The 2023 Tribeca Film Festival has officially come and gone, and with it, a crop of exciting new documentaries to unearth as potential hidden gems. From classical music hopefuls to titans of journalism, the subjects of this year’s documentaries run the gamut, resulting in a gaggle of films that are equally varied in topic but consistently exciting in their style and substance. Here are six of the documentaries we caught at Tribeca 2023:

CYPHER – dir. Chris Moukarbel

Kicking off our documentary roundup is a doc that isn’t quite a doc—Chris Moukarbel’s Cypher. Though it may initially bill itself as a straightforward look into the life and career of Philly rap icon Tierra Whack, it quickly becomes clear that Cypher isn’t as cut and dry as it seems to be. Peppered among insights into Whack’s rise to fame and footage of her playing gigs is a subplot about a supposed fan urging the rapstress not to get sucked into the menacing cult-like powers that run Los Angeles. 

Yes, you read that right—at just about the half-hour mark, this “documentary” suddenly transforms into a paranoia-ridden found-footage film about a talented young artist falling under the spell of the real power in the music industry. As much a narrative feature as it is a doc, Cypher is a fittingly unorthodox and refreshing take on typical music documentary conventions—perfect for a rapper whose unique style (both in fashion and music) similarly defies convention. 

HIDEO KOJIMA – CONNECTING WORLDS – dir. Glen Milner

When it comes to the ever-growing world of gaming, there’s only one man to whom the term “auteur” can truly be applied: Hideo Kojima. The groundbreaking developer/creative genius behind boundary-breaking games like Metal Gear (and its many sequels), Policenatus, and most recently Death Stranding, Kojima has developed a sterling reputation among the gaming community and a fervent fanbase (including many high-profiler admirers/colleagues, including Guillermo Del Toro and George Miller) with his innovative games.

Connecting Worlds, which clocks in at just shy of an hour, is maybe more structurally similar to an episode of 60 Minutes, albeit with plenty of stylistic flare from Milner, who includes extended sequences done in anime-style animation, most frequently depicting Kojima’s youth. Though the framing device of tracking the development of Death Stranding feels somewhat arbitrary in the grand scheme of his expansive career, Connecting Worlds provides more than enough insight into Kojima’s creative process and personal worldview to satisfy curious minds. 

MAESTRA – dir. Maggie Contreras

The strongest pick out of the crop of documentaries we caught at Tribeca, Maggie Contreras’s masterful Maestra chronicles the real-life journey of a group of female conductors, all vying for first prize in La Maestra, the first-ever conducting competition catered exclusively towards women. As the dwindling ranks scuffle for the top prize, we’re treated to insights into each woman’s personal life: her family, her hopes, and her sorrows. It’s a stunningly well-crafted portrait of numerous contestants. In conjunction with the interwoven contestants’ narratives, the film also paints a larger picture of the nature of gender politics in the world of conducting—a theme that (as the film’s marketing acknowledges) was fictionalized last year in Todd Field’s Academy Award-nominated TÁR. 

But while it may technically share a subject matter, Maestra is an entirely singular documentary experience that (yes) acknowledges the inequity that haunts women in the field, but also celebrates the female experience and the remarkable dedication of the select few composers. Shot with an 80% female crew (a staggering statistic and an all-too-rare one), Maestra is earnest, authentic, and wholehearted in its attempts to capture the life, passion, and spirit of women in a cutthroat field.

RATHER – dir. Frank Marshall

Perhaps the most high profile (at least, to American viewers of a certain age), Frank Marshall’s grandiose Rather follows the winding saga of former NBC nightly news anchorman Dan Rather, whose decades-spanning career in journalism included frontline coverage of the Civil Rights movement, the Kennedy Assassination, Vietnam, and Watergate, just to name a few. In addition to providing a history (that at times reads like a sizzle reel) of his pre-anchor career, Rather also deigns to get down and dirty, acknowledging and exploring his scandalous, less attractive career lowlights, which included a falsified source scandal that nearly toppled his career for good. 

Rather, like its stiff, overly-formal subject, often feels overblown and insincere: we’re given hardly any insights into significant aspects of his personal life and instead are treated to experts in the field explaining why his clashes with George W. Bush over the Killian records was a groundbreaking but inevitable moment in journalism. The film is all-too-frequently transparent in its mission to paint Rather as a heroic icon of American journalism whose touted career is stained but not ended by a few missteps, and if you’re willing to drink the Kool-Aid, it’s sure to be an enriching viewing experience. But for those of us who may not have any existing knowledge of or affection for Rather, this is an awfully inelegant way to frame a fascinating career in American television. 

ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED – dir. Stephen Kijak

In the golden age of Hollywood, there is perhaps no better textbook definition of an All-American heartthrob than Rock Hudson. The hunky midwestern “hick” (by his own admission) who led a sizzling decades-long career in Hollywood, Hudson is perhaps most famous (at least, now) for having been a closeted gay man whose frequent exploits and close “friendships” with other men were an open secret in Hollywood, eventually made public following his death due to AIDS.

Produced in a media landscape far more welcome to uplift and center conversations surrounding AIDS and the AIDS crisis, Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed gathers a strong batch of sources, including countless men with whom Hudson slept, whose testimonies are used alongside archived interviews from co-stars like Doris Day and Elizabeth Taylor. It’s a fairly cut-and-dry chronicle of his stunning double life— understandably simple in structure when your subject matter is that infamous— that uses clips from his expansive filmography to parallel the ongoings of his tumultuous, often tortured personal life. 

STAN LEE – dir. David Gelb

Rounding out this year’s crop of documentary picks is a peek behind the massive curtain that is the Marvel machine: David Gelb’s Stan Lee explores (you guessed it) the life and career of the late comic book writer whose many characters include The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. With the might of a Disney budget behind him, Gelb is able to construct charming recreations of scenes from Lee’s life using 3-D clay modeling to create a vintage comic, superhero-esque effect of its own; but the film’s visual flare can only take it so far.

Though these 3-D models are a clever way of capturing the irreverence of Lee’s life and work, Stan Lee turns a very rosy-eyed view on Lee’s career, neatly glossing over clashes with several other comic book creators at Marvel—namely Jack Kirby. While it may be expecting too much for a documentary produced by Disney to go anywhere near the less squeaky-clean side of Lee’s story, it’s nonetheless underwhelming to see an otherwise well-crafted doc so uninterested in examining its subject. 

Lauren Coates
she/her @laurenjanecoa
Just killing time until first contact with Vulcan.
Favorite Director: Mike Flanagan
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