Animated Documentary : the Sincerest Form of Docudrama

Scholarly animated documentaries are usually classified as factual films and fitted into one of Bill Nichols’s documentary modes. However, the sole stance that these products are documentaries is not enough for the viewer to accept them as such. As proved by the existence itself of mockumentary, in order to be perceived as a documentary, a film needs to present a specific set of aesthetics conventionally accepted as veridictive marks, which are absent or extremely limited in animated documentaries. Furthermore, such products not only visually lack an indexical link to reality, but also use “created actors” to reenact and dramatize factual-based stories. Wouldn’t it then be more appropriate to allocate them in the docufiction territory? In particular, considered the reasons why animation is used and that its presence alone is a flagrant declaration of constructedness, this paper proposes to redefine animated documentary as the sincerest form of docudrama.