20 Documentary Movies You Must See Before You Die

1. Night And Fog (1955)

Every person on Earth should see Night and Fog at least once - a film that its acclaimed director, Alain Resnais, almost never made.

At just 30 minutes, Night and Fog sets out to paint the holocaust and the concentration camps as an absolute truth. Essentially, the movie consists of a series of still images, played with a narration by Michel Bouquet, his voice filled with a repressed kind of anger, as life in the camps is laid out bare for audiences to see. The images are graphic, as - across its short running time - the pain and suffering experienced by those put into the camps is frankly depicted. We see mass graves; bodies without heads; children dead.

Night and Fog is art, yes, but it's also probably the most harrowing and hard-hitting documentary about the greatest crime of the 20th century. Compared to another great holocaust documentary, Shoah, which runs more than 10 hours, and it's amazing to see how Resnais manages to create a work of equal power in a film that it so much shorter.

The defining aspect of Night and Fog, however, and the true source of its power - and the very thing that renders it as arguably the greatest documentary of all time - is the way that it asks: "Why? Why did we do this to one another? Who did it? Will it happen again?"

And so it is impossible to watch Resnais' film without feeling immense sorrow... not to mention a sense of hopelessness for the human race at large. Timeless.

Like this article? Like our choices? Got any documentaries to add that we somehow missed? Let us know all your thoughts on the matter in the comments section below.