My favourite documentary films - an A-Z
The Master List
Note: if you just want to skip to the films without reading the full preamble as to why & how I’m doing this project, feel free to scroll straight on down to the full list at the end of the post 🎞
“In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.” - Alfred Hitchcock
I have a lot of passions but one that's remained pretty consistent through the whole of my adult life is my passion for documentary films.
I'm lucky to live in a country with both public and private broadcasters who've historically appreciated and supported documentary as a form - and I grew up watching a cornucopia of factual programmes shown by the UK’s terrestrial channels on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.
So it was a dream come true when I managed to get a job and begin to forge a career working in TV documentaries myself, at the end of the ‘90s and on into the ‘00s.
And as I learnt more about the craft, skill and care that went into creating documentaries, through working on them myself, I was also having my eyes opened as to the full scope of what non-fiction films could be and do.
“one of the amazing things about documentary is that you can remake it every time you make one. There is no rule about how a documentary film has to be made” - Errol Morris
This was a time in which documentaries weren't just a regular feature on our TV screens, but were breaking through in a big way at the box office too – the 'docbuster era' as I've seen it dubbed.
In the early and mid 2000s, more documentaries than ever before were appearing in cinemas – and drawing record-breaking audiences. Two films from this period - Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 and March of the Penguins the following year - have, astonishingly, both taken over $100 million at the box office worldwide.
But this was also a boom time for watching films at home. Global DVD sales peaked in 2005 and video rentals were being swiftly overtaken by newer, online DVD-by-mail services like pre-streaming-era Netflix and, in Europe, LoveFilm, which had 1.4 million customers at the peak of its popularity in 2008.
I was one of those customers and for 6 or 7 years, until the service got swallowed up by Amazon, I rented scores of incredible DVDS, from classics of celluloid history to indie, arthouse and foreign language films and, of course, documentaries.
Since then, documentaries have continued to grace our screens in cinemas, on television and, in more recent years, on the ever growing proliferation of streamers and other other online platforms. The choice is quite frankly dizzying for a documentary fan like me (as I type this I’ve got 76 episodes of the BBC’s feature doc strand Storyville alone recorded and ready to watch on my DVR - never mind all my watchlists elsewhere!)
Over the years, I've watched documentaries that have delighted me, thrilled me, moved me, educated me, filled me with awe - and with outrage, made me laugh out loud and want to get up and dance, introduced me to people, places and times I might never have experienced and posed questions I'd have never otherwise considered.
“We believe that the materials and the stories taken from the raw can be finer (more real in the philosophic sense) than the acted article. - John Grierson
And now I have my very own little corner of the internet here on Substack, I want to use it to celebrate and share some of the very best of these films with you in an ongoing series of posts that will gradually build into what I hope will prove to be a useful and inspiring library.
HOW IT WORKS
I've opted for the the tried and tested format of an A-Z, with this post serving as my master list.
I absolutely reserve the right to add to this list as and when any other favourites pop into my head that I can't believe I haven't included!
Or if I watch something new which instantly catapults itself into the category of favourite 🤩
But some possible changes and additions aside, this is the lodestar. And with this master list as my guiding light, my plan is to write companion posts for each film, with some background and context, an overview of the story and characters and why it’s made it onto my list of favourites.
As I slowly write these companion posts (which I should add, I do not intend to do in alphabetical order but merely as the fancy takes me and not on any particular schedule) I will add the links into this master post for easy navigation. For films I originally watched a long time ago, I will aim to rewatch if I can - though availability isn’t always guaranteed outside of the films I already personally own on DVD…
MY CRITERIA
I'm confining this project to single, feature length documentaries (ie with a running time of greater than 1 hour minimum), which were originally released in cinemas, on television or on a streamer. This obviously excludes many terrific short docs and documentary series, but I'm sure I'll write about some of those elsewhere.
I'm also using a broad definition of documentary to include pretty much any type of non-fiction film, including hybrid docu-dramas, essay films, animated and all-archive documentaries and plenty more besides.
By its nature, this is a very partial list favouring my own personal tastes – these are films that have left a particular impression on me. It's certainly not intended as any kind of definitive 'best of' list. Plus, as already mentioned, it's heavily dependent on the vagaries of my memory – there are very likely films I absolutely love that aren't on this list simply cos I've forgotten about them just at this moment!
Looking through the titles, I can spy a few themes emerging. There's a definite tilt towards history and politics – perhaps not surprising given that my own debut feature doc is a sweeping slice of social & political history (they do say we make the films we want to watch ourselves, after all).
There are also films about culture (including film itself) and sport, films with really compelling characters at their heart, plus quite a number taking innovative or unexpected approaches to the documentary form itself.
There is also perhaps an overrepresentation of films from that early to mid 2000s period discussed above - as this was when I was really starting to discover the world of documentary beyond the standard TV fare I’d mostly been aware of until then. And there are also quite a lot of films from the past 5-10 years - recency bias is real I guess!
But what's also striking to me is what's not really present on the list – namely, true crime and big, celebrity profiles1 – aka, the kind of films that are most popular with broadcasters and funders right now.
Perhaps this mismatch between my tastes and those of the purse-holding gatekeepers of documentary goes some way to explain why I'm no longer working in TV docs in any meaningful way and have only got one independent feature doc under my belt despite having been in the industry for a quarter of a century?! But that’s a discussion for another day, I think…!
And also deserving of a fuller discussion elsewhere, but which I will at least touch on briefly now, is the overwhelming dominance of British & American, white, male directors in my list. I actually put all the titles into a spreadsheet (yes, that's just the kind of fun gal I am 😁) and was honestly a little shocked to see laid bare quite how few women and non-white directors were there - and how few films made somewhere other than the UK or US.
On a more positive note, there is notably more diversity in the more recent titles - reflective I hope not just of my own greater awareness of and attention to broadening my gaze, but also of an industry that’s doing some hard thinking about the kinds of stories and voices it lifts up.
There is a whole world out there - and documentaries are one of the most powerful ways I can think of to engage in it, with curiosity, empathy and, ultimately, a sense of our common humanity. I for one look forward to experiencing ever more new perspectives, for as long as documentary filmmakers are ready to provide them.
THE LIST
And so on that rather lofty note, without further ado, here are all the films in their fully alphabetised glory...
A – Apollo 19, The Arbor, The Aristocrats, Atomic Cafe, Attacking the Devil
B – Bank Job, Best of Enemies, Bombay Beach, Buena Vista Social Club, The Bridge, Bros: After the Screaming Stops
C – Capturing the Friedmans, Casting JonBenet, Collective, The Corporation
D – The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Dreams of A Life
E – The End of the Line, Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room, Etre et Avoir
F – F for Fake, Finding Vivian Maier, Fire in the Blood, Flee, The Fog of War, Fourteen Days in May
G – Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, The Gleaners & I, Gorbachev. Heaven, Grey Gardens
H – Hearts & Minds, How to Survive a Plague
I – I Am Not Your Negro, I was a Soldier, Icarus, The Imposter, Irene's Ghost
J – The Janes, Jesus Camp, Jiro Dreams of Sushi
K – Kate Plays Christine, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Koyaanisqatsi
L – Let Me Be Me, Life, Animated, London
M – Man on Wire, Men Who Sing, Milisuthando
N – Notes on Blindness
O – Outfoxed, Out of the Ashes
P – The Painter & the Thief, Persepolis
Q – The Queen of Versailles, Quincy
R – Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Requiem for Detroit, Riotsville, USA, Robinson in Ruins, Robinson in Space
S – Sans Soleil, Searching for Sugar Man, Senna, Songbirds, Spellbound, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, The Story of the Weeping Camel, Summer of Soul
T – Three Minutes: A Lengthening, The Thin Blue Line, Time, The Times of Harvey Milk, Touching the Void, The Tower, A Town of Runners
U – Utopia
V – Versus: The Life & Films of Ken Loach
W – The War You Don't See, When We Were Kings, Who Killed the Electric Car, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, Winged Migration, Wisconsin Death Trip
X – XY Chelsea
Y – The Yes Men, Young Plato
Z – Zidane : A 21st Century Portrait
0-9 - 2020: The Story of Us, 32 Sounds
And there we have it. I’m excited to share more about these films with you over the coming months. And I’d love to hear from you too.
Have you seen any of the docs on my list and if so, what dd you think of them?
What other docs do you love? And why?
Is there a particular scene or character from a documentary that’s lingered in your mind long after the credits rolled?
Or maybe you watched a documentary in a memorable location or in unusual circumstances?
Whatever documentary-related thoughts or stories you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear them - and I’m sure others would too.
THE POSTS
Proudly taking part in the Sparkle on Substack 24 essays club – this is post number 18.
Watch my film on Netflix (in Europe) or Vimeo (everywhere else) - or see trailer, reviews & bonus content HERE
Life stories website – coming soon...
I’ve enjoyed plenty of celebrity profile docs, of course I have. And yes, there are some in my list, but I would still definitely say it’s not a major focus of my interests documentary-wise
I saw you have a Carol Morley film on your list, The Alcohol Years by her is one of my favourite documentaries. The things I love about it are the things that seem to annoy people that don't like it, the "unabashed narcissism", etc.
Streetwise by Mary Ellen Mark and her husband is my all time favourite though, I've watched it so many times even though it breaks my heart and makes my eyes puffy with crying every single time.
Ah, but what of "The Act Of Killing", one of the most shocking and fascinating documentaries of all time? And it's companion, "The Look Of Silence"? Those odysseys stuck with me, both for how difficult they were to sit through, but also how the movies subtly interrogate and challenge the documentary format.
Two favorites of mine:
-"The Ambassador", a brilliant high wire act of a doc. Journalist Mads Bruegger goes undercover to secure a fraudulent Liberian ambassadorship simply to procure blood diamonds. Not only an intriguing look at the diamond trade and corruption, but a daring performance, as Bruegger, trying to avoid getting killed in every frame, adopts a persona that's half Tom Wolfe, half Borat.
-"Audience Of One" follows a priest who, upon seeing his first movie in his forties, decides God has told him to make his own film. The result is a big budget sci-fi Biblical epic for which he's able to secure considerable budgetary donations, despite knowing absolutely nothing about movies. This is, uh, not one of those "underdog overcoming all odds" stories, let's put it that way. A hilarious documentary about religion, filmmaking and hubris.
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