Can the documentary be useful? Can a film change how its viewers think about the world and their potential role in it? In Kill the Documentary, the award-winning director Jill Godmilow issues an urgent call for a new kind of nonfiction filmmaking. She critiques documentary films from Nanook of the North to the recent Ken Burns/Lynn Novick series The Vietnam War.Tethered to what Godmilow calls thepedigree of the realand thepornography of the real,they fail to activate their viewersengagement with historical or present-day problems. Whether depicting the hardships of poverty or the horrors of war, conventional documentaries produce anus-watching-themmode that ultimately reinforces self-satisfaction and self-absorption. In place of the conventional documentary, Godmilow advocates for apostrealistcinema. Instead of offering the faux empathy and sentimental spectacle of mainstream documentaries, postrealist nonfiction films are acts of resistance. They are experimental, in