The Surprising—and Welcome—Comeback of Cinema Vérité

While reflecting on the artworks that moved me most this year, I did a double take: was I getting into cinéma vérité? In 2025? This couldn’t be. I’d always thought of myself as too impatient for raw footage and long, unedited takes—I liked my stories synthesized. And I remained unconvinced by the old utopian claims of the fly-on-the-wall view touted by those French filmmakers of the ’50s and ’60s: even as observational cinema tries to avoid mani