More than 200 critics and 100 filmmakers take part in poll.

Dziga Vertov’s silent film Man with a Movie Camera (1929) has topped Sight & Sound magazine’s first major poll of the world’s best documentaries.

More than 1,000 films were nominated by 200 critics and 100 filmmakers with more than 100 voting for Man with a Movie Camera.

Vertov’s surrealist classic in which a man travels around a city with a camera documenting urban life was shot in Odessa, Kiev and Khadliv.

Vertov also topped the critics’ list of top doc filmmakers while Frederick Wiseman is number one according to his fellow directors.

Participating filmmakers included Kevin Macdonald, Walter Salles, Joshua Oppenheimer, James Toback, Asif Kapadia, Carol Morley and Mark Cousins.

Critics’ Top 10 documentaries

  1. Man with a Movie Camera, dir. Dziga Vertov (USSR 1929) [pictured]
  2. Shoah, dir. Claude Lanzmann (France 1985)
  3. Sans soleil, dir. Chris Marker (France 1982)
  4. Night and Fog, dir. Alain Resnais (France 1955)
  5. The Thin Blue Line, dir. Errol Morris (US 1989)
  6. Chronicle of a Summer, dir. Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin (France 1961)
  7. Nanook of the North, dir. Robert Flaherty (US 1922)
  8. The Gleaners and I, dir. Agnès Varda (France 2000)
  9. Don’t Look Back, dir. D.A. Pennebaker (US 1967)
  10. Grey Gardens, dirs. Albert and David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer (US 1975)

Critics’ top filmmakers

1. Dziga Vertov (110 votes across 5 films)

2. Chris Marker (91 votes across 8 films)

3. Claude Lanzmann (68 votes across 1 film)

3. Alain Resnais (68 votes across 5 films)

5. Errol Morris (67 votes across 6 films)

6. Werner Herzog (65 votes across 13 films)

7. Jean Rouch (57 votes across 7 films)

8. Frederick Wiseman (43 votes across 14 films)

9. Robert Flaherty (41 votes across 43 films)

9. Patricio Guzmán (41 votes across 3 films)

Filmmakers’ top filmmakers

1. Frederick Wiseman (33 votes across 11 films)

2. Dziga Vertov (31 votes across 3 films)

3. Werner Herzog (30 votes across 9 films)

3. Chris Marker (30 votes across 7 films)

5. Albert & David Maysles (28 votes across 4 films)

6. Errol Morris (26 votes across 5 films)

7. Robert Flaherty (22 votes across 3 films)

8. Alain Resnais (20 votes across 5 films)

9. Jean Rouch (19 votes across 5 films)

10. Claude Lanzmann (17 votes across 2 films)

The poll report is released in the September edition of Sight & Sound. The full lists of all the votes received and films nominated will be available online later this month.

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