These Documentaries Took A Hard Left Turn And Left Audiences Shocked And Confused

Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne intended to make Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father as a gift for the titular Zachary, the son of Kuenne's best friend, Andrew Bagby. Bagby was murdered by his partner—and Zachary's mother—Shirley Jane Turner before Zachary was born.

But, as Kuenne sits down with Bagby and Turner's relatives and friends, what began as a loving tribute to his late friend morphs into something resembling a tragic true-crime documentary. As Turner makes her way through the Canadian prison and legal system, Bagby's parents fight to maintain custody of Zachary. They come up against some shocking hurdles and their battle, ultimately, is lost. In 2003, Turner jumped into the Atlantic Ocean with Zachary in her arms, killing them both.

French filmmakers Jules and Gedeon Naudet and New York firefighter James Hanlon set out in 2001 to capture the burgeoning career of Tony Benetatos, a probationary firefighter (a new recruit that's only been on the job for 8-18 months) in the New York City Fire Department.

On September 11, 2001, after a gas leak is reported at Church and Lispenard Streets, Jules Naudet follows Battalion Chief Joseph Pfeifer to investigate. Gedeon stays behind at the firehouse with Benetatos. During the investigation of the gas leak, American Airlines Flight 11 flies overhead, and Naudet turns the camera to follow its path into Tower One of the World Trade Center - one of only three recordings of the collision.

When David Farrier, a light-entertainment TV journalist from New Zealand, begins researching the strange phenomenon of recorded "competitive endurance tickling," he has no idea what kind of world he's getting himself into.

After noting the strangely homoerotic nature of a lot of the tickling videos, Farrier gets in touch with the production company behind the videos, Jane O'Brien Media, but is surprised to receive a pretty angry and homophobic response that asserts the exclusively heterosexual nature of the sport. The further that Farrier digs into this peculiar world, the uglier and more hostile Jane O'Brien Media becomes.

Determined to find out who's behind this, Farrier makes it his mission to track down the owner of Jane O'Brien Media and find out why the company is so aggressive. Along the way, he interviews former employees that accuse the company of blackmail, coercion, and extortion. By the end, you're left wondering if you just watched a documentary about competitive tickling or a true-crime doc about one man's life-long quest for revenge.

Heidi Bub is an Amerasian born in 1968, in Danang, Vietnam, who was brought over to the United States as part of "Operation Babylift" (a campaign to evacuate children from war-torn Vietnam) in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War. She was adopted by an ultra-conservative Christian woman, Ann Neville, in South Carolina, but after breaking Ann's strict curfew (by a mere 10 minutes) as a teenager, Heidi found herself evicted from her home and estranged from her adoptive mother.

After Heidi learned that her birth mother had contacted her adoption agency in 1991, this 2002 documentary intended to capture an uplifting reunion between mother and daughter. However, after traveling to Vietnam, Heidi struggles to come to terms with the extreme cultural differences and feels exploited when she is expected to financially support a family she has only just met.

In 1969, Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin set out to create a tour film of The Rolling Stones' US tour, culminating at the Altamont Free Concert. In the spirit of the counterculture era, they were "reactive" filmmakers, choosing to merely document but never investigate their subjects. Some of their camera operatives included a young George Lucas and Martin Scorsese.

But rather than just capturing one of music's longest-enduring bands at the height of their powers, they also happened to capture all the good vibes quickly turn sour. 18-year-old Meredith Hunter attempts to force his way onto the stage through some Hell's Angels serving as security, and the resulting skirmish ends in his murder - all caught on camera. 

Filmmaker Andrew Jarecki initially set out to make a short film, Just A Clown, about children's party entertainers in New York. This included popular entertainer David Friedman, known by his clown name, "Silly Billy." 

Things take a dark turn, however, when Jarecki unearths some buried family history. Friedman's brother, Jesse, and his father, Arnold, had pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse in the 1980s. Jarecki also discovers the family's old home movies, which—along with interviews with the Friedman children—he used to complete the newly refocused documentary in 2003.