The best Ethan Hawke’s documentary movies
We present our ranking of the best Ethan Hawke’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Ethan Hawke.
21 Years: Richard Linklater
6.5/10
A journey through the professional life of innovative film director Richard Linklater: 21 years creating films, carving his signature in pop culture; an analysis of his style and motivations, through the funny and moving testimonies of close friends and collaborators, actors and other filmmakers.
The King
6.9/10
A cultural portrait of the American dream at a critical time in the nation’s history. Set against the 2016 American election, The King takes a musical road trip across the country in Elvis Presley's 1963 Rolls Royce.
At Sundance
2.6/10
A group portrait of filmmakers attend the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Featuring Matthew Harrison, Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Todd Haynes, Greg Araki, Abel Ferrara, Atom Egoyan, James Gray, Robert Redford, Haskell Wexler, among many others. Co-directed by Amy Hobby. [Filmed in Pixelvision and blown-up to evocatively grainy 16mm.]
Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny
7.3/10
Highlighting one of the most innovative American directors, this film reveals the path traveled by the auteur from his small-town Texas roots to his warm reception on the awards circuit. Long before he directed Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s intense desire to create fueled his work outside the Hollywood system. Rather than leave Texas, he chose to collaborate with like-minded artists crafting modest, low-budget films in a DIY style. His ability to showcase realistic characters and tell honest stories was evident from his films, and others soon took notice of his raw talent.
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
8/10
Academy Award®–winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.
All the Love You Cannes!
6.5/10
Known for what must be the cheapest and cheesiest of the indie film world, Troma films takes on Cannes with gallons of fake blood, the Tronettes, and numerous hijinks by an uncontrollable group of volunteer Troma fans, costumed, naked, and did I mention covered with blood? While any publicity is good publicity, the low budget Troma films must wonder what this will do to their reputation. And I think they're thinking, woohoo!
Chelsea on the Rocks
5.9/10
Chelsea on the Rocks celebrates the personalities and artistic voices that have emerged from New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. Once considered an untouchable, impenetrable tower for writers, artists, musicians and mavericks, it has been recently claimed as a boutique hotel venture for a management company that shows disregard for its formidable history. –Cannes Film Festival
Directed by Sidney Lumet: How the Devil Was Made
7.5/10
An involved behind-the-scenes documentary that focuses on the High Definition cameras used for the movie as well as intimate interviews with the cast and crew. It is a short featurette, but never fails to be interesting.
Twelve Years
This documentary, chronicles the twelve-year production of Boyhood (2014) and features on-set footage and interviews with cast and crew.
All You Zombies: Bringing 'Predestination' to Life
6.7/10
Documentary about the making of the Spierig Brothers' 2014 film PREDESTINATION that is based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 science-fiction short story '—All You Zombies—'. Through interviews with cast and crew, film clips and behind-the-scenes footage, this documentary thoroughly explores how the film came to be from casting to pre-production to principal photography to post-production. Interviewees include writers/directors Michael and Peter Spierig, producers Paddy McDonald and Tim McGahan, director of photography Ben Nott, special makeup effects designer Steve Boyle, production designer Matthew Putland, special makeup effects supervisor Samantha Lyttle, costume designer Wendy Cork, film editor Matt Villa, and actors Sarah Snook, Noah Taylor and Ethan Hawke.
Chattanooga Strong
5.2/10
Following the July 2015 shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Peyton Manning sets up a fund to benefit the families of the service members and police officers who were killed.
After Before
7.7/10
A documentary that takes a look at the production of BEFORE MIDNIGHT. As the film starts, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are sitting around as filming has just completed. From here we get some terrific stories as they talk about the characters as well as what they bring and take from them. We also get footage from the filming of the movie where we get to see how the actors and director work together to try and build up the scenes.
Seymour: An Introduction
7.5/10
Ethan Hawke directs this intimate documentary portrait of classical pianist, composer, author, teacher and sage Seymour Bernstein.
Welcome Nowhere
7.4/10
Narrated by Ethan Hawke, Welcome Nowhere tells the true story of a community of Roma people (commonly known as Gypsies) who live in old train boxcars in Sofia, Bulgaria after being forcibly evicted from their homes. Without bathrooms for more than 200 people, they struggle to survive, waiting for help from the government that never seems to come.
The Space in Between
A new piece in which Linklater and actor-cowriters Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke discuss the trilogy, moderated by critic Kent Jones.
Before the End
Before the End responds to the ethos and fanbase of the Before series while considering the impact of the pandemic on filmmaking, films, fans and characters too. Primarily, the work is an experiment with updating the Kuleshov effect for social media, that is, showing how the juxtaposition of images will be read by a cinema audience as narrative, even though the projection of emotional connections between the images is, as here, entirely the construct of the audience. For study purposes. This simulation of a fourth ‘Before’ film for the pandemic sees Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) on a video call during lockdown in 2020, separated, and unwittingly recreating the scene in the record booth from Before Sunrise. The video incorporates footage from the Q&As that Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy did with Cameron Bailey for TIFF Originals on 30 April and 12 May 2020 respectively.
Linklater: On Cinema and Time
7.8/10
If cinema is the art of time, Linklater is one of its most thoughtful and engaged directors. Unlike other filmmakers identified as auteurs, Linklater’s distinction is not found on the surface of his films, in a visual style or signature shot, but rather in their DNA, as ongoing conversations with cinema, which is to say, with time itself. A visual essay produced by Sight and Sound.
