is forced to flee with his wife and…

Hale County This Morning, This Evening was a truly transformative experience for me when I saw the film at the 2018 Camden International Film Festival. After a weekend of viewing some mediocre films, my expectations were high going into this film. I had heard a lot of great things about Hale County, but didn’t have a clear idea of what the film was about. By the time the credits rolled, the film more than lived up to my expectations.

Hale County lacks a coherent narrative in the best possible way. The director, RaMell Ross, relies on the beauty of his…

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a documentary that inspired me in this way. Unrest was powerful and honest. The director, Jennifer Brea, artfully told her story of living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome through personal documentation and interviews with other survivors of the disease. What really stood out in Unrest was the editing. The film wove together smartphone footage with beautiful cinematography and screen-recorded Skype interviews. At no point during the film was I disengaged or put off by a jarring transition. Brea’s direction was subtle, guiding the audience through her experience. The honesty of the film was unparalleled…

I sat down to watch this film with high expectations and a measured dose of skepticism, as is often the case for me with Academy Award winning documentaries. I have been repeatedly frustrated by the winners of the documentary categories, mostly because the Academy tends to make the easier choices. It is not always the best film that wins (or is even nominated) but the most timely topic, or sometimes even films that make us feel good about ourselves (think Twenty Feet From Stardom). While I was happy to finally have a concrete representation of the civil war in Syria…

How do we come to believe the science we are told? How do we reconcile that science with our traditions?

Filmmaker Mike Day seeks the answers to these questions in The Islands and The Whales, a documentary about the environmental impacts on tradition in the Faroe Islands. This small island nation in the North Atlantic Ocean hunts seabirds and whales as their main source of food, sometimes to the chagrin of eco preservation organizations. As the oceans become more polluted by emissions, the mercury levels in these types of meat have risen. …

Everyone wonders about aliens. From childhood we ask ourselves what would happen if the human species experienced an extraterrestrial encounter. Some think that we already have. But everyone wonders how we, as a species, would react if an alien spacecraft landed somewhere on earth. Where would it land? What would we say to them? Which one of us would be the first to walk inside?

These are all questions director Michael Madsen seeks to answer in his latest documentary The Visit. Billed as a film about “an event that has never taken place” the documentary asks the world’s leading experts…