Pixel Pushers/Courtesy Everett Collection/OJ: ESPN/PMC
From 'Grey Gardens' to 'The Gleaners and I,' 'Gimme Shelter' to 'Grizzly Man' and beyond, THR critics pick their favorite non-fiction films of all time.
July 30, 2026
One of the paradoxes when it comes to documentaries — especially the “best” of all docs, as we’ve chosen here — is that the more personal, obsessive and, yes, subjective they are, the better they tend to be.
In a genre that many viewers expect to offer us dispassionate, seemingly impartial portraits of our past and present, the films that stand out frequently do the opposite. They present bold, singular, deeply idiosyncratic visions, oftentimes from directors (Agnès Varda, Werner Herzog, Jonathan Demme and Sarah Polley, to name a few included here) who’ve oscillated between fiction and nonfiction work. Even the late, great Frederick Wiseman — two of whose 46 films are on our list — claimed he made “reality fictions” and not documentaries, although they’ve always been classified as the latter.
