10 Weirdest Films To Come From Celebrated Directors

Orson Welles is the mastermind behind Citizen Kane, one of the greatest films ever made and still regarded to this day as essential viewing for anyone who wants to work in cinema. Afterwards, Welles carved himself an impressive career in the world of dramatic storytelling with The Magnificent Ambersons, Journey Into Fear, The Stranger, and adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Othello.

However, in 1973 Welles created a one-off film as a metaphor for how he viewed himself. That film was F For Fake, a documentary about the great art forger Elmyr De Hory. Throughout the film, Welles keeps the line between himself and De Hory very thin; the movie is primarily a documentary about Welles’ opinions on his own career, and throughout he refers to himself as a ‘charlatan’ and a ‘faker’. Between scenes of De Hory and his forged paintings, Welles gives anecdotes about his own career with the intention of drawing parallels between their conman endeavors.

As a result, F For Fake is a very revealing look into the minds of one of cinema's greatest pioneers, and how he views himself and his fame. In comparison to his other works, this film sticks out like a sore thumb as being the most ‘meta’, and it remained the only documentary he ever made.