Doc Corner: The Top 100 Documentaries of the Decade
Wednesday, March 18, 2020 at 11:00AM By Glenn Dunks
For those paying attention—and no offence if you haven’t—I have been counting down my top 100 documentaries of the decade. Okay, so it’s technically 110. Shut up, I couldn’t help myself. Check out the list with snap comments for each title on Twitter, or the list is also on Letterboxd. But if you don’t want to make a single click then after the jump you'll get the whole list with chosen highlights and links to full reviews. And just in case you were wondering... number 101? Exit Through the Gift Shop.
If you were to watch them all from start to finish you would be beginning with Martin Scorsese before taking an international tour through 32 countries from South Sudan to North Korea (with production credits from an additional ten). The shortest film on the list is 39 minutes. The longest is a full five-and-a-half. Subject matter is typically diverse. There are the harsh realities of racism, AIDS, drug abuse, terrorism, child abuse, capitalism and refugees to more light-hearted fare like pop concerts, stand-up comedy, fashion, sushi and even goat testicles. There are eight filmmakers with more than one title. The only one with more than two, the most prolific director, of course, is Frederick Wiseman. And speaking of Wiseman, there are multiple nonagenarians!
The number one title was always a foregone conclusion for me. I didn’t even need to think twice from the moment I decided to do the list. The same cannot be said even for numbers two and three, which swapped several times right up until the moment I hit publish. Let me know in the comments: was your favourite documentary of the decade was included?
100 BEST DOCS OF THE DECADE (2010-2019)
* denotes an Oscar nominee
** denotes an Oscar winner
100. George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Martin Scorsese)
99. The Price of Gold (Nanette Burstein)
98. Our People Will Be Healed (Alanis Obomsawin)
A fitting nod to Obomsawin’s sixth decade and a strong showing in the ‘10s with this, We Can't Make the Same Mistake Twice and The People of the Kattapiskak River.
97. A River Changes Course (Kalyanee Mam)
96. Stray Dog (Debra Granik)
95. 5B (Paul Haggis, Dan Krauss) and We Were Here (David Weissman, Bill Weber)
94. Trapped (Dawn Porter) - our first official Doc Corner review!!
93. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front* (Marshall Curry, Sam Cullman)
92. Last Days in Vietnam* (Rory Kennedy)
91. Aim High in Creation (Anna Broinowski)
90. Mala Mala (Antonio Santini, Dan Sickles) and I Am a Woman Now (Michiel van Erp)
89. Circus of Books (Rachel Mason)
88. Senna (Asif Kapadia)
I have ethical issues with Amy and structural issues with Diego Maradona, but it’s hard to deny the visceral impact of Kapadia’s signature style when applied here to the life of Ayrton Senna.
87. Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller)
86. Oyster Factory – Observational Film #6 (Kazuhiro Sôda)
85. How to Die in Oregon (Peter D. Richarson)
84. Let it Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992 (John Ridley)
83. Elena (Petra Costa)
82. The Last Time I Saw Macao (João Pedro Rodrigues, João Rui Guerra da Mata)
81. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (Sophie Fiennes)
80. No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman) and I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman (Marianne Lambert)
79. The Proposal (Jill Magid)
78. Catfish (Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman)
77. This is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
It’s hard to separate this from the way it came to be (Panahi’s home arrest, being smuggled out of Iran in a cake), but to do so would remove what makes it what it is: a blast of political cinema.
76. The Tall Man (Tony Krawitz)
75. Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb)
74. Blue (Karina Holden) and Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite)
73. Let the Fire Burn (Jason Osder)
72. Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart (Jeremiah Zagar)
71. Levitated Mass (Doug Pray)
70. Have You Seen the Listers? (Eddie Martin)
69. Peaches Does Herself (Peaches)
68. Bill Cunningham New York (Bill Press)
67. Casting JonBenet (Kitty Green)
66. The Cave* (Feras Fayyad) and Return to Homs (Talal Derki)
The Middle East was arguably the decade’s biggest story for docs, and Syria most prominently. Placing these two side-by-side, a sort of alpha and omega, feels right as works of cinematic time capsules for the country. Add Fayyad’s Last Men in Aleppo and Derki’s Of Fathers and Sons (both 2017) if you want to colour between the lines of the worlds these two films show us.
65. Shirkers (Sandi Tan)
64. 5 Broken Cameras* (Emad Burnat, Guy Dividi)
63. The Russian Woodpecker (Chad Garcia)
62. Bisbee ’17 (Robert Greene)
61. National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman)
60. Tower (Keith Maitland)
59. The Tillman Story (Amir Bar-Lev)
58. The Darkside (Warwick Thornton)
57. Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé (Beyoncé) and Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour (Paul Dugdale)
56. Black Mother (Khalik Allah)
A startling sensory remix of image and sound. Watching it feels like watching a film that people in 15 years’ time will claim inspired them, just you watch. A living, breathing memory poem about Jamaica.
55. Into the Inferno (Werner Herzog)
54. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern)
53. Behemoth (Zhao Liang)
52. Bros: After the Screaming Stops (Joe Pearlman, David Soutar)
51. Oklahoma City (Barak Goodman)
50. My Prairie Home (Chelsea McMullen)
49. Utopia (John Pilger)
48. The Oath (Laura Poitras)
47. Nuts! (Penny Lane)
46. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (Alex Gibney)
How about those Two Popes, huh? Finds simple yet effective ways to tell the shocking story of deaf children abused by a paedophile Catholic priest. Again, how about those Two Popes, huh?
45. The Interrupters (Steve James)
44. Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)
43. Yours in Sisterhood (Irene Lustzig)
42. Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Abbas Fahdel)
41. Searching for Sugarman** (Malik Bendjelloul)
40. In Transit (Albert Maysles, Lynn True, David Usui, Nelson Walker III and Benjamin Wu)
39. Kate Plays Christine (Robert Greene)
38. Dreams of a Life (Carol Morley) and Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)
37. One More Time with Feeling (Andrew Dominik)
36. Ukraine is Not a Brothel (Kitty Green)
If you give your film a protest slogan for a title, you better back it up. Kitty Green (one of this decades most exciting new non-fiction talents) does.
35. Island of the Hungry Ghosts (Gabrielle Brody)
34. Hit So Hard: The Life and Near Death of Patty Schemel (P. David Ebersole)
33. We Came As Friends (Hubert Sauper)
32. Citizenfour** (Laura Poitras)
31. Restrepo* (Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger)
30. At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman)
29. Dragonslayer (Tristan Patterson) and Minding the Gap* (Bing Lu)
28. American Factory** (Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar)
27. Hale County This Morning, This Evening* (RaMell Ross)
26. Inside Job** (Charles Ferguson)
Began the decade as a horror movie amid a rash of movies about the way America is being fooled by capitalists and destroyed by greed from all sides. At decade’s end it’s almost quaint.
25. Maidan (Sergei Loznitsa)
24. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory* (Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky)
23. Pina* (Wim Wenders)
22. Starless Dreams (Merhdad Oskouei)
21. Young Lakota (Marion Lipschutz, Rose Rosenblatt)
20. The Edge of Democracy* (Petra Costa)
19. Heart of a Dog (Laurie Anderson)
18. Out-Takes from the Life of a Happy Man (Jonas Mekas)
As he says in his own narration, here are fragments of a man’s life; just some images for him and his friends. But even what look like off-cuts become wells of memory and life thanks to the icon that is Mekas.
17. Nostalgia for the Light and The Pearl Button (both Patricio Guzmán)
16. Sherpa (Jennifer Peedom)
15. The Distant Barking of Dogs (Simon Lering Wilmont)
14. In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman)
Three hours (and ten minutes!) doesn’t do Jackson Heights justice. But Wiseman, yet again, somehow finds a way to make it all so joyous and as if you experience everything up close and in bold colour.
13. The Square* (Jehane Noujaim)
12. Strong Island* (Yance Ford)
11. Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (Wiam Bedirxan, Ossama Mohammed)
10. How to Survive a Plague* (David France)
9. The Act of Killing* (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous) and The Look of Silence* (Joshua Oppenheimer)
8. I Am Not Your Negro* (Raoul Peck)
7. The Event (Sergei Loznitsa)
6. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)
5. Dream of a City (Manfred Kirchheimer)
A symphonic relic that was 60 years in the making. Awe-inspiring imagery as a city emerges out of the ground to eventually dwarf the humans who live among it. A true dream.
4. Death in the Terminal (Tali Shemesh, Asaf Sudri)
3. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson)
What can—what *should*—non-fiction do? Even with scraps and off-cuts, it can illuminate in ways that fiction almost never can. A bold new type of documentary that muses on their very reality.
2. Dawson City: Frozen Time (Bill Morrison)
1. The Missing Picture* (Rithy Panh)
A procession of haunting (and haunted) images by a director recreating the unfilmed trauma of his childhood. Decaying figurines as the face of an unfaceable national and personal tragedy. A masterpiece.
Phew! I hope you find some titles from this huge list grab your attention to watch over these coming weeks of household isolation.
P.S. Unfortunately, there were movies which could not be accessed due to rights issues, geoblocking or just plain ol' independent film vanishing acts. So many documentaries are simply unavailable and completely unwatchable (at least depending on your location). Some titles I wanted to consider -- even critically acclaimed, award-winning ones like Clio Barnard’s The Arbor, Sébastien Lifshitz’s Cannes-winning The Lives of Thérèse, Martin Scorsese’s Public Speaking, or Tatiana Huezo’s Tempestad (the latter of which I had not heard of until it landed on multiple end-of-decade lists) have already proved too elusive just a few years after their releases.
Reader Comments (20)
Loved the following docus and I don't care how they are ranked--just glad to see them mentioned:
The Missing Picture
Dawson City: Frozen in Time
Pina
The Act of Killing
This is not a Film
No Home Movie
and a personal favorite:
Robert Beavers' From the Notebook of... (1971, 1998, 2000).
My favorites include:
American Factory
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Heart of a Dog
Minding the Gap
Shirkers
But there are quite a few on the list I need to seek out, too. I appreciate your compiling this list!
It's a shame you couldn't locate The Arbor - that is a compelling documentary that felt like it influenced a number of other prominent documentaries, like Robert Greene's films. I was able to see it on Criterion Channel, so maybe Criterion will release it eventually? (Crosses fingers.)
I've been following you on Twitter and I was going to ask for the complete list. Thank you! This is my go-to list for now on.
Glenn - Let me know if you want to get married because I am a sucker for a documentary ... and a bigger sucker for a documentary lover. Really appreciate this list.
I haven't watch many documentaries but from this decade I love Pequeñas Voces (Little Voices) from Colombia and Agnus Dei: Cordero de Dios (Agnus Dei: The Lamb of God) from México because their realizations are very interesting.
I also want to watch Tempestad because the movie is included in many lists of the best mexican films of the decade.
The movie was nominated for best picture in the Ariel awards and Tatiana Huezo won in best direction becoming the first woman to win in that category and i'm not sure but i think that also becomes the first person to win for a documentary.
Exciting list!
Chantal Akerman’s NO HOME MOVIE is my #1.
I'm looking at the list of my favorites of the decade. I always rate everything I watch on IMDb -- largely so that I can keep track of everything I see via "ratings". A year or two later, a movie I rated as 10/10 might not feel like a favorite, while a movie I rated lower might have stuck with me. It's all rather odd. I rated "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" 8/10, yet I recommend it all the time.
I think I can do a top 25 of the decade as follows:
1 Stories We Tell
2 How to Survive a Plague
3 Twenty Feet from Stardom
4 Tig
5 Exit Through the Gift Shop
6 Three Identical Strangers
7 56 Up
8 Jiro Dreams of Sushi
9 The Wolfpack
10 Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
11 Cartel Land
12 Iris
13 Sour Grapes
14 The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson
15 Weiner
16 13th
17 One of Us
18 Bill Cunningham New York
19 Honeyland
20 Knock Down the House
21 Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary
22 American Factory
23 Oklahoma City
24 The Lavender Scare
25 Do I Sound Gay?
Cesar, I would have loved to crack the surface of some international industries, but they're often just too hard (without a the luxury of no day job or an overflowing back account that I can purchase international physical copies). As you said, Tempestad seemed to rise to the top a lot on lists about Mexican and latin cinema, so I tried, but it proved impossible. I will note Little Voices and Agnes Dei, though (I've heard of the latter before).
Peggy, thank you so much. Always a big supporter of the column. :)
Charlie, that's... quite the proposal.
Deborah, great list! Even if they're not on mine, I like many of those. I felt a bit bad that I didn't include 13TH, but we can't fit everything unfortunately. The only two I didn't like are CARTEL WARS and ONE OF US, both of which I had serious issues with.
Jules, yes, unfortunately Criterion Channel isn't available for me in Australia even through a VPN. Likewise BBC in the UK. Need an international credit card to sign up to watch, and they proved elusive even through Kanopy and local libraries. I have a feeling I would love it.
Owl, I must watch the Beavers one day. It's always been one I've heard about but never seen.
FWIW, if you're in Canada or have a VPN that can access Canada, the National Film Board of Canada put a lot of their documentaries online free to watch. A great way to dive into Alanis' films as she is a titan of the medium.
Still have quite a bit to catch up on, but good list. I especially adore "This is Not a Film," "Cameraperson," "Leviathan," and "At Berkeley."
One you didn't include that I think is quite underrated is "Only the Young."
@Glenn
Little Voices and Agnus Dei are in YouTube but are just available in their original language (are you good in spanish?). Is interesting to know how people get acces to less comercial movies around the world..
Here in México City exists some movie theaters that exhibites exclusivelly non-comercial international films, the most known (and the biggest) is the Cineteca Nacional and some channels from open TV include author cinema in their transmitions but as you said it, sometimes the most difficult part is get a copy from some titles even from national cinema.
I'm glad you mentioned the National Film Board of Canada because i LOOOVE their animated short films.
Really great list you’ve got there! However, if there’s one I truly disagree with it’s the inclusion of Strong Island. I totally feel the pain and suffering that family went through, but honestly, the movie didn’t enlighten me on any of the events that went down. I learned nothing from that documentary, which is a same because it was told through such personal eyes. Better docs from that year: City of Ghosts and Jane! Still need to see Last Men in Aleppo though.
Charlie, I liked Jane a lot but did not care for City of Ghosts at all!
@Glenn, I'd love to hear your "serious issues" with both those movies. I love your insight into documentaries.
@Charlie, I agree about Strong Island. I liked it when I saw it, but now it's a blur to me; nothing about it stuck with me; no insight, no "hit."
Where is Hoop Dreams, Grey Gardens, Fahrenheit 9/11? Is this list for real? Lol. Fail
Very sad to see Stories We Tell absent from the list, as I'd be tempted to place it in my Top 10 of the decade, period, and easily my favorite doc of the decade...but I can kind of maybe see why some would disqualify it based on the twist...
...but my god is it probably the most clever and ultimately beautiful way to unveil a glimpse of life and it has had such a major impact on me as a person.
Three artful - It’s documentaries from the past decade. Whenever an article seems to have a heinous amount of snubs I reread it and usually find I’ve skipped over a caveat or limiting criteria.
Quite a list! I don't see enough docs, but my three all time favorites are Waste Land, The Interrupters, and Free Solo.
Drew, STORIES WE TELL is on there! It's sharing no. 38 with DREAMS OF A LIFE, two films that I think so very well together despite being very different in structure.
So glad to see Silvered Water and Cameraperson so close to the top. They are probably my two favorite documentaries of the past 10 years, though there are many I still have to see.
This is a masterful list of recommendations, balancing mainstream projects and more obscure offerings - thank you for this wonder.
Claudio, they're both just so good, right? I was almost annoyed that Nick Davis beat me to putting SILVERED WATER on his own (not-just-docs) end-of-decade list, too, but really can't be too peeved at anybody watching that one.