There’s no shortage of documentaries about famous photographers, but narrative films that put photography at the center of their stories are a different breed entirely. These movies explore what it means to capture images, whether as art, obsession, escape, or evidence. From Hitchcock’s voyeuristic thriller to quiet Swedish dramas, here are 10 films that every photographer should see.
Each film includes its Rotten Tomatoes scores, with the critic score listed first and the audience score second. You’ll notice some interesting gaps between the two, particularly on films that resonate more strongly with photographers than with general viewers.
Rear Window (1954) | 99% / 95%
Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece remains the definitive film about the ethics of looking. Jimmy Stewart plays L.B. Jefferies, a globe-trotting photojournalist confined to his apartment with a broken leg, who passes the time by watching his neighbors through a telephoto lens. When he becomes convinced he’s witnessed a murder, his professional instinct to document collides with questions about privacy, voyeurism, and the photographer’s role as witness.
The film works as both a taut thriller and a meditation on what photographers actually do. Jefferies frames his neighbors’ lives into neat visual narratives, and Hitchcock implicates us in his gaze. Every photographer who has ever lingered a moment too long with their lens pointed at a stranger will recognize something uncomfortable here.
One Hour Photo (2002) | 81% / 65%
Robin Williams delivered one of his most chilling performances as Sy Parrish, a photo lab technician at a big-box store who becomes dangerously fixated on a suburban family whose pictures he has developed for years. The film is a time capsule of the analog era, when strangers handled your most intimate moments as part of their daily work.
Director Mark Romanek fills the frame with the sterile fluorescence of retail spaces, making Sy’s loneliness almost unbearable to watch. The movie asks unsettling questions about the one-sided intimacy that photo processing once created. Sy knows this family’s vacations, birthdays, and milestones better than they do, and they have no idea he exists.
City of God (2002) | 91% / 97%
Fernando Meirelles’ explosive film about gang warfare in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro puts a camera in the hands of its protagonist, Rocket, a young man surrounded by violence who dreams of becoming a photojournalist. While his childhood friends descend into crime, Rocket’s camera becomes his ticket out, his way of documenting a world that most of Brazil pretends doesn’t exist.
The film’s frenetic visual style mirrors the chaos of its setting, but the quieter moments with Rocket and his camera are its emotional core. Photography here isn’t a hobby or even an art form. It’s survival, bearing witness, and the hope that images might change something.
Salvador (1986) | 90% / 85%
Oliver Stone’s raw, confrontational film stars James Woods as Richard Boyle, a burned-out journalist who heads to El Salvador in 1980 looking for one last big story and finds himself in the middle of a nightmare. John Savage plays his friend John Cassady, a photojournalist chasing the perfect shot amid the chaos. Based on the real Boyle’s experiences, the film depicts the moral compromises and physical dangers that those covering conflict face.
Woods plays Boyle as deeply flawed, a hustler who slowly rediscovers his conscience amid atrocities. The film doesn’t romanticize war photography. It shows the drinking, the cynicism, the adrenaline addiction, and the genuine horror of watching people die while you’re there to document it. It’s not an easy film to watch, but it’s worth a look.
Proof (1991) | 94% / 80%
This Australian gem stars Hugo Weaving as Martin, a blind man who takes photographs to verify that the world around him matches what people describe to him. He doesn’t trust anyone, convinced that people have lied to him his whole life, and uses his camera to create evidence he can have others interpret.
It’s a fascinating premise that director Jocelyn Moorhouse explores with intelligence. The film asks what photographs actually prove, whether they’re objective records or just another form of subjective experience. For Martin, images are tools for navigating a world he can’t see, but the film suggests that sighted people might be just as uncertain about what’s real.
Memento (2000) | 93% / 94%
Christopher Nolan’s breakthrough film follows Leonard Shelby, a man with anterograde amnesia who can’t form new memories, as he hunts for his wife’s killer. His system for navigating the world relies heavily on Polaroid photographs, which he labels with notes to remind himself of people, places, and facts.
The film’s famous reverse chronology puts the audience in Leonard’s disoriented state, but it’s his relationship to his photographs that resonates most for image-makers. His Polaroids are supposed to be objective anchors, but we gradually realize they can be manipulated, misread, and weaponized. It’s a dark meditation on the faith we place in photographic evidence.
Kodachrome (2017) | 74% / 72%
Ed Harris plays a famous photographer dying of cancer who convinces his estranged son to drive him from New York to Kansas, where the last lab in the world still processing Kodachrome is about to close forever. The film is set in 2010, when Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas actually stopped processing the legendary film stock.
Yes, it’s a road trip reconciliation story with familiar beats. But for anyone who has ever felt the weight of undeveloped film, who understands what it means to have irreplaceable images trapped in an obsolete format, the film’s central quest carries real emotional stakes. The Kodachrome is a MacGuffin, but it’s one that photographers genuinely understand.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013) | 52% / 71%
Critics were lukewarm, but photographers embraced Ben Stiller’s visually gorgeous film about a daydreaming negative assets manager at Life magazine who embarks on a real adventure to find a missing negative. Sean Penn plays a legendary photojournalist who sent the image meant for Life’s final cover, and Stiller’s Walter must track him across the globe.
The film treats the lost negative as a holy grail, and for once, the reverence feels earned. There are beautiful meditations on why some photographers choose not to take certain pictures, and the final reveal of what’s on the negative lands with genuine emotion. It’s also simply one of the most visually stunning films about the act of seeing.
The Killing Fields (1984) | 91% / 91%
Roland Joffé’s harrowing film tells the true story of New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg and his Cambodian colleague Dith Pran, who were separated when the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975. Haing S. Ngor, himself a survivor of the Khmer Rouge, won an Oscar for his portrayal of Pran.
The film examines the complicated ethics of Western journalists in war zones, the relationships they form with local fixers and translators, and the guilt of those who can leave when their colleagues cannot. When the Khmer Rouge take over, Pran must leave his camera equipment behind, and his education and association with Westerners become liabilities that mark him for suspicion.
Everlasting Moments (2008) | 90% / 84%
Jan Troell’s luminous Swedish film follows Maria Larsson, a working-class woman in early 20th century Sweden who won a camera in a lottery years earlier. When hard times force her to try selling it, a kind photographer at the local shop encourages her to use it instead, and she slowly discovers a talent and passion that transforms her difficult life. The film is based on a true story, and Troell shot it on 16mm with subdued colors and grain to echo the look of early photography.
Maria’s journey is quiet and unsentimental. Her abusive husband, her many children, and the demands of poverty leave little room for art. But her trips to the camera shop become moments of possibility. The film understands that for many people, especially women of that era, a camera wasn’t just a tool. It was a window into a larger self.