Tag Archives: documentary

360. Waltz with Bashir

Ari Folman’s animated documentary is different from many other films about trauma. But it is only in its final moments that it reveal its most telling truth.

346. Au revoir les enfants

Most films about childhood are often nostalgic. Louis Malle’s masterful auto-biopic is about loss of an unfathomable kind.

338. Man with a Movie Camera

Once “too revolutionary”, Dziga Vertov’s avant-garde masterpiece is now felt in Man on Fire, Ratatouille and Inception.

317. The Cook the Thief his Wife & her Lover

First seen as a critique of Thatcherism, this now lives in the era of MeToo and Time’s Up.

286. The Battle of Algiers

The impact of Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece is so great that it extends far beyond cinema and into terrorist organisations, as well as the US Pentagon.

264. if….

Despite being labelled fascist and an insult to Britain, if… won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1969. Almost half a century later, it still retains much of its power.

203. Son of Saul

While cinema has a moral duty to bear witness to history, the problem is that to witness something you have to see it. How can you show the Holocaust?

200. Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola’s radical adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella is one of the most astonishing achievements in the entire history of cinema.

191. GoodFellas

GoodFellas is more than just a breathless tale of middle-management in the Mafia. It’s one of Martin Scorsese’s many films in which he seeks enlightenment.

189. Genocide in Cinema

Blighted with massacres since Biblical times, the word genocide was not coined until 1944. How has cinema faired in depicting it?

186. Spotlight

Spotlight is more than just an investigation into the child abuse scandals that riddled Boston’s Archdiocese. It is an examination of the institutions we create.

160. Amy

Asif Kapadia’s extraordinary documentary makes for uncomfortable viewing, not least because he doesn’t only focus on the flaws of the tragic singer.

159. The Concert Film

With content pretty much always the same, what elevates one concert movie above others is not just the quality of the music, it is also the film’s form.


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