The Best Documentaries About Filmmaking
What is the best filmmaking documentary? The best documentary movies about filmmaking offer strong stories, memorable characters, and emotional payoffs that stick with you long after they're over. They focus on a variety of subjects and approach the craft of making movies in both subtle and more overt manners. They come from big studios and independent distributors.
The best documentary movies about filmmaking, like Cameraperson and Hearts of Darkness, have even found themselves nominated for, or winning, awards. In every way, these are some of the most important movies of our time. A lot of these filmmaking docus are available on streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
This list includes documentary films about filmmaking. Vote up the best filmmaking documentary films to make sure they make it to the top of the list. Be sure to check back for new filmmaking docs as they are added to the list upon release.
- Keanu Reeves
- Dennis Hopper, Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando
- Released: 1991
- Directed by: Eleanor Coppola, George Hickenlooper, Fax Bahr
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse is a 1991 documentary film about the production of the 1979 feature film Apocalypse Now. - Vanessa Paradis
- Released: 2002
- Directed by: Keith Fulton, Louis Pepe
Visionary director Terry Gilliam has a dream. He wants to film the classic story of Don Quixote by recasting it as a trippy, time-traveling, mistaken-identity adventure with Johnny Depp as Quixote. ...moreAvailable On:
- Darren Aronofsky, Matt Stone, Atom Egoyan
- Released: 2006
- Directed by: Kirby Dick
Filmmakers Kimberly Peirce, Wayne Kramer, Michael Tucker and Matt Stone are among those who give commentary in Kirby Dick's examination of the Motion Picture Association of America and the standards ...more - 5
Cameraperson
Kirsten Johnson, Michael Moore, Jacques Derrida- Released: 2016
- Directed by: Kirsten Johnson
Cameraperson is a 2016 autobiographical collage documentary film by director Kirsten Johnson about her life and career as a cinematographer. It relies on footage shot by Johnson across the years in ...more - Claudia Cardinale, Mick Jagger, Klaus Kinski