Documentary Film

Explore a list of the 50 best documentary films of all time selected by film critics, including 'The Thin Blue Line,' 'The Gleaners and I,' and more.

'Actuality films' were the documentary's predecessors, offering late-19th-century audiences tiny slices of real life.

The 1922 film 'Nanook of the North' was the first documentary to become a box office hit, but core elements were later revealed to be fabrications.

Watch 'Nanook of the North,' the first hit documentary.

A film critic coined the term 'documentary' in 1926 and later became one of the genre's trailblazers.

One documentary film series followed 14 schoolchildren for their entire lives, every 7 years.

Documentary filmmaking was dramatically changed in the mid-20th century by portable cameras and sound, which made it easier for directors to capture the world around them.

Barbara Kopple documented a union strike with the film 'Harlan County, USA' and was nearly killed for it.

Claude Lanzmann's 9-and-a-half-hour documentary, 'Shoah,' is comprised entirely of interviews because the director believed it was the only accurate way to document the Holocaust.

Ken Burns allowed Apple to use his name for an iMovie effect, but only after Steve Jobs agreed to donate hardware to nonprofits.