The Story of Documentary Film offers a poetic, generous and deeply informative journey through the history of nonfiction cinema, reaffirming Mark Cousins as one of the great cinematic essayists of our time.
I opened my Berlinale 2026 with a four-hour screening of The Story of Documentary Film, the first instalment of Mark Cousins’s monumental new 15-hour series on the history of documentary cinema. Screening in the Berlinale Special Series section, it proved the perfect way to begin this year’s festival: a true work of passion and joy that approaches documentary film with poetry, tenderness, and intellectual generosity.
This is the next in a series of Herculean tasks that the director has taken on, from The Story of Film and Women Make Film. The Story of Documentary Film is structured both chronologically and thematically and is the result of decades of intensive research, planning and editing. Alongside canonical classics that offer viewers familiar reference points, Cousins — in his signature style — foregrounds unknown, forgotten, or overlooked treasures, balancing the recognisable with the niche. The effect is an odyssey through global nonfiction cinema that aims to be as internationalist and inclusive as possible.
Cousins’s characteristically simple voiceover provides an inviting entry point into what might otherwise seem slightly nerdy subject matter. Coming from a working-class background that, as he noted in the post-screening Q&A, was not filled with culture, literature, or film, he is committed to welcoming audiences in rather than pushing them away with academic language or gatekeeping cinephilia. The tone of the series is intimate, curious and occasionally humorous, reflecting that of the man himself, who at one point joked with the audience in the cinema in Berlin that he regretted not cooking for us all during the interval of our four-hour screening. This underscored a serious point; that Cousins deliberately resists the accelerated pacing of streaming culture, instead allowing viewers time to sit, breathe, and reflect on the images and histories unfolding on screen.
One audience member remarked that she had spent three months watching Women Make Film, and Cousins seemed delighted by the idea that viewers might engage with his work at their own rhythm. This openness mirrors the heart of the series itself — a project that invites ongoing dialogue rather than delivering a definitive verdict.
Perhaps it’s Cousins’s early scientific training that informs the methodical structure of this overwhelming undertaking, shaped in collaboration with editor Timo Langer. Through his voiceover, Cousins encourages viewers to question his subjectivity: his selection of films, his chronology, and the very notion of a cinematic canon. He is acutely aware of who and what have been excluded — which regions, which communities, which forms of filmmaking — and he makes no claim to universality. Instead, he expresses excitement at the prospect of future filmmakers “blowing a bomb” under his version of film history, just as he has challenged those who came before him.
His passions are evident: a deep love for Japanese, Egyptian, and Syrian documentary traditions, and an abiding admiration for Agnès Varda. Yet he does not remain in the obscure. Hollywood, popular cinema, and even fiction films appear as vital reference points — a reminder that documentary does not exist in isolation but in dialogue with the broader cinematic landscape. Cousins insists that we need the popular as much as the forgotten, the mainstream as much as the marginal.
The result is a series that feels both accessible and expansive: rewarding for dedicated cinephiles while remaining welcoming to those new to documentary history. I will certainly be seeking out the remaining chapters when the full series premieres, and I would highly recommend that anyone with even a passing interest in documentary cinema do the same!
Our team is on the ground at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 12th to 22nd, 2026.
