The following documentaries from the 21st century were chosen for their abiding influence and/or “Wow!” factor. Most of them—not all—we also happen to love. But we did leave out some more obscure personal favorites to make room for the penguins, etc.

1. Spellbound (2002)

Jeffrey Blitz’s portrait of eight National Spelling Bee contestants and their families has a deep resonance: Among other things, mastery of the English language becomes a means of affirming one’s Americanness. The second half—in which the characters are knocked off one by one, as in an Agatha Christie thriller—has the audience hanging on every letter. The downside: Its massive success ushered in an age of similarly structured competition docs. (D.E.)

2. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

After Roger & Me, the Michael Moore doc with the most impact: part prosecutorial brief, part rabid editorial cartoon—a blend of insight, outrage, and innuendo. It’s not a documentary for the ages, but as an act of counter­propaganda against a monstrous government, it has

a bullying force. (D.E.)

3. Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

Graffiti guerrilla Banksy’s brilliant feature-length pranksy shows how far you can go in blurring the lines between real and fabricated and make a doc that works either way—that has its own satiric truth. (D.E.)

4. Bus 174 (2002)

José Padilha’s documentary tells the story of a bus taken hostage by an unstable, underclass addict, and the carnage (all televised) that followed owing to police incompetence. It’s the rare non­fiction film that plays out (via archival footage) as if it’s in the present tense—but with the inevitability of classic tragedy. (D.E.)

5. Grizzly Man (2005)

Werner Herzog’s documentaries are more popular than his fictions, and this one shows why. It’s a portrait of Timothy Treadwell, who obsessively idealized and shot footage of bears—including the one that would ultimately eat him (and his poor girlfriend). Herzog intercuts Treadwell’s own footage with hambone Teutonic musings and, in one scene, a shot of himself listening on headphones to the actual audio of Treadwell’s death and announcing that no one else should ever hear it. (D.E.)

6. Marwencol (2010)

Art as fixation, art as therapy, art as escape: Jeff Malmberg’s film about a man who, recovering from a horrific beating, builds a compulsively detailed miniature town, is a gorgeous, haunting journey down the rabbit hole of obsession. (B.E.)



7. Of Time and the City (2008)

The great Terence Davies creates a melancholy, even bitter audiovisual collage about his hometown of Liverpool. But, as always with Davies, the real subject is himself, and in its nakedness, the film acts as both a tribute to a city and a confessional. (B.E.)

8. March of the Penguins (2005)

This boffo French doc about ­Antarctic penguins is a ­triumph of ­location, location, location. It’s the story of an instinct so primal that the movie feels like a creation saga. You watch these ­funny, stubborn little creatures and contemplate the ­endurance of all life. (D.E.)

9. Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)

The hope was that Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning documentary could break through even to people who relished torture set pieces on 24 and would hear no evil about the War on Terror. It didn’t, but the story of a cabdriver mis­takenly ­arrested and tortured to death at Bagram Air Force base leaves you brooding on the human capacity for cruelty in a way that ­transcends the gory details. (D.E.)

10. Armadillo (2010)

Though impartial, this documentary following a group of Danish ­soldiers stationed in Afghanistan was a cause célèbre in Denmark over its suggestion that they may have killed wounded Afghans. But this is more than just mere exposé; surprisingly lyrical, it’s arguably the best of the many combat docs that have come out of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. (B.E.)