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Some realities are too shocking to capture through official channels... Join us as we count down the most unsettling documentaries where filmmakers had to go undercover to expose the truth! For this list, we're exploring films whose disturbing subject matter required secret or unauthorized footage to bring hidden worlds into the light. Which of these secret exposés shook you the most?
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00:00So I thought, what if I became a spiritual leader?
00:03If I could do it, wouldn't it prove anyone could?
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for documentaries so unsettling
00:12or strange in their subject matter that footage had to be shot without authorization.
00:2210. Life of Crime Trilogy
00:24Even the boldest exposés in HBO's America Undercover series were typically made through
00:29the proper channels. One year in a life of crime was one notable exception.
00:33John Alpert used hidden cameras to follow the lives of two young criminals throughout 1984.
00:39All together, you guys are going to get how much money for this stuff?
00:41About $40 a piece.
00:43$40, yeah?
00:44Yeah.
00:44This unique intimacy with the mean streets of Newark, New Jersey exposed the journalist to
00:49tremendous danger. It also graphically exposed audiences in 1989 to street crime, violence,
00:55and even substance use.
00:57He's my original teacher. He's the best.
01:01Number one.
01:031998's Life of Crime 2 catches up with Alpert's tragic associates while adding a third.
01:08By the end of Life of Crime 1984 to 2020, they are all dead.
01:12The trilogy pushes legal and ethical boundaries further than most true crime profiles, but
01:17is considered worth the discomfort.
01:19Don't give up.
01:20No, you can do it, ma.
01:21Number nine. The Look of Silence
01:23Joshua Oppenheimer extracted harrowing accounts from perpetrators of Indonesia's anti-communist
01:29purge for 2012's The Act of Killing. This inspired an optometrist identified as Adi Rukun
01:35to pursue more information. The Look of Silence secretly follows him as he prepares to interrogate
01:40his brother's killers during routine eye exams.
01:43How are you, sir?
01:45How are you, sir?
01:46How are you, sir?
01:46How are you, sir?
01:47How are you, sir?
01:47How are you, sir?
01:48How are you, sir?
01:49How are you, sir?
01:49How are you, sir?
01:50He and most of the crew are kept anonymous to protect them from these dangerous people.
01:54This security also allowed Oppenheimer to further examine a culture of covering up, if not justifying, atrocities.
02:08If the act of killing was thought-provoking in its humanization of monsters, the look of silence
02:14is more eerie in its approach to their victims. Either way, it's hard to look away from Oppenheimer's duplet.
02:19How are you, sir?
02:22How are you, sir?
02:23How are you, sir?
02:24How are you, sir?
02:26How are you, sir?
02:28How are you, sir?
02:29How are you, sir?
02:29How are you, sir?
02:298.
02:30Kumare.
02:31Vikram Gandhi came out of his Hindi upbringing with his skepticism about religion and how Western
02:36culture appropriates Eastern. Thus, the Punjabi American adopted a stereotypical persona
02:42and started his own New Age religion to expose an industry in Kumare.
02:46And for once, I was capable of anything.
02:49When he would focus on the different chakras, it was just on fire. It was very powerful.
02:55It's wild what he's able to get his followers to do, with promises of spiritual fulfillment
03:00and the assumption that they're not being filmed for public viewing. Oftentimes, however,
03:04Gandhi's hoax exposes very serious exploitation of people's desperation for answers in life.
03:17Made easily available for free viewing, Kumare depicts fraudulent religious awakenings with
03:23the noble intention of deconstructing that deception. It's still irreverent enough to
03:27acknowledge that the process gets pretty awkward.
03:29You don't need anyone outside yourself to make you happy.
03:347.
03:35Of Fathers and Sons
03:36Covert Syrian journalists risked their lives to smuggle out the horrors of civil war for
03:41films like City of Ghosts. With Of Fathers and Sons, Berlin-based Talal Durki risked his
03:47life to infiltrate that horror. He posed as a Salafi sympathizer in order to intimately profile
03:52the family of a jihadist. It's surreal to see a man be such a kind father and host in one
03:58moment, then wage war in the name of terrorism and hatred in the next.
04:06Durki never truly sympathizes with their cause, but shows how ingrained it is in ideologues and
04:12their family tradition. The Western viewers, for whom Of Fathers and Sons was made, praised
04:16its radical empathy, no matter how distressing the cognitive dissonance.
04:236. Willowbrook, The Last Great Disgrace
04:26Journalist Geraldo Rivera's big break went inside the Willowbrook State School on Staten
04:32Island.
04:43The staff at this Institute for the Intellectually Handicapped didn't want the world to know
04:48about its conditions, save for a whistleblower who snuck Rivera through the halls. Willowbrook,
04:53The Last Disgrace, found patients subjected to squalor and direct abuse, including experiments
04:59with deliberate hepatitis outbreaks. These deeply disturbing images earned Rivera a Peabody
05:04award, and led to Willowbrook's eventual closure.
05:07Our intention is not just to horrify, but also to demonstrate that it doesn't have to
05:11be that way.
05:12The school has since faded into urban legends around New York, including the boogeyman figure,
05:17Cropsey. The 2009 documentary of the same name incorporates Rivera's expose to contextualize
05:23how it traumatized the community, never mind the horror it leaked to the whole world.
05:335. Dark Days
05:35British immigrant Mark Singer was periodically living in Manhattan's Freedom Tunnel when he
05:40decided to document its homeless community.
05:42He's real cool. He's a lazy cat with a pretty one, you know.
05:46This was done without permits and by illegal means, which became more serious when a train
05:52rerouting project prompted forced evictions. Dark Days' vision of an empathetic portrait
05:57of homelessness often went beyond the pale in its frank depiction of plight.
06:09It was even shot in eerie monochrome, not because of an artistic choice, but because of the inexperienced
06:18filmmaker's limited means. Despite the controversial creep factor in all of this, the success of Dark Days
06:24did more than launch Singer's career as an activist documentarian. He succeeded in his
06:29mission to afford his friends a better life and public sympathy.
06:32If it ever, never, never, ever happened, I would never go homeless again. That was like a nightmare.
06:414. Dominion
06:43Animal rights activist Chris Delfors used hidden cameras to observe the Australian pig farming
06:48industry in 2014's Lucent. He then incorporated drones to expand his expose on animal
06:54agriculture around the world. Dominion is two hours of graphic footage of abuse, with dramatic
06:59style, celebrity narrations, and the presentation of this horror as business as usual for farmers.
07:05It wasn't just that community which deemed this approach emotionally manipulative, with little
07:09consideration for practical solutions to an overburdened industry.
07:13The World Heritage Macquarie Harbor, on Tasmania's west coast, is home to the largest concentration of fish farms in the
07:19country.
07:20Even those sympathetic to Delfors's cause say that, Dominion is simply too much for most viewers to handle.
07:27It's certainly way more than the animal agriculture industry would want them to see.
07:31Does this superiority complex, this pure selfishness, define who we are as a species?
07:373. Tickled
07:38Journalist and humorist David Farrier favors stories that tickle the audience. But even his 2016 expose, Tickle, is bound to
07:47give them goosebumps.
07:48Do not release them at any time during the entire tickle test.
07:51Farrier and Dylan Reeve got into legal hot water for looking into an industry of competitive endurance tickling videos dominated
07:58by Jane O'Brien Media.
08:00With pending lawsuits, I'm cautious and don't want to storm into the studio.
08:05Thus, the New Zealanders went undercover in the U.S. to unearth the shady mindsets and practices that drive this
08:11culture.
08:11An already quirky subject ends up revealing the darkness in catering to certain niche markets.
08:17Farrier would revisit this through the macabre sightseeing industry in the 2020 docuseries Dark Tourist.
08:23Tickled just twists the nerves more than even the filmmakers expected.
08:27I mean, did you think all this had sort of come to an end?
08:302. Holy Hell
08:31Will Allen was a documentarian for West Hollywood's Buddhafield community, until he escaped in 2007 over their growing cult tendencies.
08:40Nine years later, Holy Hell exposed them, with three decades worth of footage captured.
08:45If you think of tomorrow, you are unhappy. If you think of the past, you can become miserable.
08:51And happiness is wherever you are. Whatever you are is where happiness is.
08:55This included new material that Polly Morgan shot from a distance while hiding.
09:00Audiences saw things that Buddhafield guru Michael Rostand didn't want Allen to shoot, as the supposed cult grew more bizarre
09:07and aggressive under his God complex.
09:09You could only comprehend what this means. To finally have God be revealed to you in his purest form. Finally!
09:18Holy Hell is now considered one of the most vivid studies in New Age religion, at its most surreal and
09:24controlling.
09:24As bizarre as the documentary itself, is the fact that Rostand's community is still continuing to thrive in hiding in
09:31Hawaii.
09:32This was Michelle's worst fear. That the Buddhafield was going to be called a cult.
09:37Number one, Under the Sun. There's a whole industry of undercover investigations into the highly secretive society of North Korea.
09:46Perhaps the boldest is Under the Sun, which wasn't officially produced as critical propaganda.
09:59Russian filmmaker Vidali Manski gained approval to document a family in Pyongyang as their daughter joins the Korean Children's Union.
10:07The citizens' devotion and mechanical collectivism are uncomfortable enough for an outsider to watch, but Manski kept cameras rolling in
10:14between takes, to show how meticulously staged the quote-unquote documentary was, and the personality cult surrounding it.
10:21Kim Jong Il's birthday celebrations.
10:33Under the Sun is the definitive demonstration of this society's rigid personal fantasy versus harsh reality.
10:39It also demonstrates the importance of documentaries sharing the creepiest realities of our world.
10:55What are some other documentaries that were too bizarre to be filmed through formal routes?
10:59Expose this expose in the comments.
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