Photography and then filmmaking redefined how the world understoodwar. For the first time, people far from the front could see what war actually looked like. They could witness the carnage and chaos, and comprehend the courage and sacrifice like never before. Surprisingly, this didn’t stop war from perpetuating. If anything, like a collective death wish, the bloodlust for war continued throughout the 20th century in perhaps the most historically vicious ways. Nonetheless, wardocumentarieshave helped us study, lament, and understand history and combat like never before.
Whether they’re propagandistic or anti-war, purely informational or character-driven, macroscopic or smaller in scope, manygreat documentary filmshave shed an unprecedented light on history, and we’ve collected the 20 best.
It must be said, however, that there are other extremely important war documentaries which should still be seen, but are simply not as artistically produced, aesthetically pleasing, or culturally important. Whether because of low budgets or just inferior technology, a range of great films have been made that deserve your attention, but are just too low quality to be featured here.
These include —The Panama Deception, Over There 1914-18, Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler, El Salvador: Another Vietnam, Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler Within Germany 1933-1945, Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II, The Long Way Home,and a large variety of the great propaganda war films made in the 1940s by John Ford, John Huston, Frank Capra, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and others. There are, of course, great television docuseries about war as well, but we’ll only be looking at films here.
As such, we’ve collected strictly the 20 best war documentary films ever made, with more to be added in later updates.
20They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)
There are few World War I documentary movies, for obvious reasons. Camera equipment was generally much too complicated and unwieldy to document the events, though cinema did exist. For example, the Imperial War Museum had an archive of century-old footage, anddirector Peter Jackson(ofLord of the RingsandDead Alivefame) combed through 100 hours of it, restoring it with state-of-the-art digital technology and coloration.
The result is a stunning work of film restoration, asThey Shall Not Grow Oldhauntingly resurrects the wrecked old footage into glorious, bright, naturalistic cinema. Audiences get to see soldiers being themselves on the Western front, and can revisit and relive an often misunderstood era. The film boldly drops viewers right into the lives of British troops during the war with little explanation, and allows us to see them as they really were.They Shall Not Grow Oldtruly is history come to life.
19Genocide (1981)
The great Orson Welles and Elizabeth Taylor lend their voices to the powerful documentary,Genocide, providing some of the most poetic and assured narration to ever grace a war film. They read personal memories and letters from Holocaust survivors, as the film narrativizes them into a chronology of the tragedy. Incredibly, this was the first film directly about the Holocaust to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
18Restrepo (2010)
One of the morevisually stunning war documentaries(largely thanks to the mesmerizing eye of the late, great photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who co-directs with Sebastian Junger),Restrepois a fly-on-the-wall look at the life of soldiers.
The filmmakers were embedded with the U.S. Military in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan, and capture the banality and boredom as well as the danger and tragedy these soldiers face. It’s an apolitical and powerful testament to the fraternity and dedication of soldiers.
17The War at Home (1979)
The War at Homeis a very different type of war documentary, since it’s more a study of the social response to war than of a war itself. It’s also a wonderfully specific one, focusing on the anti-war rhetoric which led to the Sterling Hall bombing at the University of Wisconsin.
While there is an arguably superior film about the countercultural response to the Vietnam War (we’ll get to that),The War at Homeis nonetheless a seminal study of an era when Americans' attitudes toward their country and the military experienced a major sea change.
16Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)
With fearless journalism and unrelenting honesty,the wildly prolific Alex Gibney(Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) and his team probe the use of torture by the U.S. military in so-called ‘black sites.’
That’s the larger story ofTaxi to the Dark Side, which plays out in the backdrop of a murder investigation, with members of the military having beaten to death an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan they suspected of terrorism. It’s an infuriating cry for transparency and humanity, two things that tragically go largely absent during war.
15War Photographer (2001)
A very different kind of war documentary,War Photographeris a stunning character study of one of the world’s best artists in the titular profession. The Peabody Award and Emmy Award-winning film follows James Nachtwey as he embeds himself in Jakarta, the West Bank, Kosovo, and other dangerous locations internationally, hoping to document the lives of people caught up in war and atrocities.
Cleverly installing a digital microcamera on Nachtwey’s own camera, the film is thus able to shoot what he shoots. It’s intimate, visceral, and palpably unsettling, and uses commentary to question the ethics of war photography and filmmaking itself.
14The Last Days (1998)
An extremely touching and influential documentary,The Last Daysbridges the past and the present by taking several Holocaust survivors back to their hometowns in Europe and the concentration camps where they were held. Their recollections and conversations of the war makesThe Last Daysa profound meditation on memory (both personal and collective). This is history as filtered through personal experience,
13Standard Operating Procedure (2010)
The great Errol Morris(Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line) made his second war documentary withStandard Operating Procedure. It’s a searing study of the incidents which transpired at Abu Ghraib and shocked the world in a series of photographs that a handful of men and women in the U.S. military took, documenting their torture of suspected terrorists.
Speaking with the men and women behind the photographs and incorporating their actual footage from Abu Ghraib, Morris takes a philosophical look at the nature of photography and filmmaking, and the way that war can completely dehumanize people. It’s a cold, disturbing masterpiece.
12Last Days in Vietnam (2014)
Nearly 50 years before America withdrew from Afghanistan, the U.S. military did the same thing in Vietnam, and it’s captured in all its chaotic devastation in the intense documentary,Last Days in Vietnam.
Incredible, harrowing archival footage and in-depth interviews depict the fall of Saigon as the North Vietnamese Army dominated the South, and American soldiers faced various ethical conundrums. Restored film of helicopters weighed down with evacuees and last-minute life-or-death decisions helps paint a complicated and immensely painful portrait of a lost war.
11Dirty Wars (2013)
DIrty Warsis a fascinating war documentary, and almost feels likea film noirat times thanks to its charismatic lead, investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill. Based on his book of the same name, the film follows Scahill (utiliziing his hard-boiled narration in a nearly neo-noir way) as he travels through Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan.
Related:Best Movies About the Recent War in Afghanistan and the American Occupation
Scahill’s picking up clues in the War on Terror by investigating the ramifications, including how some Muslims are being radicalized, how some journalists are being censored and even imprisoned, and how some civilians are being killed, their deaths quickly covered up.Dirty Warsis a foreboding, intelligent film that will leave you wanting a cigarette.
