Documentary cinema, at its best, does what no other form can: it places the real world under a patient, honest gaze and finds something stranger or more moving than fiction. From Alain Resnais's shattering Night and Fog to the quiet intimacy of Pictures of the Old World, the range here is enormous. Dig into Macca's reviews below.
Rating: 3.0★
The Federated States of Micronesia sits roughly halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines, a scattering of islands in the western Pacific that most people would struggle to place on a map. Since 1986, Micronesia has been tied to the United States through the Compact of Free Association, an arrangement that
Rating: 4.0★
To mark the centenary of cinema, Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf placed a simple newspaper advertisement in Tehran in 1994, calling for anyone who wanted to appear in his next film to show up at a given time and place. He expected perhaps a few dozen people. Roughly three thousand turned
2010s
There are films that tell stories, and there are films that simply bear witness. Amazing Grace belongs firmly in the second category, and the story of how it came to exist at all is almost as remarkable as what ended up on screen. In January 1972, Aretha Franklin returned to
1980s
Abbas Kiarostami is one of those filmmakers whose reputation tends to precede him in a slightly intimidating way. Celebrated across European festival circuits and academic film culture from the late 1980s onward, the Iranian director built a body of work that consistently turned modest, everyday subjects into something that critics
2010s
Argentina's recent history carries a weight that its cinema has never quite been able to set down. The period of military dictatorship running from 1976 to 1983, known as the Dirty War, left a country scarred by disappearances, state terror, and a culture of enforced silence that outlasted
2010s
Before the smartphone era made documentation effortless and ubiquitous, entire subcultures lived, thrived, and faded away largely unrecorded. The Shakedown parties that ran in Los Angeles from the late 1990s into the 2000s were exactly that kind of scene: a series of club nights founded by and for Black lesbian
Genre Documentary
Letter from Siberia (1957)
Genre Documentary
Here and Elsewhere (1976)
Genre Music
Style Wars (1983)
Genre War
Lessons of Darkness (1992)
Genre Documentary
★★½ — Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
Genre Documentary
Shinjuku Boys (1995)
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