A lyrical journey through America’s past and present, Bisbee ’17 revisits the infamous Bisbee Deportation of 1917, during which 1,200 striking miners in a small Arizona town were violently removed from their homes and transported in freight cars to the middle of the desert. But in this unconventional investigation, boundary-breaking filmmaker Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine) combines interviews with current residents of Bisbee with staged reenactments, performed by the locals, whose relatives took part in the tragic event. One of them jokingly compares the reenactments to a “large group therapy session.” Anchored by the story of one young Hispanic resident, who experiences his own emotional and political awakening through the process of the film, Bisbee ‘17 “offers a passionately ambitious, patiently empathetic mapping of modern times” (The New Yorker). Hailed already as “among the best documentaries you’ll see this year” (RogerEbert.com), critics are raving that Bisbee ’17 “confirms that director Robert Greene is one of America’s finest new voices in nonfiction” (Variety).

Our chief film critics choose the films that moved them this year.