This week on Episode 709 of the InSession Film Podcast, inspired by the release of You Can See Everything this weekend, we thought it would be fun to dive into our Top 5 documentaries of the 21st century! With all of the hype around You Can See Everything, one has to wonder if it will eventually land in this conversation. It goes without saying, but there have been some profoundly stirring documentaries over the last 25 years. Some of them simply being the best films of their given years. When done right, nothing hits quite like a stirring documentary, which made this a really fun and rewarding exercise. That said, here are our lists:
(Note: Please keep in mind that we each had different criteria for our selections)
JD
1) The Act of Killing / The Look of Silence
2) Dick Johnson is Dead
3) Stories We Tell
4) No Other Land
5) Man on Wire
Megan
1) No Other Land
2) Cameraperson
3) The Painter and the Thief
4) Kedi
5) Bring Your Own Brigade
Honorable Mentions (Combined)
Grizzly Man, Faces Places, This is Not a Film, Tower, Four Daughters, Flee, OJ Made in America, Waltz with Bashir, The Truffle Hunters, Senna, I Am Not Your Negro, All That Breathes, Citizenfour, Fire of Love, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Time, 20 Feet From Stardom, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Some Kind of Heaven, Best of Enemies, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Minding the Gap, Virunga, Jane, Amy, The Central Park Five, The King of Kong, The Imposter, 13th, Bowling for Combine, Murder on a Sunday Morning, Gunda, Stay, Welcome to Leith, After Tiller, Trapped, Sugarcane, Solo, Every Little Thing, The Perfect Neighbor, In the Same Breath, Blackfish, Sirens
Hopefully you guys enjoyed our lists. If you agree or disagree with us, let us know in the comment section below. There are obviously more documentaries of the 21st century that we didn’t have time to mention (or they’re blindspots for us), so if your list looks very different than ours, we totally get it. That being said, what would be your Top 5? Leave a comment in the comment section or email us at [email protected].
For more lists done by the InSession Film crew and other guests, be sure see our Movie Lists page.
