2013: The Year in Documentary

Here are my choices for the ten best – and single worst – documentaries of 2013.

56 Up, Let My People Go!

56 Up

Let My People Go!

Every seven years, I can tell you the best documentary of the year before I see it. Michael Apted's "Up" series, which began with a public television program interviewing fourteen British seven-year-olds in 1964 and has followed up with them every seven years since, finds our friends at age 56, and has by now become one of the handful of most important projects in film history, an endlessly fascinating (and I must say delightful) exploration of life, aging, hope, fear, ambition, achievement, love, contentment and heartache.