Best Documentaries of All Time

This is the third and final installment in the series of lists that I have been compiling. Previously, best directors of all time and the greatest films of all time were ranked.

Shoah (1985) – Claude Lanzmann
Dead Souls (2018) – Wang Bing (Mubi)
The Look of Silence (2014) – Joshua Oppenheimer
Shoah Sisters (2018) – Claude Lanzmann
The Fog of War (2003) – Errol Morris
Nostalgia for the Light (2010) – Patricio Guzman
The Gatekeepers (2012) – Dror Moreh
The Act of Killing (2012) – Joshua Oppenheimer
Fire at Sea (2016) – Gianfranco Rosi
One More Time with Feeling (2016) – Andrew Dominik
Chasing Coral (2017) – Jeff Orlowski
Maidan (2014) – Sergei Loznitsa
13th (2016) – Ava DuVernay (Netflix)
Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) – Werner Herzog
Free Solo (2018) – Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Particle Fever (2013) – Mark Levinson
Man on Wire (2008) – James Marsh
Faces Places (2017) – Agnes Varda
Virunga (2014) – Orlando von Einsiedel
Encounters at the End of the World (2007) – Werner Herzog
Last Days in Vietnam (2014) – Rory Kennedy
Tokyo Trial (1983) – Masaki Kobayashi
The Overnighters (2014) – Jesse Moss
Capturing the Friedmans (2003) – Andrew Jarecki (HBO)
Bill Cunningham New York (2010) – Richard Press
Into the Abyss (2011) – Werner Herzog
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) – Werner Herzog
No End in Sight (2007) – Charles Ferguson
Moscow Elegy (1988) – Alexander Sokurov
Our Daily Bread (2005) – Nikolaus Geyhalter
How to Survive a Plague (2012) – David France
O.J. Made in America (2016) – Ezra Edelman
Hoop Dreams (1994) – Steve James
Bowling for Columbine (2002) – Michael Moore
The Return to Homs (2013) – Talai Derki
Citizenfour (2014) – Laura Poitras
Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) – Bill Morrison
The Thin Blue Line (1988) – Errol Morris
Dreamcatcher (2015) – Kim Longinotto
Cameraperson (2016) – Kirsten Johnson
The Arbor (2010) – Clio Barnard
Grey Gardens (1975) – Albert and David Maysles
Best Kept Secret (2013) – Samantha Buck
Waltz with Bashir (2008) – Ari Folman
Sherpa (2015) – Jennifer Peedom
Sans Soleil (1983) – Chris Marker
We Were Here (2011) – David Weissman
Triumph of the Will (1935) – Leni Riefenstahl
Uncertain (2017) – Ewan McNicol, Anna Sandilands
Stories We Tell (2012) – Sarah Polley
They Shall not Grow Old (2018) – Peter Jackson
Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2002) – Wang BIng
Crime + Punishment (2018) – Stephen Maing
Dream of Light (1992) – Victor Erice
Crumb (1994) – Terry Zwigoff
Life Itself (2014) – Steve James
Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017) – Frederick Wiseman
Minding the Gap (2018) – Bing Liu
Storm Children: Book One (2014) – Lav Diaz (Mubi)
My Perestroika (2010) – Robin Hessman
Last Train Home (2009) – Lixin Fan
Titicut Follies (1967) – Frederick Wiseman
Planet Earth I, II (2006, 2016) – BBC
The Blue Planet I, II (2001, 2011) – BBC
Strong Island (2017) – Yance Ford
Gideon’s Army (2013) – Dawn Porter
The Private Life of a Masterpiece (2001 – 2010) – BBC
Brother’s Keeper (1992) – Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky
Manakamana (2014) – Pacho Velez, Stephanie Spray
Tokyo Olympiad (1965) – Kon Ichikawa
Cinemania (2002) – Stephen Kijak
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) – Rob Epstein
American Factory (2019) – Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert (Netflix)
Wendy Whelan: Restless Creature (2016) – Linda Saffire, Adam Schlesinger
Let the Fire Burn (2013) – Jason Osder
Listen to me Marlon (2015) – Stevan Riley
Athlete A (2020) – Bonni Cohe, Jon Shenk
Inside Job (2010) – Charles Ferguson
Black and British: A Forgotten History – BBC Two
Marc Chagall (1984) – Kim Evans
Matisse-Picasso (2002) – Philippe Kohly
Jane Fonda in Five Acts (2018) – Susan Lacy
I Called Him Morgan (2016) – Kasper Collin
Boys State (2020) – Jesse Moss
Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde (1997) – Mel Stuart
For Sama (2019) – Edward Watts, Waad Al-Kateab
Kedi (2016) – Ceyda Torun
Pina (2011) – Wim Wenders
First Cousin Once Removed (2012) – Alan Berliner
March of the Penguins (2005) – Luc Jacquet
Voyages of Discovery (2006) – BBC Four
I’m Not Your Negro (2016) – Raoul Peck (Netflix)
Out of the Clear Blue Sky (2012) – Danielle Gardner
Won’t you be my Neighbor? (2018) – Morgan Neville
Amazing Grace (2018) – Sydney Pollack, Alan Elliott
My Voyage to Italy (1999) – Martin Scorsese
Wasteland (2010) – Lucy Walker
Olympia (1938) – Leni Riefenstahl
Grizzly Man (2005) – Werner Herzog
Bob Dylan: Don’t look back (1967) – D.A.Pennebaker
Leviathan (2012) – Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel
Secrets of the Dead (2000) – PBS
O Processo (2018) – Maria Ramos (Mubi)
The Missing Picture (2013) – Rithy Panh
Deliver us from Evil (2006) – Amy J.Berg
Silent Britain (2006) – David Thompson
Paris is Burning (1990) – Jennie Livingston
Murderball (2005) – Dana Adam Shapiro, Henry-Alex Rubin
Exit through the Gift Shop (2010) – Banksy
Honeyland (2019) – Tamera Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky (1988) – Michal Leszczylowski
The Third Reich in Color – Spiegel TV
The World’s Most Expensive Paintings – BBC One
Amy (2015) – Asif Kapadia
Frozen Planet (2011) – BBC
Children Underground (2001) – Edet Belzberg
The Innocence Files (2020) – Innocence Project (Netflix)
The Gleaners and I (2000) – Agnes Varda
Three Identical Strangers (2018) – Tim Wardle (Netflix)
Father, Son and Holy War (1995) – Anand Patwardhan
Our Planet (2019) – Netflix
Shirkers (2018) – Sandi Tan
The Interrupters (2011) – Steve James
Visions of Light (1992) – Todd McCarthy, Arnold Glassman, Stuart Samuels
Burden of Dreams (1982) – Les Blank
The Hour of the Furnaces (1968) – Octavio Getino, Fernando Solanas
The Battle of Chile (1975-79) – Patricio Guzman
Gates of Heaven (1978) – Errol Morris
Of Men and War (2014) – Laurent Bécue-Renard
The Woman with the five Elephants (2009) – Vadim Jendreyko
Bombay: Our City (1985) – Anand Patwardhan
Celluloid Man (2012) – Shivendra Singh Dungarpur
Connections (1978 – 97) – Mick Jackson
Cinema of Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995) – Kevin Brownlow, David Gill, Dan Carter, Michael Winterbottom
Modern Masters (2010) – BBC
The Secret Life of Birds (2011) – Iolo Williams
Calle 54 (2000) – Fernando Trueba
Mahatma Gandhi: 20th Century Prophet (1940) – A.K.Chettiar
How Art made the World (2005) – BBC One
The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo (2005) – Amy Stechler
Time (2020) – Garrett Bradley
City Hall (2020) – Frederick Wiseman
Dick Johnson is dead (2020) – Kirsten Johnson (Netflix)
David Attenborough’s A life on Our Planet (2020) – Jonathan Hughes, Alastair Fothergill, Keith Scholey (Netflix)
The Edge of Democracy (2019) – Petra Costa
63 Up (2019) – Michael Apted
Big Men (2013) – Rachel Boynton
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan’s story (2019) – Martin Scorsese
Welcome to Chechnya (2020) – David France
Hearts and Minds (1974) – Peter Davis

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