Documentarian Matthew Heineman’s sixth documentary feature, “Retrograde,” arrives on streaming services this week, hitting Disney+ on Friday and Hulu on Sunday. The film is stunning, visceral and startlingly immersive look at the United States’ chaotic and tragic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The filmmakers, who start out embedded with the Green Berets, end up following Afghan General Sami Sadat after the U.S. forces depart the country, while Sadat attempts to hold things together almost single-handedly. Heineman and his team also capture the heartrending scene at the Kabul Airport, as Afghan citizens attempted to flee the country after the Taliban took control, filming just a day before a suicide bomber killed hundreds there.
“Retrograde” is a film that demands our attention, reckoning with the 20 long years that the U.S. spent fighting in Afghanistan, and depicting the botched withdrawal that left the country under the tyrannical rule of the Taliban, while always placing the human toll front and center. It’s one of Heineman’s bravest and boldest works yet, which is remarkable, considering the harrowing films that make up the oeuvre of the young documentarian thus far.
Earlier this fall, Heineman picked up three Emmys for his 2021 documentary “The First Wave,” which put cameras, and viewers, directly into a New York hospital during the height of the COVID-19 onslaught in the spring of 2020. With keen observation, “The First Wave” is a time capsule of that recent history which impacted us forever, and it’s an important reminder of the grave realities of COVID-19. Stream it on Hulu.
Also in 2021, Heineman released something a bit lighter: music bio-doc “The Boy from Medellin,” a portrait of Colombian reggaeton superstar J Balvin. While it’s not quite as dangerous as some of Heineman’s other work, it’s entertaining and honest peek behind the scenes into the life of an international music superstar. Stream it on Prime Video or Amazon Freevee.
Also on Prime Video, Heineman’s devastating 2017 documentary “City of Ghosts,” about a group of journalists reporting out of ISIS-occupied Raqqa, Syria, during the height of the war in the country. Using smuggled video obtained under incredibly dangerous conditions, Heineman offers a look at life inside ISIS occupation that is unlike anything you will ever see, capturing the bravery of citizen journalists risking their lives to tell the world about their city’s plight. Like a lot of his work, it is a gut-punch, but an absolutely vital piece of documentary filmmaking.
Heineman’s only narrative feature so far, “A Private War,” is also set in Syria during the war, depicting the life, career and death of war correspondent Marie Colvin, played fiercely by Rosamund Pike. The film melds Heineman’s own interest and role as a conflict journalist/filmmaker with the fearless work of Colvin, a correspondent for the Sunday Times in London, who lost her life during the siege of Homs in 2012. Anchored by Pike’s steely performance, “A Private War” is streaming on HBO Max.
And for the film that put Heineman on the map, and earned him an Oscar nomination, the hard-charging 2015 documentary “Cartel Land” hopscotches back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border in order to gain a full picture of the Mexican drug wars, and the vigilantes who fight on both sides. Heineman takes us into the Mexican state of Michoacán, where a doctors straps up to fight his own battle with the narco cartels, and follows along with the American paramilitary militia group Arizona Border Recon. “Cartel Land” is an absolutely bone-rattling piece of nonfiction filmmaking. Watch it on Tubi, Kanopy, The Roku Channel or rent it elsewhere.
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