Documentary

"Like real movies but with ugly people."

— Abet's take on this art form, Community, "Introduction to Film"

A film or series that revolves around non-news reporting of Non-Fiction subjects. While there are earlier examples, technical limitations prevented the genre from forming until the 20th century. The term itself was coined by reviewer John "The Moviegoer" Grierson in 1926.

Many documentaries are known to break several Omnipresent Tropes which exist in other genres due to nature of the documentaries.

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Works of fiction or comedy sometimes use a style that imitates or parodies the Documentary, they can be found at: Documentary Episode, Faux Documentary, Faux-To Guide, and Mockumentary.

The Mondo is an intesting type of Exploitation Film that can be a hybrid of the serious types (the original Mondo Cane) or be totally fake (Faces of Death).

Compare and contrast News Broadcast. For a list of documentary features that have won or been nominated for Oscars, see Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

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Documentary Tropes

• The Ken Burns Effect
• Manipulative Editing
• National Geographic Nudity
• Ridiculously Cute Critter
• Shoot the Money
• Stock Footage
• Talking Heads

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Examples:

Subcategories:

• Docu Soap
• Documentary of Lies
  • Twisting the Words
• Nature Documentary
  • Narrative-Driven Nature Documentary
• Rockumentary
• Speculative Documentary
• TV Documentary

• Abducted In Plain Sight
• Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
• The Act of Killing: Follows the perpetrators of a 1965-1966 mass political killing in Indonesia as they re-enact their deeds.
• The Aristocrats
• Baraka
• The Battle of Russia
• The Battle of San Pietro
• The Beaver Trilogy
• Becoming YouTube is a weird mix of a serious documentary and Mockumentary-style sketches.
• Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
• Beyond the Mat
• Big Fun in the Big Town
• Blackfish
• Blood Dolphins
• Bondi Rescue - a documentary series following the lifeguards at Bondi Beach, NSW, Australia.
• The Bones Brigade: An Autobiography: A biography Stacy Peralta(one of the best skaters in the 70s)'s creation of the Powell Peralta company after the sudden disband of the Zephyr Skateboard team, and the start of the Bones Brigade, their rise to fame, their revolutionary contributions to the skateboarding community and the emotional roller coaster of each individual skaters.

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• Bowling for Columbine
• Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans Of My Little Pony
• Brooklyn Bridge
• Capitalism: A Love Story
• Capturing the Friedmans
• Card Subject to Change: Life on the Professional Wrestling independent scene, for both Ring Oldies, current stars and young hopefuls.
• Cartel Land
• Carts of Darkness: The lives of homeless men who race shopping carts for thrills and collect cans for money.
• Cave of Forgotten Dreams
• The Celluloid Closet
• Chang
• Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker
• Chaos on the Bridge
• China Blue
• Citizenfour: About Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal.
• Cocaine Cowboys: A documentary about the rise of the illegal cocaine trade in Miami during the 1970s and 1980s. Also spawned a sequel, Cocaine Cowboys 2, about a small-time coke dealer who ends up working for notorious drug lord Griselda Blanco.
• The Cove: About dolphin hunting/fishing in Japan and won an Oscar.
• Czechoslovakia 1968
• The Dark Side of Chocolate: About the widespread but strangely unknown-to-the-public use of child slaves in the cocoa industry.
• Dealt
• Dear Zachary
• De Nieuwe Orde
• De Nuremberg à Nuremberg: A French documentary about Nazi Germany.
• Dinosaur! (1985)
• Dirty Money
• Disneyland Dream, one family's (unusually sophisticated) home movie of their visit to Disneyland in 1956.
• Dreams of a Life
• The Eagle Huntress
• Earthlings: About the horrific treatment of animals in the food industry, puppy mills, etc...
• The Endless Summer
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
• Everest
• Faces Places
• Fahrenheit 9/11
• Fat Head: A rebuttal to Supersize Me.
• Felicia: Documentary short about a teenaged girl in 1965 Watts
• Fighting in the Age of Loneliness: A Join Bois documentary about the history of MMA and its popularity
• First Strike: About the possibility of a nuclear surprise attack on the United States.
• The Fog of War: About former Secretary of Defence Robert Macnamara.
• Food Inc.
• For All Mankind
• Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives
• The Forgotten Frontier — nurses tending to the poor in 1931 Appalachia
• For the Bible Tells Me So
• Forensic Files
• Forks Over Knives
• Four Days in November
• 4 Little Girls
• Freedom on My Mind
• Fyre
• Fyre Fraud
• Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers
• Gates of Heaven
• General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait
• Genocide
• The Girl Who Became Three Boys
• The Gleaners and I
• Grass
• The Great War: A series chronicling the events of World War One as they happened weekly one hundred years ago.
• Grey Gardens
• Grizzly Man
• Going Clear: About the Church of Happyology.
• Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Hale County This Morning This Evening
• Harlan County U.S.A.
• Hearts and Minds
• Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse: About the Troubled Production of Apocalypse Now.
• Hellbound: A documentary about different perceptions of hell.
• High School: A Day in the Life at an American high school in 1968.
• A History of Scotland: Explores the history of Scotland.
• Hollywood on Trial
• Home (2006): This documentary looks at New York City through the eyes of a number of famous people.
• Hoop Dreams
• The House Is Black
• I Am Big Bird
• I Am Not Your Negro
• Icarus
• If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
• I Shouldn't Be Alive
• I'll Find a Way
• An Inconvenient Truth
• Indie Game: The Movie
• In Search of...: A documentary series centered around popular mysteries, with Leonard Nimoy as the narrator.
• In the Year of the Pig: A 1968 documentary about The Vietnam War and the events leading up to it.
• The Invisible War
• Jesus Camp
• The Jewish Americans
• The Jinx: About billionaire murder suspect Robert Durst.
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi
• Jodorowsky's Dune
• Jonestown
• Kedi
• The Kids Guide to the Internet
• The Killing of America
• The King of Kong
• Kiss Loves You
• Kon-Tiki
• Koyaanisqatsi
• Last Days in Vietnam — the panicked American flight from Saigon as the North Vietnamese close in on the South Vietnam capital at the end of The Vietnam War.
• Let the Fire Burn
• Let There Be Light
• The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
• The Long Way Home
• The Look of Silence: A companion piece to The Act of Killing, following a massacre victim's brother as he confronts the aging killers.
• Loose Change
• Lost in La Mancha
• Making a Murderer
• Manson, one of the first documentaries about Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders.
• Man with a Movie Camera
• Marwencol
• Mayday, also called Air Crash Investigation
• The Memphis Belle
• Miracles For Sale: A Derren Brown special about the US faith healing industry.
• Moscow Strikes Back
• My Depression
• Nanook of the North (1922), the Trope Maker, Robert Flaherty's film about life among the Inuk people of upper Hudson Bay.
• The Negro Soldier
• Next Goal Wins is the story of the worst team in international soccer and their attempts to win one game.
• Night and Fog
• O.J.: Made in America
• Olympia — Leni Riefenstahl's documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which despite all the Nazi propaganda proved highly influential in how sports are dramatized onscreen.
• On Any Sunday
• One Day in September
• Paris Is Burning is about ball culture in New York City during the 1980s.
• The Pixar Story: about the history of Pixar.
• The Plow That Broke the Plains
• Powers of Ten
• Portrait of Jason
• Primary: Groundbreaking cinema verite film about the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary contest between Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy.
• Project Nim: About an experiment on a chimpanzee to see if they could learn how to communicate like a human if raised like a human child.
• RBG: Life and career of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
• Reclaiming the Blade: On medieval European swordmanship.
• The Red Pill
• Reel Bad Arabs: A documentary about the stereotyping of Arabs and other Middle Eastern peoples in mainstream media, particularly films, and all the Unfortunate Implications coming from it.
• Religulous
• Report from the Aleutians
• Restrepo
• Revolution (1968): This documentary explores hippiedom in San Francisco in 1967.
• Revolution (2012): This documentary explores the importance of saving the environment.
• Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World
• Roger & Me
• Ryan: Documentary short about animator Ryan Larkin unusual for itself being animated
• Salesman
• Sans Soleil
• Santoalla
• Savage Kingdom
• Searching for Sugar Man
• Seconds from Disaster, about major disasters (natural or man-made) and the series of events leading up to them.
• Serengeti
• Serial: A podcast exploring the real life murder conviction of Adnan Syed and his potential innocence.
• Sherman's March
• Shoah
• Showdown in Seattle
• Sicko
• Siege: A documentary short about the siege of Warsaw in 1939.
• The Smash Brothers: A nine-episode Web Original following seven of the most influential Super Smash Bros. Melee players of all time, as well as the community surrounding them.
• The Sorrow and the Pity
• Soviet Storm: World War II in the East
• Special When Lit: A look at the history, culture, and creators of Pinball.
• Spielberg
• The Square (2013)
• The Statue of Liberty
• The Story of the Weeping Camel
• Street Fight
• Strong Island
• Summoning Salt's videos, documenting the history of speedrunning.
• Super Size Me: One man's attempt to eat McDonald's, and only McDonalds, for 30 days in a row.
• The Sweatbox: The look into the history and making of the abandoned Disney film Kingdom of the Sun and its painful transformation into the film The Emperor's New Groove.
• Swindled: A podcast series covering white collar crimes.
• Thank You for Playing: A documentary about the creation of the critically acclaimed indie game That Dragon, Cancer
• They Shall Not Grow Old: a documentary by Peter Jackson about British soldiers' experiences in World War One, primarily using restored wartime footage and archived interviews from the soldiers themselves
• This Film Is Not Yet Rated: A look at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the frequent Double Standards applied to film ratings.
• The Thin Blue Line
• Three Identical Strangers
• Tickled: David Ferrier's documentary on "competitive tickling," which takes a dark turn.
• The Ties That Bind 1985: A documentary on the life of the filmmaker's mother.
• A Time for Burning
• The Times of Harvey Milk
• Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball: A documentary on the creation of the "Pinball 2000" game platform.
• Tokyo Olympiad
• Tower (2016): A documentary on the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting. Interestingly, this film recreates the shooting with actors portraying the people who there on the day of the shooting, recreating the scenes as recalled by some of the real survivors, then animated with rotoscoping to give the film a unique look.
• TPBAFK: A documentary about The Pirate Bay and the trial of its creators.
• Tree Man 2015
• Triumph of the Will
• Trouble the Water
• 20 Feet from Stardom
• Twist of Faith
• Undefeated
• Urasawa Naoki No Manben
• Waking Sleeping Beauty
• The Weather Underground
• When We Were Kings
• Who Killed the Electric Car?: It examines the reasons for the dismantlement of the electric car program of the early 2000s.
• Why We Fight (2005)
• Winnebago Man: Explores the phenomenon of viral videos, in particular that of one man's profanity-laden out-takes.
• Winter on Fire
• Word Wars: A documentary about competitive Scrabble playing.
• World War II: A series documenting the events of World War II week by week in real time.
• Young@Heart: The inspirational true story of a choir of senior citizens who perform modern rock music.
• Zoo

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