Maiden (2018)

Remarkable documentary about Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old who skippered the first ever all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Race when she took part in the 1989 event. 

Directed by Alex Holmes, it’s a fascinating and surprisingly emotional film. It’s impressive how much footage has been assembled and how beautifully edited together it is. The interviews with the crew in the present day make for fascinating viewing, especially intercut with their younger selves at the time of the race. 

Edwards emerges as a uniquely determined and focused individual who took on a challenge and succeeded, despite her own deep insecurities and the prejudice she faced from others.

Amy (2015)

Brilliant documentary directed by Asif Kapadia, piecing together the life and death of Amy Winehouse. As with his film Senna, there are no “talking heads” to provide a master narrative. Instead, it’s a mixture of home videos, archive footage and songs in performance. 

It’s fairly harrowing, as you might expect, to see this talented young singer so quickly spiral into the hell of fame and addiction. The saddest aspect is that she simply didn’t appear to have the support around her that she  so desperately needed. Her husband (Blake Fielder) was imprisoned for assaulting a pub landlord. Her father (Mitchell Winehouse) had abandoned her family when Amy was a child, then returned in the role of manager/Svengali after Amy’s success took off. You are encouraged to wonder how much these two individuals were steering her down the wrong path for their own gains. 

Does it teach you anything new about Amy Winehouse? Not really. But I’d never really considered the strangeness of her songwriting before. Seeing the lyrics spelled out on screen as she sings them reveals just how odd they are.

Super Size Me (2004)

Scary documentary made by and starring Morgan Spurlock, who spends a month eating nothing but McDonalds fast food in order to highlight the health risks of doing so. The effects on his physical and mental state are dramatic and remarkable. He gains weight, damages his liver and experiences mood swings and depression. 

It’s a brave and quite reckless way to make a point, but you have to admire him for sticking to his plan. The various interviews with increasingly alarmed doctors and nutritionists provide a sobering commentary. 

Fascinating stuff, it would be quite difficult to watch if he wasn’t so engaging a character.

Man on Wire (2008)

Documentary directed by James Marsh that details Philippe Petit's iconic 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Adapted from Petit’s own memoir, To Reach the Clouds, it reconstructs the complicated plans and schemes leading up to the big event. The narrative is presented like a crime story, introducing the various characters who worked with him – often against the law – to gain access to the towers and help make the carefully plotted sequence of events come together. 

Petit’s descriptions and recollections are fascinating, but he seems prone to a degree of self-mythologising. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s the accounts of his colleagues that really bring this story to life. It’s especially notable how emotional they feel about the wire walk – a moment that clearly took on symbolic significance beyond mere hair-raising spectacle.

The Queen of Versailles (2012)

Remarkable documentary made by Lauren Greenfield about former billionaire David Siegel, who made a fortune selling time-share apartments, and Jackie Siegel, his wife. The couple have lots of children and dogs and live in a huge house, but plan to build an even bigger house, styled after the Palace of Versailles, which turns out to be the largest home in America. Then the global financial crisis hits and they risk losing everything. 

It’s a powerful study of wealth and its effects. There are fascinating scenes of excess in which you see Jackie shopping at Walmart or going through the antiques she keeps in a storage facility. It’s impossible to imagine having this kind of wealth. Yet being obscenely rich doesn’t seem like much fun. Their dogs foul the carpets frequently. Their eight children seem to barely know their father. Their pet lizard dies through complete neglect. And the Siegel marriage seems strained. 

The documentary shows all of this without making judgement, but the Siegels nevertheless sued to prevent the film’s release. That the filmmakers won the case only confirms how skilfully and impartially they presented the story.

Senna (2010)

Brilliant documentary about Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna. It’s assembled entirely from footage of the time, so there are no retrospective talking heads or other such elements. As such, it’s pretty intense. We see his rise to prominence, his rivalry with McLaren teammate Alain Prost and his becoming a national hero for Brazil. Unfortunately, we also get to see the 1994 crash that killed him. 

If there’s a criticism, it’s that we learn very little of his personal life. The focus is entirely on his career, but that’s still more than enough of a story to make this a dynamic experience.

Touching the Void (2003)

Documentary film version of Joe Simpson’s 1988 memoir detailing Simpson and Simon Yates's 1985 climb of the 6,344-m (20,813-ft) Siula Grande in the Andes.

After reaching the summit, disaster strikes when Simpson breaks his leg on the way down. Yates heroically winches him down but when Simpson falls and is left dangling, Yates fears him dead and – about to plummet himself – considers he has no choice but to cut the rope...

The film tells the improbable story of how both men survived. It’s even more remarkable in the case of Simpson, whose leg was badly mangled and who was dangerously dehydrated as well as suffering hypothermia. He lost a third of his body weight during the ordeal.

It’s riveting to see the two climbers being interviewed about what happened, interspersed with convincing actor reconstructions of the climb. The psychology of their relationship is fascinating. They start out as casual friends. Then become colleagues who depend on one another for survival. When events take a darker turn, their relationship has to take on bigger ethical/existential aspects and seems to become simultaneously both intimate and remote.

The highlight, for me, was the section in which Simpson recalls being tormented by snatches of “Brown Girl in the Ring” going round and round in his head and remarking “I remember thinking, bloody hell, I'm going to die to Boney M.”

The DVD extras, unusually, are just as fascinating as the film – if not more so. One mini-film examines what happened next: the complex process by which they got down from base camp to eventual medical assistance. The other takes Simpson and Yates back to the Siula Grande as consultants on the making of the film and observes their reactions to returning to the site of the drama. Yates is very matter-of-fact about it all, or claims to be – you suspect he’s more affected than he lets on after all these years of notoriety as “the man who cut the rope”. Simpson, meanwhile, is profoundly disturbed by being forced to relive the moments in which he was absolutely certain he would soon die. It’s both moving and upsetting to watch him in this extraordinary situation.

The Imposter (2012)

Documentary about a 13-year-old Texan boy, Nicholas Barclay, who goes missing in 1994. More than three years later in 1997 he is “found” living in Spain and returns to the USA to live with his family. In fact, the family has taken in Frédéric Bourdin, a serial con-artist who is French, has a different eye colour and is several years older than the vanished child. His ears look totally different, too, as is noted by the private detective who begins looking into the case. Despite the additional involvement of the FBI, it takes almost five months for Bourdin to be found out. How the family could have believed this was Nicholas – or whether indeed they did believe it – is the subject of this riveting film. It expertly weaves together interviews with the family and the imposter himself and places these in context with subtle and clever reconstructions. Barclay’s sister made a big impression on me. Her account of travelling to Spain to retrieve her “brother” – and the countdown to the moment of their meeting – is horrifically compelling. And Bourdin himself – seemingly remorseless and even smug about his deceptions – is disturbingly charismatic. The most gripping and mind-boggling documentary I’ve ever seen.