Mild spoilers.

I don't see a thread on the Cuban-rafts film Balseros, which got a token American release last year before getting an Academy Award nod for best doc. I hadn't planned on seeing it at the Full Frame Documentary Festival -- despite the domination, I'd hadn't heard much about it -- but after the selling out of Super Size Me, I switched around my schedule completely. I'm glad I did: On first viewing, I think Balseros may have been more worthy of the Oscar than The Fog of War. Not only did the filmmakers have unbelievable access -- they seemed to have free reign to film anything they wanted in Cuba and Guantanamo Bay, including the building and set-sailing of these sticks-and-glue-and-intertube contraptions -- but there's these constant oblique references to the impact the filmmakers are having on their subjects: Showing Cubans film of their families in the America, showing Americans film of their families in Cuba, helping start a missing persons campaign on Telemundo (or Univision; I forget) when one of their subjects can't be found. (For the Catholic[s] on this board: Catholic Charities plays a large and interesting supporting role.) For spoiler reasons, I don't want to get into the role free-market v. socialist economics plays in the film, other than to mention that it's not as one-sided as it initially seems (and nowhere near as one-sided as the film I saw just before Balseros, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised).

2003 was one of the best years in the history of documentaries. And this was one of the best documentaries of that year.

Dale