Powerful Sundance Documentaries That You Need to See — The Princess, the Volcano and the Boeing Horror

The Sundance Film Festival, which is in the midst of its virtual run, is known for its stellar documentaries. Indeed, a number of Sundance documentaries — American Dream, An Inconvenient Truth, Searching for Sugar Man, The Cove, Man on Wire and 20 Feet From Stardom — have won Oscars.

This year’s documentary slate has something for every taste. Documentaries on Sinead O’Connor and Kanye West. Two documentaries on life for women in the 1960s seeking to end pregnancies at a time when abortions were illegal and dangerous. One high-profile documentary on sexual abuser Bill Cosby. And one on a survivor of sexual abuse — Evan Rachel Wood.

There are movies about subjects you maybe never have thought about. How filmmakers have used camera angles and visual language of cinema to disempower women. The world’s only married volcanologists. And what really happened that made the Boeing 737 MAX crash — twice.

Princess Diana Mania

The Princess was among the marque movies shown on Sundance’s opening night. Although many wondered what could possibly be said or shared that hasn’t been shared or said about Princess Diana, tickets to the movie quickly sold out.

The Princess differs from other Diana docs in that it is created entirely from archival film, some of which was previously unseen. The result is a hauntingly mesmerizing, powerful and sad film. Just watching Diana’s eyes, especially in the last years of her marriage — they speak of such sadness — makes words unnecessary.

And those who are fashion aficionados will revel in how Diana’s style and fashion changed over the 17 years she is filmed.

The film vividly portrays the level of scrutiny Diana was subjected to (and some members of the Royal Family are still subjected to today). Diana was only 19 years old when she became engaged to Prince Charles who she barely knew. Initially she was without security, stalked, harassed and pursued by an avaricious British press. This continued throughout her life in the Royal Family.

After her divorce in 1996, she had no official security. Jarring footage screams without words the horror of her untimely death in 1997. In a Paris tunnel. Being chased by the press.

At 106 minutes, the documentary is a tad too long, but perhaps this is a reaction to its editing. I could have done with less film of the Brits discussing her wedding and the birth of William, and more of her.

A couple of scenes stick out. Including a sequence that takes on the idea of hunting in the English countryside as a pleasurable pastime. Birds are shot and lie on the ground struggling for life. A pack of dogs brutally kill a fox by tearing it two. I wondered “Why the gratuitous cruelty?”

Then I realized the filmmaker was making a point that Diana’s brother made at her funeral: “A girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.”

HBO will show Princess later this year.

A Volcanic Love Story

For those who can’t resist flipping to the Weather Channel to catch an episode of Storm Chasers and want to ramp it up a level, Fire of Love is for you. But it is also a documetnary about love, passion and a life well lived.

Katia and Maurice Krafft are the only known husband and wife volcanologists. They shared a love for each other and volcanos. Born just 25 miles apart in northeastern France, these two quirky characters spent two decades chasing volcanos in Iceland, Hawaii, Indonesia, Congo, Sicily. Anywhere a volcano was erupting.

They didn’t do it for scientific research, though Katia was a geochemist and Maurice was a geologist. The Kraffts were thrill seekers and to them volcanos were a primal, sacred, adrenaline fueled and addictive experience.

“Once you see an eruption, you can’t live without it,” Katia Kraft says in the film.

Miranda July, the documentary’s narrator, tells us early in the film: “It’s 1991. June 2nd. Tomorrow will be their last day.”

Katia and Maurice are at Mount Unzen in Japan. Knowing how it will end, there is nothing for viewers to do but sink into the power of nature and the most thrilling, terrifying, beautiful, footage of volcanos one will ever see. And there is lots of it. The Kraffts were well known in France and thoroughly documented their experiences, leaving a treasure trove of footage for filmmaker Sara Dosa.

Katia and Maurice classified volcanos as red or grey. Although the red volcanos are more dramatic and spew red lava, the grey ones that spew huge grey clouds of smoke (think Mount St. Helens) are much more dangerous. In later years, the Kraffts sought out the grey volcanos. The final footage of the film shows them several kilometers away from the eruption at Mount Unzen.

It was not far enough. Maurice’s watch, which was all that was found, was stopped at 4:18 pm.

Fire of Love is a love story set against the backdrop of the power and beauty of Mother Nature.  It is about living a life of passion and joy. It is unfortunate the filmmakers didn’t get to experience the cheers and standing ovation they likely would have received on its Sundance showing if the film festival had been held in person this year like originally planned.

No matter. After a hotly (pardon the pun) contested bidding war, National Geographic just purchased the documentary and will show it later this year.

The Boeing Horror

Sometimes a film can be so disturbing and impactful that it moves a viewer to action. Oscar nominated filmmaker Rory Kennedy’s documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing on the crashes two new Boeing 737 Max airliners killing 346 people is one of those films.

In October 2018, a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 189 people on board. In March 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 157 people on board. Within the span of five months, two relatively new, but fatally flawed airplanes became the worst catastrophe for a new plane model in recent aviation history.

Boeing had been a company run by aeronautical engineers where safety and excellence were paramount and without compromise. But before the design of the 737 MAX, Boeing merged with McDonald Douglas, its only major United States competitor, a company run by financial engineers where stock price was king. The merged company’s focus changed from making airplanes to making money in the documentary’s telling.

Kennedy expertly explains how the Boeing’s 737 MAX design, sold by its new managers to regulators as merely a fuel-efficient extension of a proven airliner, really differs from earlier models in critical respects. What Boeing had really done was take a plane designed in the 1960s and fit it with engines that were twice as large and powerful as those the plane was originally designed to carry. To do this, and have adequate ground clearance, Boeing had to move the engines closer to the fuselage and install longer landing gear.

The new engines, coupled with their new location on the wings, changed the plane’s stall characteristics, particularly when climbing. Prior to production, Boeing sold the plane to regulators and airlines as requiring no pilot simulator training and when Lion Air Flight 610 crashed in Indonesia, Boeing initially blamed the pilots.

What really happened was that Boeing engineers had discovered the plane’s new stall characteristics during its design phase. Boeing created a software fix called MCAS that the company hid from regulators, airlines and pilots. To disclose MCAS would require pilot simulator training, which meant delays which would have cost money. Boeing also cut corners in designing MCAS to save money, resulting in a fatally flawed system that killed 346 people.

Sadly, the FAA only grounded the 737 MAX after the second crash and after other countries had done so. For months, Boeing stonewalled a Congressional panel’s request to provide documentation of its manufacturing process. When Boeing finally delivered documents, they had completed a study that showed statistically that until the defect was corrected, a Boeing 737 MAX would crash every two years. Boeing was betting they could correct the defect before the next crash.

The only bright spot in this horrifying but thoroughly researched documentary are the advocates who worked to expose the truth. Former Boeing employees; Representative Peter DeFazio, who led a Congressional investigation into the MAX disasters; former Wall Street Journal reporter Andy Pastor, who wrote several investigative pieces on the 2018 Lion Air crash; captain Dan Carey; and the relatives of those killed in the crashes appear in the documentary.

In the follow up Q&A at Sundance, DeFazio commented: “The safety culture at Boeing fell apart. It was corrupted from the top down by its CEO and board of directors yielding to pressure from Wall Street.”

Boeing ultimately agreed to pay $2.5 billion to avoid criminal liability. Very little of this will go to the families, according to the documentary. The families of the crash victims are meeting with Attorney General Garland this week to request that he reopen the case.

In the question and answer sessions after the Sundance showing, Kennedy and the other key figures mentioned above were asked if they would fly in a Boeing 737 Max. Not one of them raised their hand. I suspect anyone who sees this documentary will agree.

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing will hit Netflix on February 18th.

Jane Howze is managing director of The Alexander Group, a national executive search firm. This is her 13th year covering the Sundance Film Festival.