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
Night and Fog
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Baraka
slow burntender
One Direction: This Is Us
cozyplayfuluplifting
BLACKPINK: Light Up the Sky
foreign gemcozyplayful
Senna
bittersweetuplifting
The Salt of the Earth
foreign gembittersweettender
Samsara
bittersweetslow burntender
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
bittersweetgut punch
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
cozytenderuplifting
The Cove
dreadgut punchraw
Apollo 11
cerebralepicslow burn
Koyaanisqatsi
epicneon soakedslow burn
My Octopus Teacher
bittersweettender
13th
cerebraldreadgut punch
Man with a Movie Camera
foreign gemcerebralplayful
Friends: The Reunion
bittersweetcozy
Blackfish
gut punch
They Shall Not Grow Old
I Am Not Your Negro
bittersweetcerebraltender
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
cerebralslow burntender
Inside Job
bittersweetcerebral
Waltz with Bashir
foreign gembittersweetcerebral
Icarus
cerebralparanoid
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret
Cobain: Montage of Heck
bittersweetgut punchraw
Amy
gut punchraw
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
cerebraldreadparanoid
Grizzly Man
bittersweetcerebraldread
Bowling for Columbine
bittersweetcerebralraw
Otras colecciones canon
Comfort-cult — the ones you rewatch forever
Deep-cut rewatchables — off the beaten path, on endless repeat
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