Jenny Horwell

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A Night of Knowing Nothing

This excellent, woozy, clever, beautiful, challenging, radiantly political film by Payal Kapadia hasn't made the hugest waves yet (or has, but only in a small-ish pond), but I hope in ten years we'll still be re-watching and discussing it.

Further remarks

My list is notably focussed on documentary, because you gotta go with what you know - but also because all the films on this list easily hold their own in the canon of great (fiction) filmmaking, in terms of the vision, skill, magic and ingenuity behind them, their power and their impact, and as cinematic touchstones that have gone on to influence and inspire (or, I suspect, will do). They're obviously not all 'nonfiction' and several blur or even play with those much-discussed lines, but there's a kind of internal logic within the list, and each of them works on their own terms.