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ocumentaries not only allow us to show realities that are a priori remote to us, but -perhaps even more interestingly- to focus on some aspects of our most immediate reality that go unnoticed, or that are not sufficiently emphasized, and therefore not addressed. The function of denunciation is present in many films, which provides a value that is not only artistic or informative, but also social. From the most recent past we can mention some titles, in this sense, that have transcended and that have led to mobilizing consciences. Of course, with unequal effect, that is, not always managing to subvert or completely avoid what is being denounced. We are thinking of Bowling for Columbine, by Michael Moore, which won the Oscar in 2002. A film that, following the massacre perpetrated in an American high school, reflects on violence in society, and more specifically addresses a thorny issue such as the right to bear arms. Four years later, in 2006, Davis Guggenheim's An Inconvenient Truth, based on Al Gore's work of the same name, which warns of the fateful consequences of human action on the climate, would win the statuette.
Even if not all recognized and celebrated documentaries explicitly incorporate the function of denunciation (for example, James Marsh's Man on the Wire or Malik Bendjelloul's Searching for Sugar Man, Oscar winners in 2009 and 2012, not to mention Banksy's fascinating fake documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, finalist in 2010) currently, taking into account society's critical awareness -growing, in recent times, with the demand for real gender equality-, it is more than ever worth considering this cinematographic format, dedicating the attention it has always demanded. Similar to what happens in the case of some composers with their chamber pieces -the most obvious case, surely, Shostakovich- the documentary genre, less visible or popular, but no less intense, functions as a kind of intimate diary, in which Hollywood expiates an unconfessable feeling of guilt; there it seems to purify itself of the predominant glamour in some of its most successful productions, and verbalizes those themes that, due to being problematic or disturbing, would not even be accepted through fiction.
Also in this edition of the Oscars, the finalists dare to formulate ideas and reproduce or realize a hidden reality, silenced as unbearable. In short, they plunge into the expression of what seems inexpressible even through the channels of fiction. That parabolic narration does not allow reflecting the most immediate almost sounds like a joke. A joke or potentially macabre paradox, as Woody Allen portrays it in the final scene of Crimes and Misdemeanors; that is, when the protagonist transmits to him, as a script proposal, the story of a murderer who after some time feels no remorse for his act, and the character played by Allen discards the plot as implausible -perhaps with the example of Crime and Punishment in mind, which he would re-examine in his masterful Matchpoint- as if saying that it doesn't hold up or fit reality, making it even less credible on screen. The documentary, on the other hand, does allow reflecting extreme situations that, novelized or represented in a film, would seem impossible; situations that would not withstand the pact of fiction due to their rawness, due to the absence of a happy and/or moralizing ending.
Four of the five finalists for the 90th Academy Awards tell disturbing stories to varying degrees, with the common denominator of technical mastery, both in filming and editing. The only gentle story, also characterized by its preciousness in finishing, is the slice-of-life film by French filmmaker Agnès Varda, Faces Places, actually starring its creators. It narrates their journey through various towns, whose inhabitants, portrayed on a large scale, cover the walls of the places they inhabit. This interrelationship of space and people dramatically contrasts with Last Men in Aleppo, by Feras Fayyad, Kareem Abeed, and Søren Steen Jespersen. Even the trailer, barely a few minutes long, is difficult for us to watch until the end, comfortably installed in a space-time that we tend to take for granted. The seconds of the video pass with an almost obscene slowness in the face of human drama and the senselessness of war, which the selfless actions of a few men, whose job is to unearth the victims of bombings, try to compensate for.
Imbued with an intense feeling of injustice, which is transferred to the viewer, Strong Island, by Yance Ford and Joslyn Barnes, also stands out. The work describes the desolation sown by the unpunished murder of a young African American in his family, a family that in vain finds answers to the crime, nor therefore ways to console themselves in the face of an irreparable loss. Not only that, the absence of judicial actions insinuates a shadow of responsibility on the very victim and his environment. The fourth of the nominated films, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, also focuses on a strange application of the law, after the financial crisis that struck the United States in 2008. Perhaps we could properly use the much-used adjective "Kafkaesque" to refer to the case, which the very title ironically alludes to. The documentary explains how the only American bank accused of fraud was a small entity, Abacus Federal Savings Bank, founded in 1984 by Chinese immigrants and located in Chinatown. Finally, Icarus, by Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogan, addresses the possibility—the reality, more everyday than expected—of another type of fraud: sports doping, which distorts the essence of competition. The allusion to the Greek myth indeed refers to the audacity of wanting to fly higher and higher, at any cost.