NINE MORE STANDOUTS

Assassins

Two young women were captured on videotape in Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur airport poisoning the half brother of dictator Kim Jong Un. Were they killers or pawns? This astonishing account tells the girls' stories with edge-ofyour-seat finesse.

Born to Be

A quietly moving, wonderfully intimate film that explores the transgender experience through the eyes of New York surgeon Jess Ting, a pioneer in genderaffirming surgery, and his hopeful patients, who come to him to align their bodies with true identities.

Collective

This scorching Romanian documentary trails Bucharest journalists as they uncover layer after mind-boggling layer of corruption in the aftermath of a lethal 2015 fire in a nightclub, a tragedy that toppled a government.

Crip Camp

A revelatory movie about liberation, this rousing doc takes us back to a funky, utopian summer camp in the Catskills, where seeds of the Disability Rights Movement were sowed in the early '70s.

John Lewis: Good Trouble

A stirring, archiverich homage to the civil rights activist who never gave up the fight. Lewis's unflagging commitment to the cause inspired generations of disciples, who turn out to pay eloquent tribute.

MLK/FBI

Wiretaps and blackmail were just some of the dirty methods J. Edgar Hoover's FBI used against Martin Luther King Jr., whose following they believed rife with Communists. This double portrait (V.F.'s David Friend executive produced) unspools with chilling lucidity.

My Octopus Teacher

The year's most unexpected tearjerker, this underwater sort-of-love-story between a South African diver and an elusive, eightlimbed mollusk is a seductively mindand heart-expanding adventure.

Welcome to Chechnya

An expose of the Chechen government's torture and suspected murder of its LGBTQ+ population, this harrowing, heroic film, shot in secret, follows activists who smuggle their endangered comrades out of the country. —D.A.

David Ansen