Documentaries that hold up as cinema
Not the news-magazine kind. Documentaries that work as films — paced, composed, willing to use silence. Wiseman, Herzog, Marker, Varda, Lanzmann, Morris, Kossakovsky, the Sensory Ethnography Lab. Underrated as a form by mainstream cinephile lists.
Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me
atmospheric
Night and Fog
foreign gemcultatmospheric
Baraka
cultatmospheric
One Direction: This Is Us
atmospheric
BLACKPINK: Light Up the Sky
foreign gematmospheric
Senna
atmospheric
The Salt of the Earth
weirdforeign gematmospheric
Samsara
atmospheric
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
devastatingcultatmospheric
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
atmospheric
The Cove
devastatingcultatmospheric
Apollo 11
atmosphericdevastating
Koyaanisqatsi
cultatmospheric
My Octopus Teacher
atmospheric
13th
atmospheric
Man with a Movie Camera
foreign gemcultatmospheric
Friends: The Reunion
atmospheric
Blackfish
devastatingatmospheric
They Shall Not Grow Old
devastatingatmospheric
I Am Not Your Negro
atmospheric
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
atmospheric
Inside Job
atmospheric
Waltz with Bashir
fever dreamforeign gemdevastating
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret
atmospheric
Cobain: Montage of Heck
slow burnatmosphericdevastating
Amy
atmospheric
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
atmospheric
Grizzly Man
devastatingcultatmospheric
Bowling for Columbine
cultatmosphericdevastating
The Social Dilemma
dreadatmosphericdevastating
Weitere Kanon-Sammlungen
Japanese New Wave — the essentials
80s horror everyone has forgotten
Giallo — Italy's blood-red mystery genre
Korean cinema essentials beyond Parasite
Post-Soviet cinema — Russia & Eastern Europe after 1991
The Romanian New Wave
Essential anime that isn't Studio Ghibli
Slow cinema — the long-take canon
70s American paranoia — the post-Watergate canon
First features by directors who later mattered
Scandinavian noir beyond the Stieg Larsson franchises
Iranian new wave — Kiarostami, Farhadi, and the rest
Argentine cinema — beyond Wild Tales
British kitchen-sink and what it became
First features directed by cinematographers
German New Wave — Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, Schlöndorff
Hong Kong action — Woo, Lam, Tsui, To
Spaghetti westerns — Leone, Corbucci, Sollima, and the second tier
Mumblecore — the American indie movement nobody named
Czech New Wave — Forman, Chytilová, Menzel, before they fled
French New Wave — Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Rivette, Rohmer
Blaxploitation — Shaft, Pam Grier, and the 70s Black cinema boom
Dogme 95 — von Trier, Vinterberg, and the vow of chastity
Australian New Wave — Weir, Miller, Armstrong, Campion
African cinema — Sembène, Sissako, Mambéty, and beyond
Italian neorealism — the rubble and the real
Commedia all'italiana — Italy laughing at itself
German expressionism — shadows, angles, madness
Taiwanese New Cinema — Hou, Yang, Tsai, and the island's quiet revolution
New Queer Cinema — Haynes, Araki, Van Sant, and the 90s insurgency
Wuxia and martial arts — flying swords, hidden masters