Sandi Tan’s Shirkers is one of those films that defies categorization: a coming-of-age story, a mystery, possibly the pieced-together remnants of a lost work of art. And as for this list-its only qualifier is that these are the critically acclaimed, historically important, and pivotal films that a person who cares about film (and, in doing so, often cares about humanity in general) should really get to know.

Once viewed as something stiff and obligatory, documentary film has, in recent years, risen to the top of the heap-thanks in no small part to some of the earth-shaking, needle-pushing, and ultimately world-changing films that are listed here, which find their focus in war, love, sex, death, art, and everything in between. What makes a documentary “important”? What makes it worth referencing, or remembering, or even watching in the first place? Why, at a moment when world events are often stranger than fiction, would we veer from the vaunted, glorious escapism of big feature films ( No Time to Die, anyone?) and opt for something small and rooted in the real, instead?ĭocumentaries can be a hard sell, but it’s one that’s getting easier all the time.

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