For years, far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones alleged that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax – which ended in 2022 with Jones being successfully sued by the victims’ families for nearly $1.5 billion.
Now this extraordinary story has been turned into a new documentary, The Truth vs. Alex Jones, which is landing on Sky Atlantic tomorrow. It’s a shocking tale that exemplifies so many of the issues consuming America: media echo chambers, alternative truths and gun violence.
It also comes as a reminder of just how powerful documentaries can be. So, on the eve of the new release, we pick 11 of our favourite documentaries, celebrating the genre – a near impossible task, even when restricting the list to films released over the last 25 years.
We have simply pieced our favourites: these are films that we found astonishingly moving and illuminating and made us think differently about the world.
Grizzly Man (2005)
The bonkers and endearing Long Island-born Timothy Treadwell, aka the Grizzly Man, was a bear enthusiast and conservationist who spent 13 summers in Alaska’s Katmai National Park before ultimately being killed by one of the animals. Legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog cuts together over 100 hours of Treadwell’s own footage, shot in the last five years of his life, to create a remarkable portrait of this extraordinary man.
Waltz With Bashir (2008)
Ari Folman’s Oscar-nominated documentary film, described as “an acid-trip down memory lane”, depicts the director’s own memories of being a soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War – and specifically remembering the Sabra and Shatila massacre. With a score from celebrated composer Max Richter, it’s a provocative and devastating meditation on guilt, violence and remembering.
Man on Wire (2008)
Man on Wire is a real stress watch: for 94 minutes audiences follow Philippe Petit’s mad ambitions to walk on a tightrope between the two World Trade Centre buildings. A reminder, they were 415m and 417m respectively – 110 floors high. “There is no why,” says the French high wire artist, who had walked between the towers of the Notre-Dame three years earlier in 1971. A true nail-biting, cinematic documentary that proved the form is often so much more effective than dramatised versions, such as its own Hollywood dramatisation The Walk.
Nostalgia for the Light (2010)
Patricio Guzmán, best-known for his film trilogy The Battle of Chile (1975–1979), weaves together two great mysteries in this beautiful, moving documentary. The first: the enigma of our universe’s origins – the clear skies above Chile’s Atacama Desert, the driest non polar desert is the world, are a magnet for astronomers looking to find answers. The second, the mystery of Chile’s lost political prisoners, detained in concentration camps under General Pinochet’s dictatorship, disappearing forever. The women in these prisoners’ lives – sisters, daughters, wives – still search for their loved ones, scouring the desert’s Mars-like red surface, as the scientists look to the heavens.
Pina (2011)
Wim Wenders, celebrated director of Paris, Texas (1984), Buena Vista Social Club (2002) and The Salt of the Earth (2014), turns his camera to German choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch whose landmark neo-expressionist works continue to inspire artists to this day. The film is structured around four of Bausch’s best-known pieces, and, just like the works themselves, is humorous, thought-provoking and an aesthetic treat.
Leviathan (2012)
A wild and unique film, British anthropologist Lucien Castaing-Taylor and French Véréna Paravel, both of whom worked at the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, explore North America’s fishing industry by giving your senses a pummeling. Described as a “wave-lashed vision”, “a shocking record of a savage industry” and “staggering cinema”, this is a truly eye-opening, overpowering, unforgettable film.
Free Solo (2018)
Another one to make the palms clammy. Free Solo, which won the Best Documentary Oscar in 2018, follows American climber Alex Honnold as he attempts to scale the 3,000ft El Capitan granite rock face in Yosemite National Park – described as “the centre of the rock climbing universe” – without any ropes. The near-impossible nature of the task transforms the documentary, made by American filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and her husband Jimmy Chin, into a kind of thriller. Honnold’s ambition and bravery is masterfully captured by the directors.
For Sama (2019)
A life-changing film, For Sama follows 18-year-old economics student Waad Al-Kateab in the five years after the 2011 Syrian uprising. Al-Kateab picks up a camera and does not put it down again – not when bombs are being dropped on buildings nearby, not when her new born baby is crying, nor when screaming mothers cry over their dead children in her doctor husband’s hospital.
It’s an understatement to say that For Sama is a difficult watch: there are harrowing sequences of bodies of men, women and children frequently shown on screen. But the violence is interspersed with scenes of love, hope and unfathomable bravery, which leaves the viewer overwhelmed and inspired.
Fire At Sea (2016)
Gianfranco Rosi’s Oscar-nominated, Golden Bear-winning documentary is set on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, one of the first European spots that receives refugees and migrants who survive the dangerous Mediterranean crossing. This reality is radically changing the face of this small fishing village. Rosi’s poignant film contrasts the lives of two young boys on the island as they go about their lives, with those of the new arrivals.
Time (2020)
One of just six documentaries to have won the “big four” – nods from America’s most prestigious film critics – Time is about one woman’s tireless fight for the release of her husband from prison. Rob has served a third of his 60-year sentence for his participation in an armed robbery; while he has been away Sibil Richardson has raised six children, built a career for herself, and never, ever, given up on her husband. Although Garrett Bradley’s film, made of hundreds of hours of Sibil’s home videos, works as an excoriating takedown of America’s prison system, Sibil’s grace and devotion means the Oscar-nominated film is above all else about the power of love.
20 Days in Mariupol (2023)
As with For Sama, 20 Days in Mariupol is an unvarnished look at life in a war zone. Filmed by Pulitzer Prize-winning Ukrainian filmmaker and journalist Mstyslav Chernov, the film follows three Associated Press journalists in the besieged city of Mariupol over three weeks at the very start of the war. The unflinching Oscar-winning documentary, described as “intensely upsetting” and “relentless” was deemed so important it was screened at the start of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly.
