The greatest documentaries: 21 essential films

Weekly collection in the app for the week of July 31, 2026.

Non-fiction cinema has its own canon: Wiseman walking his camera into American institutions, Chris Marker writing essays in images, the Maysles brothers finding Beckett in a Long Island mansion, Joshua Oppenheimer asking killers to re-stage their crimes for the camera.

This collection of 21 films ran as the weekly theme in the I Like Movies Discover tab for the week of July 31, 2026, featuring Hoop Dreams, five years in the lives of two Chicago basketball hopefuls and still the bar for longitudinal documentary. Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera, from 1929, is the oldest film in any of these weekly collections.

The collection

1. Hoop Dreams (1994) James Featured Five years in the lives of two Black teenagers from Chicago recruited into a white suburban basketball powerhouse; about sport, class, race and family, and still the bar for longitudinal documentary. Cast: William Gates, Arthur Agee, Gene Pingatore
2. The Act of Killing (2012) Oppenheimer Aging leaders of Indonesia's 1965 death squads, still celebrated at home, happily re-enact their murders in the styles of their favorite Hollywood genres, until one of them begins to break. Cast: Anwar Congo, Herman Koto, Syamsul Arifin
3. The Look of Silence (2014) Oppenheimer An optometrist whose brother was murdered in Indonesia's massacres fits the killers with glasses and quietly asks them to describe what they did; the companion to The Act of Killing. Cast: Adi Rukun, M.Y. Basrun, Amir Hasan
4. Sans Soleil (1983) Marker A fictional cameraman's letters read over footage from Japan, Guinea-Bissau and San Francisco become an essay on memory, images and time; the peak of the essay film. Cast: Florence Delay, Amílcar Cabral, Arielle Dombasle
5. Grey Gardens (1975) Maysles A reclusive mother and daughter, aunt and cousin of Jackie Onassis, bicker and perform for the camera in their decaying Long Island mansion; endlessly quotable and quietly tragic. Cast: Edith Bouvier Beale, Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, Brooks Hyers
6. Salesman (1968) Maysles Four door-to-door Bible salesmen work New England and Florida, and one of them slowly comes apart as the pitches stop landing; the Maysles brothers finding Death of a Salesman in real life. Cast: Paul Brennan, Charles McDevitt, James Baker
7. Titicut Follies (1967) Wiseman Inside a Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane: force-feedings, taunting guards, an annual talent show; suppressed by the state for decades.
8. High School (1968) Wiseman Wiseman's camera sits in a Philadelphia high school's classrooms and offices, no narration, no interviews, and lets the institution reveal how it manufactures obedience.
9. Shoah (1985) Lanzmann Nine and a half hours of testimony about the Holocaust, from survivors, bystanders and perpetrators, with no archive footage at all; a monument built entirely from memory. Cast: Claude Lanzmann, Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik
10. The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) Ophüls Four hours on one French town under the Occupation that demolished the myth that everyone resisted; interviews with collaborators, resisters and those in between.
11. The Thin Blue Line (1988) Morris A re-investigation of a Dallas cop killing, with stylized re-enactments and a Philip Glass score, that actually got an innocent man off death row. Cast: Randall Adams, David Harris, Gus Rose
12. F for Fake (1973) Welles Orson Welles spins the stories of an art forger and his fraudulent biographer into a playful essay about authorship and lies, and pulls one final trick on the audience. Cast: Orson Welles, Oja Kodar, Elmyr de Hory
13. Stop Making Sense (1984) Demme A Talking Heads concert that begins with David Byrne alone with a boombox and builds the band member by member, up to the giant suit; widely rated the best concert film ever staged. Cast: David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison
14. Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Vertov A day in the Soviet city assembled from every technique the camera had in 1929: split screens, superimpositions, freeze frames; a silent film that still feels fast. Cast: Mikhail Kaufman
15. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991) Bahr & Hickenlooper The making of Apocalypse Now, from typhoons and a lead actor's heart attack to Coppola gambling his sanity and fortune; the definitive film about filmmaking as madness. Cast: Francis Ford Coppola, Eleanor Coppola, John Milius
16. Crumb (1994) Zwigoff A portrait of underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, his obsessions, and the brilliant, damaged brothers who never escaped the family he did; uncomfortable and unforgettable. Cast: Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky, Charles Crumb
17. Faces Places (2017) Varda & JR Agnès Varda, in her late eighties, road-trips through rural France with the young photographer JR, pasting giant portraits of the people they meet onto barns and trains. Cast: Agnès Varda, JR, Patricia Mercier
18. Searching for Sugar Man (2012) Bendjelloul Two South Africans hunt for the fate of Rodriguez, a forgotten Detroit singer who, unknown to himself, had become bigger than Elvis in apartheid-era South Africa. Cast: Stephen Segerman, Rodriguez, Regan Rodriguez
19. Don't Look Back (1967) Pennebaker Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England, caught backstage being brilliant and cruel in equal measure, opening with the famous cue-card scene for Subterranean Homesick Blues. Cast: Bob Dylan, Albert Grossman, Bob Neuwirth
20. Capturing the Friedmans (2003) Jarecki A Long Island family films its own disintegration as the father and youngest son face child-abuse charges; the home videos leave you genuinely unsure what happened. Cast: Arnold Friedman, Elaine Friedman, David Friedman
21. Hearts and Minds (1974) Davis The Vietnam War argued through the words of the generals, politicians and soldiers who ran it, cut against what the cameras actually saw; it won the Oscar and caused a scandal. Cast: Clark Clifford, John Foster Dulles, Georges Bidault

Keep your place

I Like Movies tracks documentaries the same as everything else: watchlist the ones you have not seen, rate the ones you have, and the app keeps the collection sorted by what is left. A new themed collection lands in the Discover tab every Friday.

Questions people ask

What is the greatest documentary ever made?

Sight and Sound's documentary poll crowned Man with a Movie Camera; the popular vote tends toward Hoop Dreams; Shoah stands apart as a nine-hour monument of testimony. All three are in this collection.

Is Stop Making Sense really a documentary?

It is a concert film, which is non-fiction cinema at its most joyful, and it is widely rated the best ever staged: Demme shoots Talking Heads as theater, building the band on stage member by member.

The week before: Heat on film: 21 movies where the temperature breaks people. The week after: Japanese cinema: 21 films from the masters. See every weekly theme, or browse every guide, watch order and comparison.