The Documentary

Aug 15, 2025 — Julia Loktev issues an urgent warning and Paul Thomas Anderson makes an action movie.

Mar 3, 2025 — Sean Baker’s eighth feature wins five top Academy Awards.

May 7, 2024 — This year’s edition features work by Michel Khleifi, Antoinetta Angelidi, Amit Dutta, Raúl Ruiz, and Tsai Ming-liang.

Sep 25, 2023 — This month brings collections on Straub-Huillet and Whit Stillman, an Anna May Wong biography, and a novel starring Marilyn Monroe.

Apr 21, 2022 — In 1948, leftist filmmaker Leo Hurwitz directed a documentary whose title summed up the uncertainty of its moment: for America’s antifascists, the end of the Second World War was a Strange Victory indeed. Using newsreels from the war’s front lines,...

Feb 18, 2022 — This week we’re celebrating pioneers of queer cinema and reading about Melville, Menelik Shabazz, Patrick Wang, and Francis Ford Coppola.

Jan 31, 2022 — Movies are about looking, and no one involved in the making of a film is more directly responsible for the frames we look at than a cinematographer, or director of photography. Together with the director, the cinematographer shapes the visual...

Sep 16, 2021 — For some, it’s “a relentless, propulsive chase movie,” while others find this first part to be “a turgid preamble with little payoff.”

Aug 30, 2021 — An electrifying voice in American independent cinema, the filmmaker, artist, and DJ Ephraim Asili believes that moving images can revolutionize our perception of the world. His body of work attests to this conviction. Since he began making films more than...

May 24, 2021 — We’re reading more about Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock and about Sofia Coppola and Stanley Kubrick.