What's the best documentary of 2014? We're tracking festivals, critics, blogs, award shows and more to determine the top docs of the year.

Heather McIntosh questions the purpose of "best of" lists, referencing the recently published "The 20 Essential Documentaries of the Century."

Finally — the post that you’ve all been waiting for: my top 5 greatest doc moments. You’ll note that POV’s Ruiyan wins an honorable mention for beating me to the punch in the comments section from last week, with her admiration for Harlan County, USA. What a moment, eh? I agree, and had ranked it […]

It’s been a while since I’ve done a list (see my 10 most lugubrious docs and the 10 sexiest) — and as an unabashed advocate of the genre, here’s another. What makes for a great moment in a documentary? That can sometimes be a complicated issue, because some of the “greatest” moments are also the […]

Freelance writer Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive, blogs about documentaries and the Web in her column, Outside the Frame, published every other Wednesday. It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not referring to Christmas, or “the holidays.” Nor am I referring to the winter solstice, New Years or festive binge drinking. […]

It’s end of the year wrap-up time, at a juncture when the world of movies and entertainment and even docs seems a little removed from what’s really on our minds: we appear to be stuck in the muck (but for how long?), though many of us are hopeful that an Obama administration could bring great […]

Are you as much of a Rotten Tomatoes junkie as I am? I’ve always enjoyed perusing the site’s compilations of critical reactions to a film. It’s about as indispensable to me as imdb.com, the Internet Movie Database, where you can get information about the producers, cast, release dates and more on a film. Well, last […]

And now for something completely inappropriate… I know many will think ill of me for degrading/simplifying the non-fiction filmmaking genre with the following list. But I can’t help myself. I recently got to wondering: why shouldn’t we have fun with the genre we love so much? Isn’t a new way to look at/debate documentaries a […]

Ah, the flush feeling of having a documentary that receives high accolades and big box office returns! As I mentioned last week, not many doc filmmakers have felt that way this year, which puts Charles Ferguson among the elite few. I was at a fancy screening and reception this week for his film No End […]

The International Documentary Association (IDA) is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, and last week they announced their list of the top 25 documentary films of all time. The list was tabulated from a poll of IDA members, which number over 3,000 and include filmmakers, executives and academics. Hoop Dreams snagged the top spot from […]