Best Documentaries About Film/Film Icons

Documentary about an aspiring filmmaker's attempts to finance his dream project by finally completing the low-budget horror film he abandoned years before.

A documentary following German auteur Werner Herzog as he deals with difficult actors, bad weather and getting a boat over a mountain, all in an effort to make his film Fitzcarraldo (1982).

In the final fifteen years of the life of legendary director Orson Welles, he pins his Hollywood comeback hopes on a film, The Other Side of the Wind (2018), in itself a film about an aging film director trying to finish his last great movie.

A documentary on the rise and stumble of Troy Duffy, the bartender-cum-filmmaker who was swept up by Miramax's Harvey Weinstein to turn his script for The Boondock Saints into a feature film.

A look at the professional, political and personal life of legendary movie producer Jerry Weintraub featuring interviews with friends, family and colleagues.

A documentary that utilizes hundreds of hours of audio that Marlon Brando recorded over the course of his life to tell the screen legend's story.

A behind the scenes chronicle of how clash of vision, bad creative decisions, lack of interest and really bad weather plagued the disastrous production of the infamous The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996).

A look at the life and work of the great theatre, radio and film artist.

A documentary about how English actor Leon Vitali came to work as an assistant to American filmmaker Stanley Kubrick for over 30 years.

The story of the Disney Renaissance, an incredibly prolific, successful and prestigious decade lasting from 1984 to 1994 that saw the fallen Walt Disney Animation Studios' unexpected progressive triumphant return to excellence.

S Is For Stanley is the story of Emilio D'Alessandro, Stanley Kubrick's personal driver. A Friendship that lasted through 30 years of their lives, helped create four cinema masterpieces, and brought together two apparently opposite people, that found their ideal journey companion far away from their homes.

A documentary about the proposed 1998 Superman Lives feature film that would have starred Nicolas Cage.

Terry Gilliam's doomed attempt to get his film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018), off the ground.

Jon Ronson is asked by the widow of Stanley Kubrick to investigate the contents of about a thousand boxes left by Kubrick, shown to contain materials reflecting the work Kubrick did after the release of Barry Lyndon (1975) in 1975.

Documentary that chronicles how Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) was plagued by extraordinary script, shooting, budget, and casting problems - nearly destroying the life and career of the celebrated director.

An intimate documentary delving into Rian Johnson's process as he comes in as a director new to the Star Wars universe.

War stories and life lessons from the industry's top writers.

Filmmaker Mike Nichols sits down with theater director Jack O'Brien to discuss his personal life and professional work.

Judd Apatow presents an emotional two-part in-depth look at the life, career and complex internal struggles of his loving mentor, the influential stand-up comedian and actor Garry Shandling, based on Shandling's personal diaries.

A documentary about writer and director Brian De Palma.

A look at the troubled acting career of George Lazenby and his short-lived association with James Bond.

A behind-the-scenes look at how Jim Carrey adopted the persona of idiosyncratic comedian Andy Kaufman on the set of Man on the Moon (1999).

For the first time one of Hollywood's greatest stars tells his own story, in his own words. From a childhood of poverty to global fame, Cary Grant, the ultimate self-made star, explores his own screen image and what it took to create it.

The story of cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky's ambitious but ultimately doomed film adaptation of the seminal science fiction novel.

A documentary about the production of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and the people who made it.