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Hundreds of films have been identified as the best documentary films of all time. This is a list for my college students to learn about the history of documentary films and the greatest documentary films to date.
50 titles. Sort by List order. 1. Blackfish. 2013 1h 23m PG-13. 8.1 (73K) Rate. 83 Metascore. A documentary following the controversial captivity of killer whales, and its dangers for both humans and whales. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite Stars Tilikum Dave Duffus Samantha Berg. 2. Exit Through the Gift Shop. 2010 1h 27m R. 7.9 (69K) Rate.
The best documentaries allow us to see the world with a fresh set of eyes, from social experiments ( Super Size Me) to quirky competitions ( The King of Kong) to political exposés ( Citizenfour) to...
- 30 'Bowling For Columbine'
- 29 'Sans Soleil'
- 28 '13th'
- 27 'Gimme Shelter'
- 26 'Man on Wire'
- 25 'Grey Gardens'
- 24 'They Shall Not Grow old'
- 23 'Life of Crime: 1984-2020'
- 22 'The Act of Killing'
- 21 'The Thin Blue Line'
Director: Michael Moore
Coming out years before crime documentaries became Netflix's bread and butter, Bowling for Columbineuses a horrific crime spree as a jumping-off point to explore American culture, and its seemingly unending love of firearms. The event it's all framed around is the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, which claimed more than 20 victims. In one of the best movies of 2002, Michael Moore made arguably his most passionate and emotional movie with Bowling for Columbine, with the editing and pres...
Director: Chris Marker
Sans Soleilis a documentary that's hard to summarize, and has a rather experimental approach to the format/genre. It has little by way of narrative or a direct argument that it wants to present, instead being an artistically presented odyssey through a woman's abstract thoughts, often relating to the meaning of life and human existence. Sans Soleil feels broad and open to interpretation, but it's the kind of thing where someone could watch it and have it fully click, gaining an entirely diffe...
Director: Ava DuVernay
Standing as one of the most important cultural/political documentaries in recent memory, 13th is a difficult yet essential watch.It tackles the U.S. prison system with a particular focus on the racial inequality present within it, tying the way prisons function in modern times to the way slavery functioned back during the nation's earlier days. It might be a difficult thing for some viewers to hear and grapple with, but 13th is persuasive and remarkably good at presenting the case for this cl...
Directors: Albert and David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin
It's no secret that Martin Scorsese loves The Rolling Stones, having directed his own documentary about them and using their songs throughout his films. He seems particularly fond of the song "Gimme Shelter," which is also the name of this 1970 documentary about The Rolling Stones, focusing on one particularly infamous concert they performed in 1969. Gimme Shelter is one of the few concert movies that could be described as nightmarish, because even if you enjoy some of the music on offer, the...
Director: James Marsh
Somehow functioning as both a documentary and a heist movie at the same time, Man on Wire tells a wild true story that was also adapted into a feature film with 2015's The Walk. It's about daredevil/tightrope walker Philippe Petit, and the way he managed to execute a stunt in 1974 that involved walking between the two towers of the World Trade Center, which had then only recently been built. Man on Wire's pacing makes it feel more dynamic and thrilling than many other documentaries out there,...
Directors: David Maysles, Albert Maysles, Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer
For better or worse, Grey Gardens feels like a proto-reality TV show, arguably leading the way for the genre to exist in all its wild, uncomfortable, and sometimes exploitative glory. This is because Grey Gardenssimply observes two real-life people who live strange lives, and may or may not be exaggerating their odd behavior because cameras are present. The two women at the center of Grey Gardens are relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and they live in a large yet rundown house, and have ver...
Director: Peter Jackson
There have been many great films about the First World War, and among them would have to be They Shall Not Grow Old. It was released on the 100th anniversary of the conflict's end, and uses colorized and meticulously restored footage to depict the harrowing experience of trench warfare in a way that's never been shown before in previous WW1 documentaries. It was an ambitious project directed by Peter Jackson, and though getting the footage to look so striking would have taken a great deal of...
Director: Jon Alpert
Life of Crime: 1984-2020may have a bit of a clunky title, but as a film, it's anything but clunky. It's the third and final installment in a series of documentaries that follow several individuals who engage in petty crime and/or struggle with drug addictions, with it all being filmed in an uncompromising and very raw fashion. This 2021 film spends one hour recapping the first and second documentaries in the series (which covered the 1980s and 1990s respectively) before moving on to what happ...
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Though The Act of Killingisn't a horror movie by any means, it feels more brutal and terrifying than most could ever hope to be. It covers a difficult subject in a unique yet stomach-churning way, focusing on the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966 which saw somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people being killed (mostly people associated with communism, or believed to be). It follows various people who participated in these killings more than 40 years on from the events, with the filmm...
Director: Errol Morris
The true crime genre has experienced a boom in the last five to 10 years, and on a streaming service like Netflix in particular, it seems difficult to avoid documentaries about crime. Many documentaries that are definable as true-crime owe a great deal to 1988's The Thin Blue Line, which was revolutionary for documentary filmmaking as a whole. It follows the investigation surrounding the murder of a police officer in Dallas, criticizing certain aspects of how it was done, and arguing that the...
- Jeremy Urquhart
- Senior Author
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record ". [1] .
Mar 23, 2024 · From groundbreaking movies that have shaped the genre’s form to recent series that have captured the public's imagination, this selection of the best documentaries to watch in 2024 will ...
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Nov 10, 2023 · Once viewed as something stiff and obligatory, documentary film has, in recent years, risen to the top of the heap—thanks in no small part to some of the earth-shaking, needle-pushing, and...
