Top 100 Documentaries
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- DirectorChris MarkerStarsCatherine BelkhodjaKenji TokitsuNagisa ÔshimaThe French computer programmer Laura inherits the task of making a computer game of the Battle of Okinawa during World War II. She searches the internet for information on the battle, and interviews Japanese experts and witnesses. The extraordinary circumstances of the Battle of Okinawa lead Laura to reflect deeply on her own life and humanity in general, particularly the influence of history and memories.
- DirectorFrederick WisemanShot in Frederick Wiseman's trademark blank style - no narration, no music, and minimal editing - this four hour documentary follows a cross-section of the small Maine city's workers, from lobstermen and tugboat operators working the picturesque coast to teachers, hospital workers and shopkeepers in the sleepy downtown center.
- DirectorStan BrakhageAt a morgue, forensic pathologists conduct autopsies of the corpses assigned.
- DirectorForugh FarrokhzadStarsForugh FarrokhzadEbrahim GolestanHossein MansouriSet in a leper colony in the north of Iran, The House is Black juxtaposes "ugliness", of which there is much in the world as stated in the opening scenes, with religion and gratitude.
- DirectorYervant GianikianAngela Ricci LucchiArchive footage documents the World War One wartime displacement of ethnically diverse prisoners of war, civilian refugees and orphans. Placed in a labor camp, they are stripped, showered and shaved as they become forced labor. Many die, and their bodies are piled up in mass graves.
- DirectorJonas MekasStarsJonas MekasStan BrakhageRobert BreerDirector Jonas Mekas provides an intimate glimpse of his personal life by constructing a feature length narrative from over 30 years of private home movie footage.
- DirectorNaomi KawaseStarsNaomi KawaseUno KawaseKiyonobu YamashiroKawase tries to come to terms with her late father, whom she never knew when growing up, and contemplates getting a tattoo like his.
- DirectorSergey LoznitsaThe city of Leningrad and the blockade during the Second World War. No words. No music. Only sounds and black and white images of a dying city.
- DirectorWang BingThe impact of the decline of heavy industry on workers and their families in the Tiexi district of Shenyang, China, at the turn of the 21st century, documented unflinchingly by a fly-on-the-wall camera.
- DirectorArtavazd PeleshianA man paves his own way to his own soul through an intellectual quest, tragedies of nations and personal drama. The road moving through the cosmic distances is a flight into one's internal world. This flight and this drama are revealed in this philosophical film-poem.
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsWerner HerzogAnna HitchVissarionWhat is faith and religion to Russians after the fall of communism? We get the insight into the Russian Orthodox church as well as different folk and shamanic beliefs.
- DirectorSharunas BartasThe film is a day in the life that passes by, even if it seems neverending.
- DirectorVincent MonnikendamIn a span of ninety minutes the film aims to show how the Netherlands administered its colony as a colonial enterprise and what the relations were like at the time. The usual commentary has been omitted and in its place poems and songs in Bahasa Indonesia have been included in a digital sound composition. In Mother Dao the Turtlelike, the viewer sees how the colonial machinery in the 1920s was implanted in a world so different from Western Europe.
- DirectorStephen DwoskinStarsAstley HarveyStephen Dwoskin tells the double story on memory, bringing together the beauty of its documents and the sadness of its elusiveness. Extracts from the filmmaker's own films are collaged with photographs and bits of home movies, stills, etc.
- 1989– 1h 44m7.6 (434)TV EpisodeDirectorPedro CostaThierry LounasStarsDanièle HuilletJean-Marie StraubTwo directors struggle to survive in the movie industry.
- 1995– 5 eps7.4 (213)TV SeriesStarsAleksandr SokurovIn 1994, Alexander Sokurov accompanied Russian troops assigned to a frontier military post at the Tajikistan/Afghanistan border to film their experiences. While unnamed tribal forces occasionally engaged the troops in skirmishes, Sokurov's haunting documentary chronicles the downtime between activity.
- DirectorJames BenningStarsWillem Dafoe
- DirectorDavid PerlovStarsDavid PerlovMira PerlovYael PerlovShot over a ten-year period, Diary is not only the political, professional, and personal diary of a man, but is a testimony on the turbulent reality of a war-torn country, Israel. In six chapters, Perlov travels to Tel Aviv, Paris, London, and finally to Brazil, where he was born. The film is also a family diary in which Perlov records the coming of age of his two daughters, Yael and Naomi.
- DirectorMichel BraultPierre PerraultStarsLéopold TremblayAlexis TremblayAbel HarveyAt the instigation of the filmmakers, the young men of the Ile-aux-Coudres in the middle of the St-Lawrence River try as a memorial to their ancestors to revive the fishing of the belugas interrupted in 1924.
- DirectorLeo HurwitzStarsPeggy LawsonLeo HurwitzA documentary about the film-maker's wife and co-worker, Peggy Lawson, who died in 1971.
- DirectorJoris IvensStarsJoris IvensHenxiang HanZhuang LiuAn elderly, asthmatic filmmaker travels to China, hoping to film the wind.
- DirectorJean-Pierre GorinStarsJean-Pierre GorinIdentical young twin girls in the USA have invented their own shared language. Scientists are wanting to study the language but social workers are trying to get the twins to leave their secret language world and enter the mainstream. This means forcing them to speak normal English and lose their secret language. The filmmaker's own questions about this process run across as text at the bottom of the screen, a first use of that technique in documentary.
- DirectorJohan van der KeukenA poetic depiction of life and ritual in the south Indian state of Kerala. We see how knowledge is passed down from generation to generation: within the family, through the village economy, and especially from teachers to students. Performance footage shows how song, dance, martial arts, and religion constitute the building blocks of a culture.
- DirectorBen RiversStarsJake WilliamsAfter working at sea, a man realizes his dream of moving to the middle of the forest.
- DirectorChantal AkermanStarsNatalia ChakhovskaiaA look at life in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
- DirectorRobert GardnerA look at daily life in the city of Benares, India, one of the most religious places in the country.
- DirectorHanns Walter KornblumStarsPaul BildtWilly Kaiser-HeylTheodor LoosDocumentary on physics and astronomy.
- DirectorBruce BaillieA sensitive, low-key portrait of the East Bay Activity Center, a school in Oakland, California, started in the 1950s to help emotionally disturbed children.
- DirectorManoel de OliveiraStarsJorge TrêpaRicardo TrêpaMaria de MedeirosThe city of Porto viewed by the intimate eye of Manoel de Oliveira.
- DirectorDziga VertovHow the miners of the Don coal basin (one of the industrial regions of Ukraine) were striving to fulfill in four years their part of the Five Year Plan.
- DirectorMichael PilzAn epic documentary in two parts about life in the Styrian mountain village of St. Anna.
- DirectorApichatpong WeerasethakulStarsDuangjai HiransriKome Kongkiat KomesiriSaisiri XoomsaiA film crew documents a folk story-exquisite corpse combination by random Thai people; the story is reenacted.
- DirectorAlexander HammidA young man sets out for an aimless stroll by tram from the center to the outskirts of Prague.
- DirectorMasao AdachiStarsMasao AdachiA visual document of the life of serial killer Norio Nagayama, focusing entirely of his living environment with some narrated biographical information.
- DirectorDusan HanákPictures of the Old World is an unquestioned masterpiece of European documentary cinema, with existential radicalism that offers a contrast to the shallowness of hundreds of other documentary films showing images from the outskirts of civilization. The outskirts here are a Slovakian town in the Tatra Mountains. Though censored for 17 years, Dusan Hanáks poetic visual essay is not a political or even social film. It goes to far deeper and more fundamental levels of human experience. Inspired by the photographs of Martin Martinek, the films power lies in its unusual portraits of people whose raw visual beauty radiates from their very souls. Some, like the village cosmos aficionado or the disabled old man who climbs stairs on his knees, are hard to forget.
- DirectorAllan KingStarsMartin FischerChronicles 7-weeks in the lives of 12 emotionally disturbed children and their therapist's experimental method of treatment at the Toronto-area Warrendale facility.
- DirectorFrédéric PardoStarsTina AumontPierre-Richard BréPierre ClémentiA painter presents his own kind of "making of" documentary, without dialogue, playing games with light and superimpositions.
- DirectorJosé Luis GuerínStarsMichael KillaninPadraig O'FeeneyBartley O'FeeneyDocumentary in which the camera of Jose Luis Guerín returns, almost forty years later, to the same places where the mythical film of John Ford 'The quiet Man' was shot. The locality of Innisfree still keeps alive the memory of the filming among the survivors, full of historical references in the other inhabitants, as well as the particular way of seeing the life of the deep Ireland that Ford wanted to portray.
- DirectorFranco PiavoliThe passage of time in different dimensions illustrated by biological evolution, the changing seasons and the everyday moments of human life.
- DirectorJoão César MonteiroStarsMaria Velho da CostaJosé DiogoCarlos MenaBy cross-editing footage of Portuguese workers protesting against NATO forces and various movies, Monteiro shows how one 'sword' can confront the army.
- DirectorA.O. VäisänenStarsLyyli HomeBenjamin TrofimovOlga Tarpio
- DirectorRoss McElweeStarsRoss McElweeDede McElweeRoss McElwee Jr.Documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee sets out to make a movie about Union General Sherman's March to the Sea towards the end of the American Civil War, but keeps getting sidetracked by his own love life.
- DirectorPeter KubelkaA trip to Africa is edited into a brief documentary without continuity between sound and image or story and time.
- DirectorZhangke JiaStarsXiaodong LiuSanming HanChina's greatest living filmmaker Jia Zhangke (Platform, The World) travels with acclaimed painter Liu Xiaodong from China to Thailand as they meet everyday workers in the throes of social turmoil. Liu Xiaodong is well-known for his monumental canvases, particularly those inspired by China's Three Gorges Dam project. In DONG, Jia Zhangke visits Liu on the banks of Fengjie, a city about to be swallowed up by the Yangtze River. The area is in the process of being "de-constructed" by armies of shirtless male workers who form the subject of Liu's paintings. Liu and Jia next travel to Bangkok, where Liu paints Thai sex workers languishing in brothels. The two sets of paintings are united in their subjects' shared sense of malaise in the face of the dehumanizing labor afforded them.
- DirectorJoel DeMottJeff KreinesIn their final year at Muncie's Southside High School, a group of seniors hurtles toward maturity with a combination of joy, despair, and an aggravated sense of urgency. They are also learning a great deal about life, both in and out of school, and not what school officials think they are teaching.
- DirectorKazuo HaraStarsKazuo HaraSachiko KobayashiHiroshi YokotaAn intimate documentary about a group of people with cerebral palsy in Japan that confronts our preconceptions and prejudices about who they are, what they feel, and how they view their lives.
- DirectorMikhail KalatozovStory of distant mountainous region in Georgia that depicts folklore, lifestyle and daily routines of Svani people, focuses on the scarcity of salt in Svaneti region. Rich with documentary value, the movie also served for Soviet propaganda.
- DirectorPeter B. HuttonFigures and their shadows play sidewalk games. Far-off figures gather on rooftop under the slow crawl of a clouded sky. Skywriters stitch the ether and skyscrapers sprout from their silhouettes. Architecture frames a drifting airship, then finds a bustling Sunday crowd. Festivities regale the throng along the harbor, before sleeping strangers rest in abandonment. A figure slogs, in makeshift trappings, through flooded streets - another fjords the quagmire searching for outlets to plunge. Radiant patterns of fluid flower and flow to the withdrawing drain, as the smothering thunderheads skulk away.
- DirectorShôhei ImamuraStarsShigeru TsuyuguchiYoshie HayakawaShôhei ImamuraPlastics salesman Oshima disappeared without a word to anyone, and has been missing for two years. Shohei Imamura and his crew follow Oshima's fiancé Yoshie and actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi as they investigate the disappearance.
- DirectorMalo AguettantMaurice BornJean-Daniel PolletStarsRaimondakisPhilippe SollersPollet provides an insight into life on the leper colony of Spinalonga, an island off Crete, through the eyes of Raimondakis, who tells the story of his life to the camera after having been excluded from his community to spend years of his life on the island with his fellow sufferers. Themes addressed include love, community, companionship and death and the importance of these values to all people whatever their state of health.
- DirectorRaymond DepardonStarsMarcelle BrèsRaymond PrivatLouis BrèsFirst documentary of a trilogy produced on the long term (together with Profils paysans: le quotidien (2005) and Modern Life (2008)), showing the simple lives of farmers in contemporary Southern France.
- DirectorSantiago ÁlvarezAn agit-prop documentary marking the death of Vietnamese nationalist leader Ho Chí Minh, using found footage to link his work to worldwide political movements including the Cuban revolution and resistance within the USA to the Vietnam war.
- DirectorRobert J. FlahertyStarsAllakariallakAlice NevalingaCunayouIn this silent predecessor to the modern documentary, film-maker Robert J. Flaherty spends one year following the lives of Nanook and his family, Inuits living in the Arctic Circle.
- DirectorAntoine d'AgataStarsAntoine d'AgataThe renowned Antoine d'Agata, again and always, uses his sublime camera and whole being to reveal a parallel world of prostitution and drugs, punctuated by exhausted bodies and lost souls in Cambodia, Russia and India.
- DirectorTonino GuerraAndrei TarkovskyStarsTonino GuerraLora JabloskinaAndrei TarkovskyAcclaimed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and his screenwriter Tonino Guerra travel all over Italy to scout locations for the film Nostalghia.
- DirectorWalerian BorowczykStarsAndré Pieyre de MandiarguesA witty and eye-opening tour through Borowczyk's own collection of vintage erotica. Originally intended as part of his 'Contes immoraux', it was released first as a separate short, and is therefore marks the turning-point between Borowczyk's career as a highly-regarded animator and surrealist filmmaker, and his subsequent career in the sexploitation field.
- DirectorVíctor EriceStarsAntonio LópezMaría MorenoEnrique GranThe artist Antonio López tries to capture the sunlight hitting his quince tree all autumn, but the struggle seems futile.
- DirectorÓsvaldur KnudsenStarsAlan BoucherA short documentary showing the formation of an island from lava and other volcanic activity.
- DirectorTsai Ming-liangA behind the scenes documentary on the making of Ming-liang Tsai's "Hei yan quan", (a.k.a "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone").
- DirectorBenjamin ChristensenStarsBenjamin ChristensenElisabeth ChristensenMaren PedersenFictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in Eastern Europe.
- DirectorDusan MakavejevStarsDragoljub AleksicBratoljub GligorijevicVera JovanovicDocumentary about the famous Serbian athlete and movie enthusiast who made a feature film during the Nazi occupation of Belgrade and had some problems after the liberation because of that.
- DirectorLeni RiefenstahlStarsDavid AlbrittonArvo AskolaJack BeresfordThe document of the 1936 Olympics at Berlin.
- DirectorLeni RiefenstahlStarsSheigo AraiJack BeresfordRalf BerzsenyiThe document of the 1936 Olympics at Berlin, orchestrated as Nazi propaganda.
- DirectorPhilippe GrandrieuxStarsMasao AdachiNaruhiko OnozawaGrandrieux pays an homage to Masao Adachi, a Japanese filmmaker with a turbulent past and now a recluse in his homeland, creating a portrait of this man always faithful in its very own way.
- DirectorClaude LanzmannStarsSimon SrebnikMichael PodchlebnikMotke ZaïdlClaude Lanzmann's epic documentary recounts the story of the Holocaust through interviews with witnesses - perpetrators as well as survivors.
- DirectorHans-Jürgen SyberbergStarsWinifred WagnerGottfried WagnerHans-Jürgen SyberbergHans-Jürgen Syberberg's epic interview with Winifred Wagner in 1975.
- DirectorJean RouchStarsJean RouchA documentary short depicting a Hauka ceremony where young workers are possessed by British colonial officers.
- DirectorAlain CavalierStarsAlain CavalierCatherine DeneuveVanessa WidhoffA video diary shot and recorded by the filmmaker, using little more than his imagination and the happenstance and flow of the everyday, finally layering in a lifetime of memories.
- DirectorSteve BilichStarsTerry 'Coyote' MurphyJohn 'Pope' PaulThis silent documentary with an original score was filmed through the eye of a 1924 hand-crank spring-wound Cine-Kodak camera. This film features Terry 'Coyote' Murphy representing the Native American influence of the isle of Manhattan. Coyote, a Shaman Trail Scout, takes a journey which transcends time, weaving from Inwood Park (where the island was traded for beads & booze), down a long native path (now called 'the great white way', more commonly known as 'Broadway'), to the lower reaches of Manhattan into 'ground zero' (which is now a sacred burial ground for not just the American Indian & the slaves of yesteryear, but for the newest natives of this island empire as well).
- DirectorHenri StorckBelgian director Henri Storck presents a tribute to one of the most well-known spots in Belgium: the Ostende beach. Filming from everyone and everything, gathering a small collection of eight short films made in the 1920's, Storck invites the audience to feel the beach, the port, the surf, the wind and the dunes, giving us more than what the real images can really evoke, reaching a surreal level.
- DirectorAlain ResnaisStarsMichel BouquetReinhard HeydrichHeinrich HimmlerThe history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.
- DirectorRobert KramerStarsJesse JacksonPaul McIsaacPat RobertsonDoc (McIsaac), back from a decade in in Africa, and filmmaker Kramer, decide to follow Route 1, from the Canadian border all the way to the tip of Florida.
- DirectorGeorge T. NierenbergGary S. WandDocuments the hardships faced by a poverty-level Adirondack community.
- DirectorSergei EisensteinFootage of the aftermath of the January 14 1931 Earthquake in Oaxaca, Mexico.
- DirectorPaul RothaStarsA.J. Cummings
- DirectorJean-Claude Rousseau
- DirectorSergei DvortsevoyThis excellent low-key documentary records the daily life of an elderly blind man in Russia. He spends his days at home in a tiny flat making bags out of string. His only companion is a cat, which persists in unraveling the man's bags and tangling the thread. Once the man has completed a set of string bags, he goes out to the street-corner and tries to give them away to passersby for free. Sadly, no one wants them, even though they are much nicer than the grimy plastic bags commonly used on that street.
- DirectorAudrius StonysUku Ukai is not a film that tells, but lives like a meditative experience in time and space, landscape and movement. Inhale, exhale. Uku Ukai does not ask the viewer to understand but rather to enter into synchronicity with the sounds and images. Uku Ukai is spiritual gymnastics: bodies run, breathe, reach out without needing to reach anything. While images flutter and sounds ricochet, the viewers become the real film. Inhale, exhale.
- DirectorGeorges FranjuStarsGeorges HubertNicole LadmiralAlfred MacquartBucolic scenes from the outskirts of Paris are contrasted with stark footage from slaughterhouses.
- DirectorCarlos CasasSaodat IsmailovaStarsJanibek AnuarovTanjer IrsimbetovJumagul OltijanovA documentary film about the three remaining generations of fishermen in the Aral Sea, and their awaiting and everyday struggle to survive in one of the scarcest places on the planet. Life after one of man made biggest disasters.
- DirectorBill MorrisonSourcing original 35mm nitrate footage, filmmaker Bill Morrison pieces together a unique visual exploration of WWI from footage that has never been viewed by modern audiences, and will never be seen again outside of this film. Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov created the haunting score, commissioned and performed by the Kronos Quartet.
- DirectorKen JacobsStarsJack SmithJerry SimsGib TaylorStar Spangled to Death is a 2004 experimental film directed by Ken Jacobs, consisting almost entirely of archive footage, depicting the history of the United States in film.
- DirectorSami SaifStarsRicardo LopezChronicling the last days of the life of the social outcast Ricardo Lopez in 1996 as he mails a bomb to Icelandic singer Björk.
- DirectorHollis FramptonStarsMichael SnowFrampton slowly burning his black and white photographs as he describes and tells the story behind them.
- DirectorBoris KaufmanJean VigoWhat starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.
- DirectorHerz FrankA 10 minute long journey of emotions that befall children faces. Fear, Curiosity; a Smile. They all sit in a dark theater. What they see, we don't; we can only guess from their faces.
- DirectorNoriaki TsuchimotoStarsKimio KawasakiThe film focuses on the taxi drivers of Tokyo in the year before the Tokyo Olympics and the difficulties they face: construction obstructing traffic, poor working conditions, numerous accidents, and bad pay.
- DirectorWeikai HuangFootage collected from a dozen amateur videographers woven into a unique city symphony of social dysfunction.
- DirectorRüdiger SünnerThe film investigates the mythological backgrounds of nationalsocialism.
- DirectorMitsuo YanagimachiThe 1970s in Japan saw the rise of motorcycle gangs, which drew the interest of the media. The movie follows a member of the "Black Emperors" gang and his interaction with his parents after he gets in trouble with the police.
- DirectorSeung-jun YiStarsCho Young-ChanKim Soon-hoChoi JungahYoung-Chan comes from planet of snail where deaf blind people live slow and quiet lives. When Young-Chan came to Earth, nobody understood his language and he was desperate. Then an angel walked into his life. Soon-Ho knows how it is to be lonely and soon becomes an inseparable part of his life. Young-Chan also discovers an amazing world under his fingers as he learned to read books with braille. Hopes began to grow and he dreams of writing a book. However, Soon-Ho cannot always be there for him because of her own problem of spine disability. The couple now should learn to survive alone. While Soon-Ho uneasily spends her first day waiting for his return, Young-Chan goes out for the biggest adventure of his life.
- DirectorGianfranco MingozziShort film which explore the Tarantula bite curing process in Italy using music and dance.
- DirectorErnie GehrAn experimental short in which San Francisco is viewed from an elevator moving up and down 24 floors.
- DirectorThom AndersenFay AndersenMorgan FisherStarsDean StockwellEadweard MuybridgeA documentary film about the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge.
- DirectorByambasuren DavaaLuigi FalorniStarsJanchiv AyurzanaChimed OhinAmgaabazar GonsonWhen a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
- DirectorJennifer VendittiStarsPenny BakerBilly P.Heather Pelletier"I'm not black, I'm not white, not foreign, just different in the mind. Different brains, that's all," explains 15-year-old Billy in Jennifer Venditti's provocative coming of age film. Billy's intuitive commentary and intimate verite footage reveal a unique attitude as he responds to a painful childhood, first time love, and his experience as an outsider in small town Maine. By turns humorous and disturbing, this portrait challenges the viewer to understand a triumphant teen on his own terms.
- DirectorAndrew KottingStarsAndrew KottingEden KottingBenji MingWhen British filmmaker Andrew Kotting decided to tour the perimeter of Great Britain with his grandmother Gladys and his daughter Eden, he brought a film crew along. The result is this often humorous and picturesque documentary.
- DirectorPieter FleuryStarsHong Soon-huiDocumentary about North Korea
- DirectorJacinto EstevaStarsManuel CanoMarta MejíasAntonio GadesA compilation, in the form of a black and white documentary, of very diverse aspects of Spanish regional folklore, formed by peculiar customs of a still underdeveloped and primitive Spain and in which many of these rituals are related to death.