Pseudodocumentary
see all genres ›The theme-and-variations of pseudodocumentary have exploded in recent years as filmmakers have grasped the range of witty, disturbing and ambiguous effects that can be reached by blurring fact and fiction.
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Genres / Drama / Realism / Pseudodocumentary
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The Clowns
Federico Fellini's fascination with the circus and the surreal come to a head in one of his final masterpieces, THE CLOWNS. The film reflects Fellini's childhood obsession with clowns and begins with a young boy watching a circus set up from his bedroom window. Though comical and referred to as a...Watch Movie
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Punishment Park
The war in Vietnam is escalating. There is massive public protest in the United States and elsewhere. President Nixon declares a state of national emergency and the federal authorities are given the power to detain persons judged to be "a risk to internal security." In a desert zone in southwest...Watch Movie
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Loss Prevention
Documentary and fictional elements are combined in LOSS PREVENTION to tell the story of Irene, arrested at the age of seventy-nine for stealing a bottle of aspirin from a Miami Walmart and sentenced to ten weeks of Senior Citizen Shoplifting Prevention School. Narrated through the voice of her...Watch Movie
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Propaganda
Controversial to its core, this hard-hitting anti-Western propaganda film looks at the influence of American culture on the rest of the world from a North Korean perspective. As first reported on mainstream new around the world, PROPAGANDA is allegedly a video smuggled out of North Korea....Watch Movie
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Water Wrackets
Landscape becomes the central performer and only actor in this rare, mystical short that was Peter Greenaway’s first experiment with the fantastic. WATER WRACKETS’ vast wilderness landscape and soothing soundtrack of babbling brooks vividly recount the battles won and lost by the mythical WATER...Watch Movie
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24 City
A masterful film from Jia Zhangke, the renowned director of STILL LIFE, 24 CITY chronicles the dramatic closing of a once-prosperous state-owned aeronautics factory in Chengdu, a city in Southwest China, and its conversion into a sprawling luxury apartment complex. Bursting with poetry, pop songs...Watch Movie
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Flotsam/Jetsam
A grainy black-and-white adventure on the high seas turns into something else entirely in this typically idiosyncratic short from David and Nathan Zellner, their very first to appear at the Sundance Film Festival. Adrift in the open water, a man clings to some floating suitcases (along with a...Watch Movie
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3 Businessmen: A User's Guide
In the 1990s all the feature films I made were shot in a style the Mexicans call "plano secuencia" (a single master for every scene). I was inspired in this by my friend the director Arturo Ripstein. It was a response to editing strategies which had become increasingly...Watch Movie
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The Falls
Standing at a pivotal point in his filmography, poised between his earlier, witty shorts and the unique pleasures of his post-DRAUGHTSMAN'S CONTRACT oeuvre, THE FALLS is arguably the most significant film of Peter Greenaway’s prolific career. Shot as a pseudodocumentary, this magnum opus...Watch Movie
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Shirin
A vibrant, daringly original work from Abbas Kiarostami, SHIRIN is the flowering of an experimentalist streak that’s been evident in many of the director’s most well-known features, including CLOSE-UP, TASTE OF CHERRY and others. Ostensibly an adaptation of a 12th century Persian poem about a...Watch Movie
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Time
TIME blurs the line between documentary and fiction, questioning the system of filmmaking itself, while also addressing the root of another system entirely: The American Correctional System. Through a collection of conversational portraits filmmaker Theodore Collatos presents a group of male...Watch Movie
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Sophisticated Acquaintance
Filmmaker Daniel Kremer began shooting SOPHISTICATED ACQUAINTANCE as his first feature-length film in 2006. He shelved an early cut of it in 2007, only to finally finish it ten years later in 2016. Mixing elements of narrative, experimental, pseudo-documentary and essayist...Watch Movie
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Manhole 452
Despite assurances from local municipalities, manholes occasionally blow sky-high, more than most people realize. The fictionalized film is a first person narrative that follows the reflections of a middle-aged man whose car was hit by an exploding manhole; he now rides the Geary Limited bus the...Watch Movie
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I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You
José Renato, geologist, thirty-five years old, is sent on a field-trip to the scrublands of the Sertão, a semi-arid isolated region in the Northeast of Brazil. The goal of his survey is to assess possible routes for a water canal from the region's only voluminous river. For...Watch Movie
