# The best documentaries of all time

The top ten of Sight & Sound's documentary poll (more than 200 critics and 100 filmmakers), followed by the documentaries most praised by critics and audiences since.

- 120 votes · 24 items
- Feb 11, 2023 · austinartnerd
- https://even.best/en/l/111/the-best-documentaries-of-all-time

## Top 20

1. **Shoah** (10 · ▲10 ▼0) — Claude Lanzmann, France, 1985. Nine and a half hours of testimonies about the Holocaust, without archive footage.
2. **Man with a Movie Camera** (7 · ▲8 ▼1) — Dziga Vertov, USSR, 1929. A day in Soviet cities with no actors or intertitles; number one in Sight & Sound's poll.
3. **Chronicle of a Summer** (7 · ▲8 ▼1) — Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, France, 1961. 'Are you happy?' asked in the streets of Paris; founding work of cinéma vérité.
4. **Free Solo** (7 · ▲7 ▼0) — Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, 2018. Alex Honnold climbs El Capitan without ropes; Oscar for Best Documentary.
5. **Night and Fog** (6 · ▲7 ▼1) — Alain Resnais, France, 1955. 32 minutes that contrast the empty camps in colour with archive images in black and white.
6. **The Thin Blue Line** (6 · ▲7 ▼1) — Errol Morris, USA, 1988. Its investigation helped free Randall Adams, wrongly sentenced to death.
7. **Hoop Dreams** (5 · ▲6 ▼1) — Steve James, USA, 1994. Five years following two Chicago teenagers who dream of the NBA.
8. **Nanook of the North** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Robert Flaherty, USA, 1922. The life of an Inuk family in Arctic Quebec; the first feature-length documentary.
9. **Dont Look Back** (4 · ▲5 ▼1) — D. A. Pennebaker, USA, 1967. Bob Dylan's 1965 UK tour, opening with the cue cards of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'.
10. **Grizzly Man** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Werner Herzog, 2005. Timothy Treadwell's own footage of living among Alaska's bears.
11. **Sans Soleil** (3 · ▲4 ▼1) — Chris Marker, France, 1982. A film-essay of letters between Japan, Guinea-Bissau and Iceland.
12. **Grey Gardens** (3 · ▲4 ▼1) — Albert and David Maysles, USA, 1975. Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, Jackie Kennedy's relatives, in their decaying mansion.
13. **Salesman** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, USA, 1969. Door-to-door Bible salesmen in New England and Florida.
14. **Paris Is Burning** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — Jennie Livingston, USA, 1990. New York's ballroom culture and voguing in the 1980s.
15. **Stories We Tell** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — Sarah Polley, Canada, 2012. Polley investigates her own family's secret.
16. **Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola, 1991. The chaotic shoot of Apocalypse Now.
17. **Close-Up** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1990. A man who impersonated director Mohsen Makhmalbaf replays his own story.
18. **Harlan County, USA** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Barbara Kopple, USA, 1976. A Kentucky miners' strike filmed from the picket line; Oscar for Best Documentary.
19. **Man on Wire** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — James Marsh's 2008 film about Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers; Oscar for Best Documentary.
20. **The Last Waltz** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Martin Scorsese's 1978 concert film of The Band's farewell show at Winterland in San Francisco.
21. **The Gleaners and I** (0 · ▲3 ▼3) — Agnès Varda, France, 2000. People who gather what others throw away, filmed with a small digital camera.
22. **Koyaanisqatsi** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Godfrey Reggio's 1982 wordless film of landscapes and cities set to music by Philip Glass.
23. **The Act of Killing** (-1 · ▲1 ▼2) — Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012. Indonesian death-squad leaders re-enact their 1965–66 killings as film genres.
24. **Searching for Sugar Man** (-2 · ▲1 ▼3) — Malik Bendjelloul, 2012. The forgotten singer Rodriguez, a star in South Africa without knowing it; Oscar.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.