Recommended Documentaries

Recommended Docs

  • Public

This is a topic where you can say which documentary has really impressed you, and why people should see it. Can be a recent one or an all-time favourite. Can't be your own though, sorry...

Praise the work of others, not your own. If you want to beat the drum for your own documentary, please don't do it here. Professionals have their own Shameless Self-Promotion topic.

We also have a Documentary Films topic for our Professionals where the debate is private and possibly more controversial. This topic here is for recommendations to the documentary-interested public.

Christopher Wong

Re: James Longley's post on Sun 10 Apr 2011: View thread

i just watched INSIDE JOB, and i must say... yawwwwwnnnnn! i was really looking forward to it, but it was just so uncinematic and uninspiring. i suppose if one had their head in the sand for the past few years – or stuck in Pakistan/Iran – and had no knowledge of the financial crisis already, then it could have been educational. but having listened to This American Life's radio series on the crisis, and having read a whole bunch of newspaper articles on the same, it just did not add anything new.

i really think it is regrettable that an unimaginative doc like INSIDE JOB gets nominated for an oscar, but films like LAST TRAIN HOME and THE OATH get left behind.

James Longley

Heh. You know, even when in Pakistan I still listen to TAL and Planet Money podcasts every week. I also went through several books on the subject, including the highly recommended The Big Short as well as The Black Swan and 13 Bankers and also The Quants just for fun. But still, even though I thought Inside Job was cinematically standard and even dullish, it was still a film I'm happy got made – and I know people who only really got their heads around the financial crisis after watching it. Not everybody is a public radio policy wonk. That said, I also wish that The Oath had been nominated.

John Burgan

Docalliance has a wide range of docs online (legally, unlike many portals), some to download at small cost or even free, others streamed:

From April 18 to May 2, you can watch five unique, multiply awarded documentary films by Polish director Marcel ŁoziÅ„ski for free. Enjoy the best of the past twenty years of a filmmaker who is “trying to influence the reality around him while following the outcome with openness”.

Loading...