Movies like Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014)
The best movies like Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People (2014) are Naqoyqatsi (2002), Fuck (2006) and Come See Me in the Good Light (2025). If Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People hooked you with its documentary, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedBaraka (1992)8.2/10 from 735 votes
- NewestCome See Me in the Good Light (2025)Released 2025
Naqoyqatsi (2002)
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFuck (2006)
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCome See Me in the Good Light (2025)
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAll the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAs I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000)
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHeart of a Dog (2015)
Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother and her beloved dog.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChadwick Boseman: A Tribute for a King (2020)
A tribute to Chadwick Boseman, celebrating his life and legacy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisI Am Heath Ledger (2017)
The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Art of the Steal (2010)
A gripping tale of intrigue and mystery in the art world, this film traces the history of a collection of Post-Impressionist paintings - worth billions - which became the subject of a power struggle after the death of its owner. Dr. Albert Barnes.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGod Grew Tired of Us (2006)
Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBaraka (1992)
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisNothing Like a Dame (2018)
BBC Arena's documentary on the Dames of British Theatre and film featuring Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Joan Plowright on screen together for the first time as they reminisce over a long summer weekend in a house Joan once shared with Sir Laurence Olivier.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEx Libris: The New York Public Library (2017)
A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me (2023)
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCameraperson (2016)
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTongues Untied (1990)
Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the "Institute of Snap!thology," where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like this35 Up (1991)
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFinding Vivian Maier (2014)
Vivian Maier's photos were seemingly destined for obscurity, lost among the clutter of the countless objects she'd collected throughout her life. Instead these images have shaken the world of street photography and irrevocably changed the life of the man who brought them to the public eye. This film brings to life the interesting turns and travails of the improbable saga of John Maloof's discovery of Vivian Maier, unravelling this mysterious tale through her documentary films, photographs, odd collections and personal accounts from the people that knew her. What started as a blog to show her work quickly became a viral sensation in the photography world. Photos destined for the trash heap now line gallery exhibitions, a forthcoming book and this documentary film.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures (2016)
Nude men in rubber suits, close-ups of erections, objects shoved in the most intimate of places—these are photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, known by many as the most controversial photographer of the twentieth century. Openly gay, Mapplethorpe took images of male sex, nudity, and fetish to extremes that resulted in his work still being labelled by some as pornography masquerading as art. But less talked about are the more serene, yet striking portraits of flowers, sculptures, and perfectly framed human forms that are equally pioneering and powerful.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLA Originals (2020)
Photographer Estevan Oriol and artist Mister Cartoon turned their Chicano roots into gritty art, impacting street culture, hip hop and beyond.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both documentary
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Painter and the Thief (2020)
When two of artist Barbora Kysilkova’s most valuable paintings are stolen from a gallery at Frogner in Oslo, the police are able to find the thief after a few days, but the paintings are nowhere to be found. Barbora goes to the trial in hopes of finding clues, but instead she ends up asking the thief if she can paint a portrait of him. This will be the start of a very unusual friendship. Over three years, the cinematic documentary follows the incredible story of the artist looking for her stolen paintings, while at the same time turning the thief into art.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBerra (TBA)
A film about art, mathematics, friendship, and social deprivation. Bertil lives in a decommissioned railway station in Skåne. He is internationally renowned, with monumental works displayed across Sweden, yet to gather the courage to walk to the local grocery store he needs a few glasses of wine under his belt. He is powerful, imaginative, humorous, and a resourceful storyteller. He jokes and performs for those around him whenever the opportunity arises. His sculptures are geometrically and mathematically calculated, and his tools are meticulously organized — but his life can be chaotic. One day, something happens: Bertil’s sculptures have disappeared.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Lee Miller: A Crazy Way of Seeing (2001)
Documentary charting the fascinating life and work of Lee Miller, a model for Vogue in 1920s New York who became the only female photojournalist to cover the Second World War. Having given up photography in later life and virtually disowned her own work, Miller's extraordinary archive of 40,000 negatives was only rediscovered after her death. George Melly, David Hare, friends, colleagues and her only son, Tony Penrose, trace the story of her unconventional life through her own remarkable pictures and photographs, as well as rarely seen archive footage.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Sofonisba's Chess Game (2025)
An illuminating examination of Sofonisba Anguissola's iconic masterpiece as a window into the artist's full oeuvre while painting a detailed picture of Sofonisba's journey and the world she lived in to become one of the most accomplished female artists of her time. At a time when women were typically regarded as objects or madonnas to be represented in art, Sofonisba Anguissola (1532/5-1625) was something very different indeed: a highly respected painter and teacher who interacted with the likes of Michelangelo and Anthony van Dyck, and whose remarkable portraits were enthusiastically sought by many of the most powerful figures of the age. The Chess Game by Sofonisba is a remarkable group portrait of three of her sisters and a maid. It is widely considered to be one of her most compelling and innovative artworks: a painting whose many subtle levels of meaning offer a fascinating window on Sofonisba, her family, and contemporary 16th-century values.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Pictura (1951)
A documentary film directed by seven famous directors, and narrated by several famous Hollywood actors. The film attempts to give the general filmgoing public a taste of art history and art appreciation.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Gauguin: A Dangerous Life (2019)
Gauguin’s vivid artworks sell for millions. He was an inspired and committed multi-media artist who worked with the Impressionists and had a tempestuous relationship with Vincent van Gogh. But he was also a competitive and rapacious man who left his wife to bring up five children and used his colonial privilege to travel to Polynesia, where in his 40s he took ‘wives’ between 13 and 15 years old, creating images of them and their world that promoted a fantasy paradise of an unspoilt Eden in the Pacific. Later, he challenged the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church in defence of the indigenous people, dying in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, sick, impoverished and alone.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Mondongo II: Portrait of Mondongo (2024)
“This is a film about the end of a friendship. It wasn’t meant to be. Fifteen years ago, they painted my portrait.” (Mariano Llinás)
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Cinema Through the Eye of Magnum (2017)
The film tells the story of the intimate and unprecedented encounter between the photojournalists of the Magnum Agency and the world of cinema. The confrontation of two seemingly opposite worlds – fiction and reality. For 70 years their paths crossed: a family of photographers, amongst them the biggest names in photography, and a family of actors and filmmakers who helped write the history of cinema, from John Huston to Marilyn Monroe to Orson Welles, Kate Winslet and Sean Penn.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
Still Life (1978)
This film explores the transformation of an image from color negative to color positive on one film stock. “The Still Life“ was painted its color negative during the filming and then the exposed film was processed and printed on color negative printstock.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both documentary
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People?
The closest matches to Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People are Naqoyqatsi (2002), Fuck (2006) and Come See Me in the Good Light (2025). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People?
Start with Naqoyqatsi (2002), the closest match to Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People.
What is the highest-rated movie like Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People?
Baraka (1992), rated 8.2/10 by 735 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People?
Come See Me in the Good Light (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People?
Yes: Naqoyqatsi (2002), Fuck (2006) and Come See Me in the Good Light (2025).
How are movies similar to Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.