10 Greatest Mockumentary Films Of All Time

9. I'm Still Here

borat film
Magnolia Pictures

Never has a mockumentary been debated over as eagerly or as intensely as I’m Still Here. Internet forums lit up like a bonfire night sky discussing whether this was real or a hoax. Going back to Lonelygirl15 and grainy footages of prehistoric monsters in the woods, the Internet has loved to debate truth and fiction and Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in this mockumentary blurred the lines between the two frequently, blatantly and at times, stupidly.

Filmed over 12 months, Phoenix tries to pull off a stunt reminiscent of something Andy Kaufman would’ve done, not as subtle or as tender as anything Kaufman did but it’s still in the same mineral vein. From his bizarre appearance on Letterman to videos of him rapping, this was a 21st century take on the ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’.

I’m Still Here taps into that small nodule in the brain that causes humans to pause and watch a car crash in slow motion, then hit rewind. This wasn’t self-destruction, rather self-immolation.

This film is madness; it depicts all those pre-existing beliefs you have towards child actors going off the rails and then presenting you with the reality of it all with play by play analysis. It has all the colours of emotion; most of them human sh*t brown.

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Sometime Brummie with a love for tea, tequila and football teams that don't win a lot of games. Still don't really understand apostrophes.