What do tennis phenomenon Roger Federer and pop phenomenon BTS have in common? Absolutely nothing – but they’re both the subjects of prestigious new documentaries coming to Prime Video.
The Federer documentary doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s going to be a feature-length look at “the final 12 days of Roger Federer’s illustrious career. Originally a home video never intended for public viewing, the film captures Federer at his most vulnerable and candid self, as he says goodbye to a game and the fans that shaped his life for the last two decades”. The show will also feature interviews with friends and rivals including Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.
Prime Video is also preparing to launch Hope on the Street, a six-part docuseries featuring J-Hope of the K-pop supergroup BTS. Now in the 12th year of his professional career, the pop star finds himself in the middle of a deadly conspiracy full of dirty cops, shady businessmen and scheming politicians. I kid! That’s Reacher! J-Hope teams up with his former dance instructor Boogaloo Kin to explore the streets of Osaka, Seoul, Paris, New York and Gwangju, “meeting inspiring street dancers along the way”.
There’s no official launch date for the Federer doc just yet, although it’s likely to surface in July to coincide with Wimbledon 2024. And you’ll need to wait a while for the BTS show, which won’t stream until March 28. But there’s plenty more to watch on Prime in the meantime if in-depth documentaries are your thing. Here are three that are well worth watching.
Marley
With the Bob Marley biopic One Love getting mixed reviews, this is a good time to see the real Marley in Kevin Macdonald’s electrifying documentary about reggae’s biggest star. It’s currently sitting with a 96% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers generally agreeing that it explains the legend without hyping it.
According to INDY Week: “As far as documentaries on the late, reggae-singing revolutionary Bob Marley go (and I’ve seen a couple in my time), Marley is definitely the most comprehensive – almost exhaustingly so.” And USA Today says: “Sprinkled with riffs, concert footage and home videos, the family authorized documentary does what the artist usually did: When in doubt, return to the beat.”
Just don’t expect a warts-and-all exposé: this is authorized by the Marley family. Nevertheless, BET.com was impressed enough to say that “‘Marley’ will go down in cinematic history as one of the greatest music documentaries of all time.”
Touching The Void
Kevin Macdonald – yes, him again – delivers an exceptionally hard-to-watch docu-drama based on one of the most horrifying things that can happen up a mountain. It’s based on the real Joe Simpson’s and Simon Yates’ 1985 ascent of the 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Andes, where the climbers used a brand new and innovative technique that left no room for error or accident. And then Simpson fell and shattered his legs.
RogerEbert.com gave the movie four stars, saying that it “is the most harrowing movie about mountain climbing I have seen, or can imagine… [it’s] more of a horror film than any actual horror film could ever be.” Today said that “the fact that “Touching the Void” is a true story gives it more of a gut impact than even the best fictional films”. Empire agreed: it “builds into a chilling depiction of the agonising disintegration of body and mind as they are exposed to the elements.”
Mister Organ
While BTS’ fans are famously among the most frightening people you can make enemies of online – I may have to go into hiding after gently mocking their hero at the top of this article – they’re nothing to Mister Organ. He’s the protagonist of this extremely odd and unsettling documentary that, according to RogerEbert.com, is “scarier than a Blumhouse joint, more torturous than a Saw sequel”.
Michael Organ is a middle-aged man in New Zealand who is apparently clamping people’s cars outside an antique store when it’s closed for the night; when director and filmmaker David Farrier attempts to find out more, things get horrible, weird and horribly weird. “Farrier has bottled one of the darkest ways a law-abiding human can be made,” Ebert.com says. The New York Times [paywall] says that “if its title, ‘Mister Organ’, initially strikes you as humorous, you won’t be laughing long”. It’s a “documentary horror film” about “a terrifying type: the sociopathic con artist who doesn’t so much work on discrete schemes as lead an entire sham existence, with no specific aim besides gaslighting and controlling others”.
