Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film has compiled its list of the top 100 documentary films of all time. To create this list, members were asked to come up with their Top 10 – 20 documentaries of all time. For our purposes, documentaries included concert films, and films made for televsion. After receiving all of the lists, numerical values were assigned to each of the rankings, and each movie was given a point total. The number of lists a movie appears on is also a factor. Much has been said about the rise of documentaries in the last 5 years or so, and our resulting list certainly speaks to that. In the Top100, nearly half (49) were made post 2000, with 23 made during the 90’s, 12 during the 80’s, 9 during the 70’s, 4 during the 60’s, and one each during the 50’s and the 20’s. It is also interesting to note that the top 3 films could be considered “older documentaries.” Not surprisingly, Errol Morrs appears most frequently with four films in the Top 100, his highest being THE FOG OF WAR in at #19. Four filmmaker/filmmaker teams appeard three times: Jonathan Demme, Frederick Wiseman, Michael Moore, and Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky. Women filmmakers are responsible, or partly responsible for 21 of the Top 100 films. So if you’re been enjoying recent documentary fare such as AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, SUPER SIZE ME or FAHRENHEIT 9/11, take this list with you to the video store (or toss some of these titles on your Netflix queue) and try out some of these documentaries.
We hope you enjoy our list of the 100 Best Documentaries.
| 01 | Grey Gardens | Ellen Hovde; Albert Maysles; David Maysles; Muffie Meyer | 1975 |
| 02 | The Man with a Movie Camera | Dziga Vertov | 1929 |
| 03 | Stop Making Sense | Jonathan Demme | 1984 |
| 04 | Tarnation | Joanthan Caouette | 2003 |
| 05 | The Up Series | Michael Apted | Various |
| 06 | The Gleaners & I | Agnès Varda | 2000 |
| 07 | Titicut Follies | Frederick Wiseman | 1967 |
| 08 | Spellbound | Jeffrey Blitz | 2002 |
| 09 | Double Dare | Amanda Micheli | 2004 |
| 10 | Grizzly Man | Werner Herzog | 2005 |
| 11 | Crumb | Terry Zwigoff | 1994 |
| 12 | Born into Brothels | Zana Briski; Ross Kauffman | 2004 |
| 13 | DiG! | Ondi Timoner | 2004 |
| 14 | This Film Is Not Yet Rated | Kirby Dick | 2006 |
| 15 | In the Realms of the Unreal | Jessica Yu | 2004 |
| 16 | Bowling for Columbine | Michael Moore | 2002 |
| 17 | Hoop Dreams | Steve James | 1994 |
| 18 | Capturing the Friedmans | Andrew Jarecki | 2003 |
| 19 | The Fog of War | Errol Morris | 2003 |
| 20 | Murderball | Henry Alex Rubin; Dana Adam Shapiro | 2005 |
| 21 | O.T.: Our Town | Scott Hamilton Kennedy | 2002 |
| 22 | The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl | Ray Müller | 1993 |
| 23 | Winged Migration | Jacques Perrin; Jacques Cluzaud; Michel Debats | 2001 |
| 24 | Times of Harvey Milk | Rob Epstein | 1984 |
| 25 | Don’t Look Back | D.A. Pennebaker | 1967 |
| 26 | Harlan County, U.S.A. | Barbara Kopple | 1976 |
| 27 | Buena Vista Social Club | Wim Wenders | 1999 |
| 28 | Gigantic: a Tale of Two Johns | A.J. Schnack | 2002 |
| 29 | Night and Fog | Alain Renais | 1955 |
| 30 | Fahrenheit 9/11 | Michael Moore | 2004 |
| 31 | My Architect: a Son’s Story | Nathaniel Kahn | 2003 |
| 32 | Fast, Cheap and Out of Control | Errol Morris | 1997 |
| 33 | Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills | Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky | 1996 |
| 34 | Shut Up & Sing | Barbara Kopple | 2006 |
| 35 | Love & Diane | Jennifer Dworkin | 2002 |
| 36 | The Agronomist | Jonathan Demme | 2003 |
| 37 | Gimme Shelter | Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin | 1970 |
| 38 | Brother’s Keeper | Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky | 1992 |
| 39 | How to Draw a Bunny | John W. Walter | 2002 |
| 40 | 10th District Court | Raymond Depardon | 2004 |
| 41 | Let’s Get Lost | Bruce Weber | 1988 |
| 42 | Baseball | Ken Burns | 1994 |
| 43 | Thin Blue Line | Errol Morris | 1988 |
| 44 | Swimming to Cambodia | Jonathan Demme | 1987 |
| 45 | High School | Frederick Wiseman | 1968 |
| 46 | Liza with a “Z” | Bob Fosse | 1972 |
| 47 | Rivers and Tides | Thomas Riedelsheimer | 2001 |
| 48 | Shoah | Claude Lanzmann | 1985 |
| 49 | Mad Hot Ballroom | Marilyn Agreto | 2005 |
| 50 | The Devil & Daniel Johnston | Jeff Feuerzeig | 2005 |
| 51 | Darwin’s Nightmare | Hubert Sauper | 2004 |
| 52 | My Father, the Genius | Lucia Small | 2002 |
| 53 | Metallica, Some Kind of Monster | Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky | 2004 |
| 54 | One Day in September | Kevin Macdonald | 1999 |
| 55 | The Last Waltz | Martin Scorsese | 1978 |
| 56 | So Much So Fast | Steven Ascher, Jeanne Jordan | 2006 |
| 57 | Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room | Alex Gibney | 2005 |
| 58 | Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism | Robert Greenwald | 2004 |
| 59 | American Movie | Chris Smith | 1999 |
| 60 | Mr. Death: the Rise and Fall of Fred J. Leuchter, Jr. | Errol Morris | 1999 |
| 61 | Original Cast Album: Company | D.A. Pennebaker | 1970 |
| 62 | Sherman’s March | Ross McElwee | 1986 |
| 63 | Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony | Lee Hirsch | 2002 |
| 64 | Ballet Russes | Daniel Geller, Dayna Goldfine | 2005 |
| 65 | Pour la suite du monde | Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, Pierre Perrault | 1963 |
| 66 | The Corporation | Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott | 2003 |
| 67 | Koyaanisqatsi | Godfrey Reggio | 1982 |
| 68 | The Life & Times of Hank Greenberg | Aviva Kempner | 1998 |
| 69 | Bob Dylan: No Direction Home | Martin Scorsese | 2005 |
| 70 | The Case of the Grinning Cat | Chris Marker | 2004 |
| 71 | New York Doll | Greg Whiteley | 2005 |
| 72 | Without Memory | Hirokazu Koreeda | 1996 |
| 73 | Cosmos | Adrian Malone | 1980 |
| 74 | Hearts and Minds | Peter Davis | 1974 |
| 75 | F for Fake | Orson Welles | 1974 |
| 76 | La Ville Louvre | Nicolas Philibert | 1990 |
| 77 | Rod Serling: Writer | Colin Strayer | 1996 |
| 78 | Mondovino | Jonathan Nossiter | 2004 |
| 79 | When We Were Kings | Leon Gast | 1996 |
| 80 | Who Killed the Electric Car? | Chris Paine | 2006 |
| 81 | Free Fall | Péter Forgács | 1997 |
| 82 | War Reporters | Patrick Chauvel | 2004 |
| 83 | Vietnam: a Television History | Judith Vecchione | 1983 |
| 84 | Blood in the Face | Anne Bohlen, Kevin Rafferty, James Ridgeway | 1991 |
| 85 | Word is Out | Rob Epstein | 1978 |
| 86 | Stone Reader | Mark Moskowitz | 2002 |
| 87 | Roger & Me | Michael Moore | 1989 |
| 88 | Bukowski: Born Into This | John Dullaghan | 2003 |
| 89 | Kestrel’s Eye | Mikael Kristersson | 1998 |
| 90 | Cane Toads | Mark Lewis | 1988 |
| 91 | Berkeley in the Sixties | Mark Kitchell | 1990 |
| 92 | Domestic Violence | Frederick Wiseman | 2001 |
| 93 | Lessons of Darkness | Werner Herzog | 1992 |
| 94 | Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision | Freida Lee Mock | 1994 |
| 95 | Jesus Camp | Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady | 2006 |
| 96 | Standing in the Shadows of Motown | Paul Justman | 2002 |
| 97 | An Inconvenient Truth | Davis Guggenheim | 2006 |
| 98 | Hearts of Darkness: a Filmmaker’s Apocalypse | Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper, Eleanor Coppola | 1991 |
| 99 | Why We Fight | Andrew Jarecki | 2005 |
| 100 | Who Gets to Call It Art? | Peter Rosen | 2006 |