The best Documentaries of all time ranked

Everyone is a documentarian these days, in the sense that we all have cameras in our pockets and the means to easily disseminate footage to the public. And it’s also true that, with the demand for streaming content, documentary filmmaking has never been bigger or more in-demand. But the best documentaries don’t just show you real life – they explain it. They put reality into context, and sometimes even reshape it. They teach us about the world we live in and the people that surround us. At their very best, they make us rethink our ideas of ourselves.

Yes, there are a lot of documentaries out there these days. But making a truly great documentary film requires much more skill and thought than simply stringing together a bunch of talking heads and archival clips. These 23 docs represent the pinnacle of the form, and they range from fly-on-the-wall depictions of the celebrity machine at work to accounts of history’s gravest tragedies to David Byrne dancing in an oversized suit.

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