The past is never past; in bringing the Holocaust to life in his towering nine-and-a-half-hour masterpiece, director Claude Lanzmann would stick solely to the present. Shoah is composed of the reflections of Polish survivors, bystanders and, most uneasily, the perpetrators. The memories become living flesh, and an essential part of documentary filmmaking finds its apotheosis: the act of testifying. Our top choice was an obvious one.
Thanks to that high-quality camera in our pocket, we’re all documentarians these days. But a great documentary film isn’t simply about capturing real life on video and sticking it on social media. A truly masterful doc frames our understanding of the world. It can change how we see reality and the people around us. In many cases, it makes us look inward, and maybe even see ourselves differently.
It does, however, seem like we’re living in a time of documentary overload. So that’s why we’ve dug through the entire history of cinema – literally, the first docs go back to the very beginning of the form – to sort the must-sees from the glorified TikTok videos. From a simple clip of a train pulling into a station to Andy Warhol gazing up at the Empire State Building for eight hours, from Bob Dylan accosting reporters to an animated navigation of the horrors of war, here are our picks for the best documentaries ever made.
Written by Joshua Rothkopf, Cath Clarke, Tom Huddleston, David Fear, Dave Calhoun, Phil de Semlyen, Andy Kryza, David Ehrlich and Matthew Singer
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