En el 2016, el diario inglés The Guardian se dio a la tarea de reunir a 10 de los más destacados documentalistas en el mundo para pedirles que hicieran una selección de 5 documentales cada uno y de esta manera reunir los 50 mejores de este género cinematográfico.
Esta es la lista que arrojó este invaluable ejercicio dedicado a todos los que aman o se quieren adentrar al mundo del documental.
- China: Beyond the Clouds (Phil Agland, 1994)
- Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995)
- Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
- Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris, 1978)
- Loss Is to Be Expected (Ulrich Seidl, 1992)
- The Hour of the Furnaces (Octavia Getino and Fernando e Solanas, 1968)
- Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)
- Streetwise (Martin Bell, 1984)
The Five Obstructions, Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth, 2003
The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000)
Up series (Michael Apted, 1964)
Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)
Gimme Shelter , Albert and David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin 1970
- When We Were Kings (Leon Gast, 1996)
- Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
- Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
- Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986)
- Tales of the Grim Sleeper (Nick Broomfield, 21)
- Solar Mamas ( Jehane Noujaim and Mona Eldaief, 2012)
- Virunga (Orlando von Einsiedel, 2014)
- Five Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi, 2011)
- Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
- Le Sang des Bêtes (Georges Franju, 1949)
- The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965)
- The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzmán, 1975, 1976, 1979)
- Primate (Frederick Wiseman, 1974)
- Amy (Asif Kapadia, 2015)
- Iraq in Fragments (James Longley, 2006)
- Buena Vista Social Club (Wim Wenders, 1999)
- The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)
- Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)
Global Report, Peter Armstrong, 1981
The Queen of Versailles, Lauren Greenfield, 2012
- Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite, 2013)
- Lessons of Darkness (Werner Herzog, 1995)
- Some Kind of Monster (Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky, 2004)
- When the Levees Broke (Spike Lee, 2006)
- Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003)
- Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
- The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (Pirjo Honkasalo, 2004)
- Pina (Wim Wenders, 2011)
- Into Eternity (Michael Madsen, 2010)
- Le Joli Mai (Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme, 1963)
- Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield And Joan Churchill, 2003)
- The Power of Nightmares (Adam Curtis, 2004)
- Sisters in Law (Kim Longinotto, 2006)
- Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008)
- Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Werner Herzog, 1998)
- Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
- Pandora’s Box (Adam Curtis, 1992)