Nanook of the North

The film that launched documentary cinema — and immediately complicated it. Robert Flaherty spent months living among the Inuit people of northern Quebec, and the result is an extraordinary portrait of human resilience against one of the harshest environments on Earth. You watch Nanook and his family build igloos, hunt walrus, and navigate frozen expanses with breathtaking ingenuity. But Flaherty also staged scenes and asked his subjects to use outdated tools for dramatic effect, raising questions about truth and performance in nonfiction filmmaking that documentarians are still wrestling with today. Authentic or constructed, the footage is mesmerizing — a window into a way of life that was already vanishing, captured with genuine awe and affection.