Pixel Pushers/Courtesy Everett Collection/OJ: ESPN/PMC One of the paradoxes when it comes to documentaries — especially the “best” of all docs, as we’ve chosen here — is that the more personal, obsessive and, yes, subjective they are, the better they tend to be.
In a genre that many viewers expect to offer us dispassionate, seemingly impartial portraits of our past and present, the films that stand out frequently do the opposite. They present bold, singular, deeply idiosyncratic visions, oftentimes from directors (Agnès Varda, Werner Herzog, Jonathan Demme and Sarah Polley, to name a few included here) who’ve oscillated between fiction and nonfiction work. Even the late, great Frederick Wiseman — two of whose 46 films are on our list — claimed he made “reality fictions” and not documentaries, although they’ve always been classified as the latter.
Of course, a lot of great docs are also about great subjects, and there’s no shortage of pivotal historical events and figures explored in the films we’ve chosen. The carnage of World War II is the focus of three movies on our list — all made in France, notably. Pioneering writers (James Baldwin), artists (Robert Crumb), rock stars (Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Talking Heads) and athletes (Muhammad Ali, O.J. Simpson — OK, well, an athlete who was also a suspected murderer) are featured as well.
And yet nearly half of our top 25 are about people or places nobody had really heard of before. Whether it’s skateboarders facing hardship in the Rust Belt; high-school ballers struggling in Chicago; drag queens voguing in 1980s New York; Parisians dumpster diving for produce; Kentucky miners striking for a union contract; a failed actor who believed he could buddy up with Alaskan bears; or a pair of formerly wealthy recluses living in squalor and delusion in the Hamptons — what becomes clear, when making a list like this, is that the subjects depicted ultimately matter less than how they’re depicted.
There will no doubt be readers who disagree with our ranking, omissions and selections; we ourselves spent a long time debating. After initially deciding to include no more than one film per filmmaker, we ended up scrapping that parameter and going with our gut — an implicit recognition that certain documentary filmmakers, in this case the Maysles brothers, D.A. Pennebaker and Wiseman, are truly masters of the form.
Five films that almost made the cut — consider them honorable mentions — are: Laura Poitras’ All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams (1982), Spike Lee’s 4 Little Girls (1997), the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin’s Salesman (1969), and Rob Epstein’s The Times of Harvey Milk (1984).
As we enter the dog days, and “dump months,” of summer — or if you’re still waiting to book a decent seat for The Odyssey in Imax 70mm — you could do worse than seek out a title or two from our list (many are available on streaming). Perhaps you’ll discover something new, allowing one of these great directors to serve as your guide through our strange, sad and marvelous world.
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‘The Fog of War’ (2003)
Image Credit: Sony Pictures Classics/Courtesy Everett Collection The best and worst things about Errol Morris’ documentary are, and always will be, the same: It’s a film composed of 11 lessons, conveyed by former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in uncomfortably relaxed fashion, that we didn’t learn during the Vietnam War, didn’t learn in 2003 when we were newly enmeshed in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and still haven’t learned in 2026 as we position ourselves in the midst of various conflicts around the globe. It’s a clear-eyed, cogent exploration of every international policy screw-up we’ve ever made and are ever going to make, featuring one of the most candid geniuses and war criminals ever captured on film.
The Fog of War encapsulates all the things Morris does best, from his ability to set the strangest and cagiest of subjects at ease, to his capacity for illuminating the most intricate of topics with absolute clarity, to his gift for expressing righteous anger dispassionately. It’s a masterpiece of moral ambiguity, accompanied by Philip Glass’ eerie, pulse-pounding score, perhaps the composer’s best cinematic work.
