Top 5 Documentaries
Published:What are the greatest documentaries ever made? We have scoured hundreds of hours of footage and reviewed countless critic & fan polls to compile our BOLD list of Top 5 Documentary Films! Did any of your favorites make the list?
1) Hoop Dreams
- Follows the story of two African-American high school students in Chicago and their dream of becoming professional basketball players
- 1994 Sundance Film Festival won the Audience Award for Best Documentary
- Ebert in his initial television review proclaimed "This is one of the best films about American life that I have ever seen", and later called it the best film of the decade
- In 2007, the International Documentary Association named Hoop Dreams as its selection for the all-time greatest documentary
- Despite its length (171 minutes) and unlikely commercial genre, it received high critical and popular acclaim, and grossed over $11 million worldwide
2) Shoah
- Consists of Claude Lanzmann’s interviews and visits to German Holocaust sites across Poland. It presents testimonies by selected survivors, witnesses, and German perpetrators, often secretly recorded using hidden cameras
- Gene Siskel named it as his choice for the best movie of the year, later naming it the second best film of the 1980s
- Ebert declined to rank it, saying that it belonged in a class to itself and no film should be ranked against it. He also said it was “one of the noblest films ever made”
- In 1985 it won Best Documentary and Special Award at the New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association
- In a 2014 Sight and Sound poll, film critics voted Shoah the second best documentary film of all time
3) The Thin Blue Line
- Depicts the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit. Adams' case was reviewed and he was released from prison approximately a year after the film's release
- Has had a considerable influence on later television and documentary film, often credited with pioneering the style of modern crime-scene reenactments
- In a 2014 Sight and Sound poll, film critics voted The Thin Blue Line the fifth best documentary film of all time
- Current TV placed the film 2nd on their list of 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die
- In 2001, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"
4) Sans Soleil
- A meditation on the nature of human memory, showing the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory, and how, as a result, the perception of personal and global histories is affected
- Expanding the documentary genre, this experimental essay-film is a composition of thoughts, images and scenes, mainly from Japan and Guinea-Bissau, "two extreme poles of survival"
- In a 2014 Sight and Sound poll, film critics voted Sans Soleil the third best documentary film of all time
- An overwhelming film experience!
- Maintains a very high 8.2 star ranking on IMDB.com
5) The Act of Killing
- A documentary which challenges former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers
- Won the 2013 European Film Award for Best Documentary and the Asia Pacific Screen Award. Also won best documentary at the 2014 BAFTA awards
- "Raw, terrifying, and painfully difficult to watch, The Act of Killing offers a haunting testament to the edifying, confrontational power of documentary cinema”
- Named the best film of 2013 by Sight & Sound, The Guardian, LA Weekly and more
- Currently holds a very high 8.2 star ranking on IMDB.com
