The documentary usually will get a foul rap. Possibly you watched a number of boring (or prescriptive) ones in class, during which speaking heads drone on about what you should assume or really feel. Nonetheless, regardless of its popularity as constrained retelling—emphasis on the “telling”—the medium additionally affords storytellers virtually limitless formal flexibility, and the ability to indicate us actuality in dazzling new hues.
This was a 12 months of quite a few beautiful nonfiction releases, in addition to many pageant premieres of works but to be distributed. When viewing them in unison, it’s clear that the medium’s stylistic and thematic ingenuity couldn’t be in higher palms. These 25 movies from 2025, hailing from all throughout the globe, symbolize the easiest of what documentary cinema has to supply.
