10 Notable Filmmakers Who Work In Both Documentary & Fiction

Ken Loach
When people talk about the tradition of British social realism in cinema, pretty much the first name they reach for is that of Ken Loach. An overtly left-wing filmmaker with an uncompromising and undimmed social agenda, Loach’s passion about current and historical issues from homelessness and poverty to colonialism and Thatcherism informs his body of work across both documentary and narrative formats. But while he’s probably more celebrated (he has a Palme d’Or, an Ecumenical Jury Prize and two Special Jury Prizes from Cannes over the years) for his fiction work, word is that after the currently shooting “Jimmy Hall,” he may retire from it altogether, possibly to concentrate more on documentaries. Maybe this is because, while he hardly seems it, Loach is 77, and in his words from our interview earlier this year, documentaries are “a lot easier. The alarm doesn’t have to go at 6 in the morning… doing an archive documentary is very civilized.”
Notable documentaries: Loach’s first documentary was also his first brush with controversy: he was hired by charity Save the Children to make 50-minute documentary “The Save the Children Fund Film.” However Loach was angered by the charity’s “neo-colonial attitude” and by some of the employees’ views on the parents of the poorest children, and produced a film that the fund not only refused to pay for, but tried to have destroyed. The resulting legal battle nearly bankrupted Loach’s fledgling Kestrel Films. In the ’80s he experienced the suppression and/or censorship of several of his TV documentaries, including “Questions of Leadership” and miners’ strike doc “Which Side Are You On?” which was only aired after it won a major prize at the Berlinale. Most recently, Loach brought us “The Spirit of ‘45,” an archival/interview-based film about the establishment of the welfare state in Britain during the postwar reconstruction years.
Notable Fiction Films: “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” won Loach the Palme d’Or, and indeed, he’s often been successful at Cannes, where “Raining Stones,” “Land and Freedom” and “Hidden Agenda” were also honored. But 1969’s “Kes,” just his second film, was the one that established him and is still a benchmark movie in British cinema. Since then he’s been prolific, so everyone will have their personal favorites, but we’d have to number “Riff-Raff,” “Sweet Sixteen” and “My Name Is Joe” up there too, not least for the breakthrough roles they gave to actors like Peter Mullan and Martin Compston.
Which Format Suits Him Better? Loach’s work in both areas is never less than intelligent, convincing and passionately argued, but when he has put that fire in service of a narrative which a wider audience will experience, the results have often been exceptional. The specificity of his documentary subjects sometimes restricts their relevance (or a distributor’s idea of it, anyway) and their rather unadventurous format (talking heads/archive footage) often make them feel resolutely small-screen—in fairness the medium for which they are often designed. So we’re going to go with fiction, here, though we’ll take whatever Loach we can get.

James Marsh
Not as big a name as some on this list, Marsh has been doing some sterling work in both the fictional and non-fictional worlds for a decade or so. Starting out as an editor, then on some arts documentaries for the BBC (Marvin Gaye doc “Troubleman” is particularly worth a watch), Marsh moved into documentary features with 1999’s “Wisconsin Death Trip,” and made his feature debut six years later with “The King.”
Notable Documentaries: The eerie, atmospheric “Wisconsin Death Trip,” a beguiling mix of drama and documentary, is quite remarkable and deeply underrated, but his greatest success in the form came with 2008’s “Man On Wire.” The rare kind of doc that’s genuinely cinematic, it’s a thrilling, moving and brilliantly made piece of work, and was a worthy Oscar winner in 2009. 2011’s “Project Nim” isn’t quite as good, but it’s still very strong.
Notable Fiction Films: Marsh’s fiction debut, Southern Gothic tragedy “The King,” starring Gael Garcia Bernal, William Hurt and Paul Dano, was divisively received when it premiered at Cannes in 2005, and went unnoticed by most audiences, but it’s well worth seeking out. A few years later, Marsh would direct the second (and to this writer’s mind, the strongest) of the “Red Riding” trilogy, and followed it up last year with the sterling IRA thriller “Shadow Dancer.” Like Macdonald, he arguably hasn’t knocked one out the park yet, but it may only be a matter of time—perhaps on Stephen Hawking biopic “Theory Of Everything,” which shoots soon with Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones.
Which Form Suits Him Better? His work across the two forms is very different, but up to now, the documentary’s proved more consistent in quality. That said, he’s straddled the two worlds nicely so far.

Claire Denis
It’s rare that an auteur arrives on the scene fully formed from their debut, but that’s pretty much what happened when Claire Denis, prior to that an assistant/second unit director to people like Wim Wenders, Costa Gavras and Jim Jarmusch, made her first film, the brilliant and beautiful “Chocolat.” Setting the enigmatic and slightly dreamlike tone that a lot of her films embody, since then Denis has carved out a small but immensely impressive body of work, often featuring her recurring motifs of colonialism, the immigrant experience and outsider-ness, especially as it pertains to her country of birth, France. While she reportedly does not consider herself a political filmmaker (and her films are too highly individual to be really be regarded as such) most of her work is socially engaged and profoundly concerned with the issue of cultural perspective, often heightened by the extraordinary power of her imagery.
Notable Documentaries: Denis has only made three feature-length documentaries (we’re counting the two parts of ‘Jacques Rivette‘ as one), of which the first, “Man No Run,” in which she follows Cameroonian band Les Tetes Brulees (whom she met while filming “Chocolat”) on their first tour of France, is very hard to track down. “Jacques Rivette, The Nightwatchman,” which was commissioned for French TV, is a fascinating, meandering conversation between New Wave filmmaker Rivette (“Celine and Julie Go Boating,” “Out 1,” “The Nun”) and Cahiers du Cinema critic Serge Daney. And, best of all 2005’s “Vers Mathilde” is a beautiful and oddly reflexive film about the creative process of dancer and choreographer Mathilde Monnier.
Notable Fiction Films: Aside from “Chocolat,” Denis’ most celebrated films are “Beau Travail,” “White Material” and “35 Shots of Rum” with her forays into more thrillerish territory with “Trouble Every Day” and this year’s “Bastards” meeting a much more mixed reception.
Which Format Suits Her Better? Undoubtedly Denis is a fiction filmmaker first and foremost, though a little like Agnes Varda, she incorporates elements of social realism into her fiction work in a way that suggests a more porous divide between the two. And “Vers Mathilde,” a fascinating document of dedication, creativity and the sheer beauty of movement, has moments that are among the most Denis-iest we’ve seen, with her camera coolly worshipping the wordless dance sequences, all set to a haunting, pulsating P.J. Harvey score.

Werner Herzog
Though his career has been going on for nearly fifty years, German maverick Werner Herzog has had something of a revival in the last decade, becoming a cult figure, to the extent that he even played the villain in Tom Cruise blockbuster “Jack Reacher.” But all the jokes and oddities don’t overshadow that Herzog has had one of the most prolific and consistently fascinating runs in contemporary cinema, and he’s flitted between documentary and feature consistently since the 1960s.
Notable Documentaries: Though we can’t claim to have seen every non-fiction film that Herzog’s made, it’s his documentary work of the last couple of decades that’s the best regarded (though early fare like “The Great Ecstasy Of Woodcarver Steiner” and “Ballad Of The Little Soldier” are worth checking out too). From “Little Dieter Needs To Fly,” which inspired Herzog’s fictional retelling “Rescue Dawn,” to the powerful death row documentary “Into The Abyss” and the TV follow-up series “On Death Row,” via surprise hit ‘Grizzly Man” and the impressive 3D “Cave Of Forgotten Dreams,” the work has been consistently rich, though our favorite might be “My Best Fiend,” his touching tribute to frequent collaborator/adversary Klaus Kinski.
Notable Fiction Films: And although Herzog’s made some recent gems too, only a fool would consider the very best of his work to be outside his collaborations with Kinski (Though “The Enigma Of Kasper Hauser,” in the same period but without Kinski, is right up there too). The pick of the bunch might vary depending on mood—”Aguirre: The Wrath Of God,” “Nosferatu” and “Fitzcarraldo” could all stake their claim easily. But as a body of work, there’s no doubt that Herzog was at his best when Kinski was around.
Which Form Suits Him Better? Depends on which period of Herzog we’re talking about. If we’re discussing the Herzog of the 1960s and 1970s, his collaborations with Kinski easily outshine his documentary output. If we’re discussing present day Herzog, his documentaries easily feel like his more significant work (and, to be honest, where his heart is these days).