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In 1973 Chol Soo Lee, a 21-year-old Korean immigrant, was wrongfully incarcerated for the murder of a Chinatown gang leader. He became a symbol for systemic injustice against Asian Americans and spurred solidarity within his community. His prison memoirs have been adapted into a book and his case inspired the 1989 drama film “True Believer.” But his life — what happened before and after he became famous for his imprisonment — was far from a Hollywood fairy tale.

In the documentary “Free Chol Soo Lee,” first-time doc directors Julie Ha and Eugene Yi use archival materials in an attempt to present their tragic hero in all three dimensions. Despite their efforts, Soo Lee feels just out of reach, but the story of his life remains as important as it is horrifying.

The film opens by explaining the crime and how Soo Lee became a prime suspect. Journalistic giant K.W. Lee compared Soo Lee’s...

The late Korean-American immigrant Chol Soo Lee never got the chance to narrate Julie Ha and Eugene Yi’s clear-eyed documentary about his journey through the American justice system, but his voice rings through every moment of “Free Chol Soo Lee.” His own memoirs and letters to key compatriots frame the film, thanks to respectful and compelling narration from another former prisoner of Korean descent, Sebastian Yoon (you can find his story in the Netflix Ken Burns docuseries “College Behind Bars”).

, which follows Lee’s tragic life through many iterations. A tremendous miscarriage of justice led to him being incarcerated in 1973 for a murder he did not commit, and that story alone could support its own film. However, Ha and Yi also delve into Lee’s upbringing, the myriad ways systems let him down (from schools to assorted detention facilities), and his desire to find a place in the world as a confused young man.

When you watch College Behind Bars, which began last night on PBS and concludes tonight, or any other documentary like it, please don’t say that it “humanizes” the people who are photographed. Because they’re people. Our society teaches us to consider folks like Dyjuan Tatro and Giovannie Hernandez, two of the film’s subjects, to be numbers or vermin or somehow less than us when they’re locked up, and they are considered to be little more than the property of a state or federal prison. But we...

The documentary lineup at the New York Film Festival showcases largely hidden worlds of the city and nearby environs.

When Tania Cypriano began filming Dr. Jess Ting at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital in 2017, he was one of only 40 surgeons in the United States who performed gender-confirming surgery.

“A lot of films about the trans experience have been made, but I wanted to make something new, that would speak to a larger audience,” says Cypriano, whose documentary is entitled “Born to Be.” “Learning what it is to be transgender, what is at stake and what the future of [these surgeries] looks like through Dr. Ting’s eyes was key.”

Ting and a handful of his patients allowed the director to film their surgeries. “We pitched the president of Mount Sinai, David Reich,” Cypriano says. “He looked at the documentary as an opportunity to show the public what Dr. Ting and his team were doing.