5 of the Best History Documentaries Ever
A good documentary can make for one of the more edifying experiences available to moviegoers. A great documentary makes for one of the more edifying experiences available, period — it shows us something we didn’t already know, or gives us a better understanding of something we thought we knew. But what makes a documentary qualify as one of the best of all time? “Best” is admittedly a subjective word, but for our purposes here, we’ll define it not just as a film that illuminates a particularly substantial topic to enduring effect, but a film that has consensus regard. The following documentaries are works that show up on a multitude of best-of lists, from industry polls to culture magazines, and more.
Shoah (1985)
When Shoah was released in 1985, Roger Ebert called it “one of the noblest films ever made,” and its regard hasn’t slipped since. Director Claude Lanzmann spent 12 years interviewing survivors of concentration camps at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Belzec, as well as former German SS officers and the Polish townspeople who lived in the surrounding areas. Lanzmann famously eschewed archival footage, comprising the entirety of the nine-hour film with interviews intercut with location footage. It’s a powerful, ponderous approach that grounds Shoah in the humanity of the aftermath of the Holocaust, versus dusty newsreels, which risk feeling detached. It is not an easy topic to take in, but as Ebert concluded, “Claude Lanzmann celebrates the priceless gift that sets man apart from animals and makes us human, and gives us hope: the ability for one generation to tell the next what it has learned.”
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Apollo 11 (2019)
Todd Douglas Miller’s documentary about the moon landing mission takes the complete opposite approach from Shoah. Constructed from hundreds of reels of previously unseen footage and 11,000 hours of audio that NASA gave Miller access to, Apollo 11 is, in the director’s own words, “an all-archival experience.” The subject of space is, by nature, visually mysterious, and Apollo 11 shows the viewer exactly what we want to see, via footage of space exploration as it happened. Apollo 11 is a visual masterpiece, frequently stunning in its beauty, and those never-before-seen images make for a more revealing picture than any previous documentary about the moon landing.
13th (2016)
Named after the constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery, Ava DuVernay’s film contextualizes the evolution of race relations in the U.S. along with the history of the American criminal justice system. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary; it won a BAFTA Award, a Peabody Award, an NAACP Image Award, and many other film critic awards. 13th weaves together interviews with scholars, activists, journalists, and politicians that decisively illuminate inequity in criminal justice. The result is a potent document that invites the viewer to, as DuVernay puts it herself, “get to a place where we just do better as Americans.”
I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary uses a rich amount of archival material to piece together a vision of James Baldwin’s unfinished book on race in America, Remember This House. Samuel L. Jackson narrates the 30 pages of notes on the unfinished manuscript along with letters written by Baldwin, giving an intimate look at Baldwin’s friendships with Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X — as well as the lives and deaths of those leaders. As Baldwin wrote, “I want these three lives to bang against and reveal each other as in truth they did,” and the power of that intention, along with found footage and present-day contextualization from Peck, is what makes this documentary exceptional.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2018)
Morgan Neville delves into the life of children’s television icon Fred Rogers, and the result is 93 minutes imbued with the gentle and moving warmth that Rogers brought to his eponymous show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Through archival footage of the show, interview clips from various points in Rogers’ career and from those closest to him, and even inventive animated interludes, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? paints a full picture of Rogers’ life; and in it, his integrity, tolerance, and humanism. Here is an unassuming man whose calmly resolute testimony in front of a Senate subcommittee was instrumental in saving public television. His reassuring advice to children to look for the helpers during upsetting times is still quoted to this day. It would be easy for a film like Won’t You Be My Neighbor? to end up cloying or mawkish — that it never does is what lands it on so many best-of lists. As critic A.O. Scott put it in his New York Times review, it’s an intellectually rigorous portrayal of an unwavering commitment to the value of kindness.
