10 Notable Filmmakers Who Work In Both Documentary & Fiction

Agnès Varda
Often dubbed the “mother of the New Wave,” Agnès Varda’s early career is remarkable for how she came onto the scene in 1955 with her first fiction feature, “La Pointe Courte,” and in it, demonstrated a visual flair (she was a photographer) and a unique melding of storytelling, philosophy and docu-realism that was almost shockingly fully developed for a novice. Throughout her career she shifted between documentary and fiction films, but all of her films to a certain extent synthesize elements of both, giving her one of the most highly individual and mercurial of filmographies, consistent only in its high quality, its often exquisite compositions and its tendency, at every turn, to surprise.
Notable Documentaries: Varda’s first doc, the short “Du côté de la côte,” is again a terrific example of just what a cinematic savant the director seems to have been from the beginning—ostensibly simply a travelogue about the south of France, it’s elevated by Varda’s gorgeous, vibrant photography and by the brittle and often sarcastic voiceover narration, by a man and a woman. She also made docs on subjects as diverse as the Black Panthers, the widows on a remote island (this after she herself was widowed following the death of her husband, Jacques Demy), and Cuba in the early ’60s. But it is her later feature documentaries, like “The Gleaners and I” about the subculture of impoverished ‘gleaners’ who scour harvested fields for what scraps may remain, “Cinevardaphoto” which is a trilogy of films about photography, and the kind of irresistible “The Beaches of Agnes,” which is a playful autobiography of sorts, that are arguably her most noteworthy.
Notable Fiction Films: ”La Pointe Courte” is a stunning debut, and 1985’s ”Vagabond” is a sombre feminist touchstone, but Varda’s greatest legacy is “Cleo From 5 to 7,” the real-time story of 90 minutes in a young singer’s life as she awaits the results of a biopsy. It has taken a while for ‘Cleo’ to earn its deserved place as one of the finest of the New Wave films, but Varda’s (ongoing) reassessment in recent years has meant it’s gradually finding the wider audience it deserves.
Which Form Suits Her Better? More than elsewhere on this list, the dichotomy feels like a false one, as with her very first film, Varda showed a sensibility, which would continue throughout her career, that combined documentary and fiction formats in a way that didn’t just root her fictions in reality, but also lent a heightened, avant-garde aspect to her documentaries. However as a shorthand it appears that, rather like Herzog’s trajectory, Varda has worked more in the documentary arena in the last decade or so, often placing herself at the center of the films with terrifically mischievous results. So while the drama ‘Cleo’ will remain the keystone of her career, we have to say that we enjoy her documentaries immensely, in which she often lets loose a puckish sense of humor that is largely absent from her more serious-minded fictions.

This is a short, clearly non-definitive selection of ten filmmakers who work in both formats, but there are many others we can mention: Martin Scorsese has something of a parallel career as a music and film documentarian, and esteemed French director Louis Malle made some wonderful contributions to the documentary world, especially those set in India. Speaking of India, Mira Nair, pre-“Salaam Bombay,” directed several eye-opening TV documentaries on different aspects of Indian society, the Dardennes brothers honed their realist eye for two decades in documentary before starting on narrative films, while Michelangelo Antonioni (you can check our recent Essentials piece on him here) was another filmmaker who clearly found a certain realism in documentary that he then took with him to fiction filmmaking.

We did loosely rule out (for now) those filmmakers who only have one film in either or both formats, so for example Bennett Miller, Todd Phillips, and Sarah Polley all only have one doc (“The Cruise,” rock doc “Hated: GG Alin and The Murder Brothers” and the great “Stories We Tell,” respectively), where Clio Barnard and Andrew Jarecki have just one of each (hybrid “The Arbor” and the terrific “Capturing the Friedmans” being the docs). Steven Soderbergh worked mostly with Spalding Gray in documentary format, “Spellbound” ‘s Jeffrey Blitz has one feature but now works mainly in TV, Derek Cianfrance has some music documentary TV credits too … there really are too many to list, but please feel free to shout out any examples you’d like to read more about. It’s a subject we’re keenly interested in, and with one of our very favorite documentarians (and kinda favorite humans, really) Errol Morris returning to narrative filmmaking after the largely forgotten “Dark Wind” with the Naomi Watts-starring “Holland Michigan,” we’ll hopefully have an excuse to revisit the topic soon.– Jessica Kiang & Oli Lyttelton