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
tender
Night and Fog
foreign gemdreadgut punch
Baraka
slow burnsurreal
One Direction: This Is Us
playfuluplifting
BLACKPINK: Light Up the Sky
foreign gembittersweettender
Senna
bittersweetuplifting
The Salt of the Earth
foreign gembittersweetslow burn
Samsara
cerebralslow burn
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
gut punchtender
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
bittersweetcozytender
The Cove
gut punchraw
Apollo 11
cerebraluplifting
Koyaanisqatsi
cerebralslow burn
My Octopus Teacher
bittersweetcozytender
13th
gut punchparanoid
Man with a Movie Camera
foreign gemcerebralplayful
Friends: The Reunion
bittersweetcozytender
Blackfish
dreadgut punchraw
They Shall Not Grow Old
gut punchraw
I Am Not Your Negro
cerebralgut punchtender
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
cozyslow burntender
Inside Job
cerebralparanoidraw
Waltz with Bashir
foreign gemcerebralslow burn
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret
cerebralgut punch
Cobain: Montage of Heck
3am cultgut punchoutsider
Amy
bittersweetgut punch
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
cerebralparanoidraw
Grizzly Man
gut punchoutsiderraw
Bowling for Columbine
outsiderparanoidpitch black
The Social Dilemma
dreadparanoid
Otras colecciones canon
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