My favorite documentary is one called Up. ... For your listeners, it’s a guy, Michael Apted who in 1964 decided to follow about a dozen or actually more kids from very different backgrounds and from the UK and some in orphanages, and some very well off to try and establish how much people are stuck to their context, to their social context. ... It’s quite an extraordinary way to look at humanity and see can people really escape their social constraints and their initial lay of life?
What is your favourite documentary, and what did it change for you?
"Fourteen Days in May" by Paul Hamann opened my eyes to the power of documentary and "Portrait of Jason" remains my favorite documentary of all time. The exploration of performance and representation of reality and storytelling is still very powerful to me.
Elaine Sheldon and Sarah Ginsburg, She Does questionnaire/interview page, She Does Podcast, 27 January 2016 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 12 →
Ricardo Semler
Chief executive and later chairman of Semco Partners, Brazil
Wes Lindamood
designer and immersive-storytelling producer at NPR
What's your favorite documentary? I'm glad you asked. It's Errol Morris's film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control I saw this film at a festival in college, and in a single viewing it completely changed my perception of what a documentary could be. Since then, I've had an unrelenting obsession with documentary film.
Alex Hallford
professional skateboarder
My favourite documentary, that’s lovely and everyone should watch, is called Water: The Great Mystery. It changed my perception of the whole planet more than maybe anything ever. Dr Masaru Emoto’s water research is very profound.
Jim Loehr
Performance psychologist; co-founder of the Human Performance Institute
I love ESPN’s 30 for 30. I adored the one on Andre Agassi. I love the story, the documentary on Ray Mancini’s life. This is food for my soul. I love the inside story because that’s kind of the world I live in. And a lot of the stories I can’t tell, but I have such deep appreciation when the honesty and authenticity of an athlete is out there.
More on taste & recommendation
Also answered this
David Heinemeier Hansson, Geoffrey Rush, Wes Lindamood, Mo Scarpelli, Alex Hallford, Dan Harris
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All taste & recommendation questions
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject