Part of what makes Alexander Nanau’s documentary so terrific is that it becomes more that the portrait of journalistic crusaders that it begins as. In October 2015, a fire at the Romanian nightclub Colectiv killed several people on the scene, and many more in the days to come from infections at the country’s hospitals. Nanau initially focuses on journalist Catalin Tolontan and his team at Sports Gazette</em, exploring the network of corruption that led to hospitals employing diluted disinfectants. But…

The most compelling portraits of heroes introduce us to people who not only never set out to be heroes, but would probably resist the description if you suggested it to them. Director Tania Cypriano’s documentary focuses on Dr. Jess Ting, a plastic surgeon heading up the newly-created Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Along the way, Cypriano does introduce a few specific patients, capturing both the elation many of them feel at finally receiving…

What if this Lion King had come first? It’s an interesting thought experiment, sort of a second-cousin to the idea that drives the current theatrical feature Yesterday: What if we woke up in a world where Disney had never released a hand-drawn animated film called The Lion King in 1994, and this story were appearing now for the first time, in the age of photorealistic CGI recreations of real-world animals? If there’s anything wrong with it—and by extension, with Disney’s…