10 great Olympic documentaries

In France, in the 1890s, two of contemporary culture’s most enduring entities were born: cinema and the modern Olympic Games. The former would find a happy bedfellow in the latter – what could be more cinematic than the human form pushed to its limits?

It was inevitable, then, that films would be made of the Olympics, not least due to their importance as cultural phenomena. But in an alternate reality, it’s not impossible that filmmaking would have been an Olympic discipline too. Between 1912 and 1948, the Olympics awarded medals for various art competitions, including mixed literature, drawings and watercolours, and statues. Perhaps, had the International Olympic Committee not begun commissioning its own official Olympic films in 1912, we could have seen gold medal-winning cinema too.

But those official films were worth their weight in gold all the same. From 1912’s series of shorts to the more elaborate feature-length films that would follow, they rapidly wrote the cinematic language of sports on screen, recognising the power of slow motion, of multiple-angle replays, and of commentary voiceover to add drama to proceedings. Without these films as vital forebears, we wouldn’t have the wall-to-wall Olympic coverage that we see on television today.

From our modern-day standpoint, the films below serve as documents not only of a century’s worth of Olympic Games but of a style of cinema flourishing over the course of decades. With four unofficial films included, they all take very different views of the Games – some intently focused on one athlete, others holistically covering not only the sports but also the surrounding excitement.

Director: Jean de Rovera

Documenting the first Winter Olympic Games is this charming mid-length film, which depicts a decidedly amateurish occasion lacking much of the spectacle of modern-day competitions. Some of the hallmarks of Olympic coverage are already present here: slow-motion footage (of figure skating, showing 11-year-old Sonja Henie, competitor for Norway and future Hollywood star, spinning with abandon); a rapid-fire explanation of a sport (ice hockey, featuring “the piece of wood that takes the place of a ball” and “an ice hockey stick”, both rotated in front of a black background like archaeological discoveries); and a fascination with the human body in flight, as seen in a lengthy ski-jumping montage. 

With all of the sports taking place outdoors – in the modern day, many would take place in the controlled environment of an indoor ice rink – stunning scenery is a constant, with the Alps imposing themselves on almost every shot.

Director: Leni Riefenstahl

A watershed film in the filming of sports, Leni Riefenstahl’s two-part record of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin is an infamous piece of Nazi propaganda – as were the Games for which they act as a record. Here we see the beginnings of the Olympics as a self-mythologising event; Olympia opens on the first relay of the Olympic torch from Greece to Germany, which is used to conjure up images of the ‘ideal’ Aryan form. 

The sporting footage often appears relatively ordinary, simply because of how ubiquitous the techniques have become: a pan from a high vantage point follows track runners (including four-time gold medalist Jesse Owens), and consistent camera positions create visual unity when showing athletes attempting the high jump. The most beautiful sequence comes at the film’s close, marvelling in the grace of divers’ leaps into the water, with quick cuts and dizzying angles creating the impression of weightlessness.

Director: Giorgio Ferroni

The Winter Olympics’ arrival in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 1956 is depicted as a Technicolor fantasy, bringing snowfall that delights the children of this sleepy Italian town. The Olympic torch is impressively ski-slalomed down pristine slopes to the sound of church bells ringing, as if the simultaneous presence of snow and fire was some kind of miracle. 

After this whimsical introduction, the focus turns to the sports, which in the 32 years since Chamonix have professionalised considerably and are explained by an enthusiastic commentary; the camerawork is as simple and crisp as the snowy terrain, only once indulging in a bumpy trip down the bobsleigh track. In the only non-sporting segment, there is an amusing exploration of various nations’ differing mealtime preferences, including the Japanese team’s “refined palates”, the Finns’ six-course breakfasts, and the Russians, “champions in terms of appetite”. With the 2026 Winter Olympics taking place once again in Cortina d’Ampezzo (this time alongside Milan), White Vertigo will soon make an interesting point of historical comparison.

Director: Kon Ichikawa

A wrecking ball crashes into a wall; a building’s facade is violently pulled to the ground; and then, new stadiums stand proud across Tokyo. The Summer Olympics 1964 were a major act of public relations for Japan as a country hoping to shake its image as a WWII axis enemy and to reintroduce itself as high-tech and industrially booming. The Japanese government wanted a safe pair of hands for this project who would deliver a film of historical record, and were greatly displeased by Kon Ichikawa’s holistic approach to putting the Games on film. 

Greater focus is placed on the peripheral, including the crowd (including a gorgeous sequence of umbrellas glistening in the rain) and the ritualistic warm-ups of competitors – feeling prioritised over record-keeping. Shot in ultrawide TohoScope, and in a combination of crisp monochrome and deep Eastmancolor, this is by some distance the most cinematic of all nonfiction Olympic offerings.

Directors: Claude Lelouch, François Reichenbach and others

There are 29 directors credited for this film, also known as Challenge in the Snow; splitting the runtime equally, that would be less than four minutes apiece. No wonder, then, that this unofficial film about the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble (shot in February and ready for the cancelled Cannes Film Festival of May that year) is such a scattershot of ideas, styles and focuses, held together primarily by two repeated pieces of music, one whimsical, one jaunty. 

Even further abstracted from a focus on sports than Tokyo Olympiad, there are very witty ‘behind the curtain’ shots, such as one focused on the propane tank fuelling the Olympic flame, or an impossibly long cherry on a cameraman’s cigarette. When 13 Days in France does get round to filming the sports, the footage is often extraordinary, including a ‘how did they do it?’ tracking shot following an Alpine skier throughout an entire race, and literally dizzying footage of an ice-skater-cum-cameraperson furiously spinning while filming.

Directors: Miloš Forman, Claude Lelouch, Yuri Ozerov, Mai Zetterling, Kon Ichikawa, John Schlesinger, Arthur Penn and Michael Pfleghar

Shot four years after 13 Days in France, and employing something like a formalised version of that film’s concept, this anthology feature by eight internationally renowned filmmakers (including 13 Days’ Lelouch) was shot at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Many segments are laser-focused on one event, including Penn’s ‘The Highest’, which is in essence a 12-minute montage of men gurning as they contort themselves while pole vaulting, Ichikawa’s ‘The Fastest’ (on the men’s 100m sprint), Zetterling’s ‘The Strongest’ (weightlifting), and Forman’s ‘The Decathlon’. 

Schlesinger’s ‘The Longest’ centres around the marathon but takes a wider-view, highlighting the loneliness of the British long distance runner Ron Hill. This is also the only segment to mention the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches by the Black September Organization, albeit focusing primarily on its impact on Hill’s training and mental state. Other segments key in to the often-ignored emotional states of the athletes: Ozerov’s ‘The Beginning’ examines the pensive, tension-filled moments before a contest begins, while Lelouch’s ‘The Losers’ examines the anguish of failure, an uncomfortable sight rarely dwelled on in TV coverage. Pfleghar’s ‘The Women’, which aims to “acknowledge [women’s] presence and contributions”, offers little, and seems primarily preoccupied by the athletes’ beauty and physiques.

Director: Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is a filmmaker drawn inexorably to the extreme, and he found his match in Walter Steiner, the Swiss silver medalist in ski jumping at the 1972 Winter Olympics, who in his early 20s pushed his body and sport to their limits, at times having to intentionally impair his performance for his own safety. 

Interrogating the motives behind man’s desire to fly (Steiner calls the sport ‘ski flying’ on occasion), Herzog, in his first significant on-screen appearance, is softly spoken and compassionate towards Steiner. The director’s fascination seems to be not only with the Olympian’s incredible feats (which are shown in wonderfully gritty 16mm, often in slow motion, and accompanied by Herzog’s frequent musical collaborators Popol Vuh), but with the fact that Steiner’s interests aren’t monomaniacal, and that he at times seems to resent the sport to which he has dedicated much of his life.

Director: Carlos Saura

By the 1990s, the dual purposes of the official Olympic film were being covered elsewhere; as a comprehensive record of the games, TV coverage was far superior, and as an artistic rendering of the occasion, the Olympic opening ceremony was becoming increasingly elaborate and was seen as a must-watch part of the Games (figures estimate a global audience of 3.5 billion watched in 1992). No wonder, then, particularly given Saura’s interest in dance, that the opening of the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, featuring performances by dance troupe La Fura dels Baus and music by Ryuichi Sakamoto, make up a sizeable chunk of Marathon. 

The titular event may be used as a framing device (we return intermittently to the runners throughout the film), but this is an otherwise straightforward highlights reel of the Games, with a skew towards Spanish success stories. Olympics nerds will be interested by the one-time presence of the Unified Team, a joint team featuring 12 former Soviet republics.

Directors: Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk

The pursuit of victory and medals at all costs can lead to horrific abuse, as this film about the journalistic investigation by the Indianapolis Star into Larry Nassar, a team doctor for USA Gymnastics who sexually abused hundreds of girls and young women, shows. Nassar’s crimes, as recounted by survivors, are Athlete A’s primary focus, but the pervasive and insidious nature of abusive practices across the national gymnastic team’s training process is also exposed. 

With this context, famous moments of Olympic gymnastics triumph – including Kerri Strug’s gold medal-winning vault, performed on a badly injured ankle after pressure from her coaches – become devastating moments of failure in safeguarding. The journalistic and eventual police investigations place the blame not only on individual perpetrators but with the organisation of USA Gymnastics as a whole for a culture of silence. Despite survivors (including Maggie Nichols, the athlete referred to in the film’s title) stating that the positive legal action against Nassar has allowed some kind of closure, it will be difficult for viewers of Athlete A to view gymnastics, or any sport in which non-adult athletes compete, the same way again.

Director: Julien Faraut

A group of Japanese women, all in their 70s and 80s, all Olympic gold medalists, reunite for a meal. They were Japan’s volleyball team at the 1964 Summer Olympics – receiving pride of place in Tokyo Olympiad – and many of them haven’t spoken in the decades since. Named the ‘Oriental Witches’ by European press after an unbeaten continental tour, they were notorious for their incredible work ethic, as enforced by Hirofumi Daimatsu (nicknamed ‘Demon Daimatsu’) through severe training practices. 

This modern-day footage adds important first-hand testimony from the athletes, who appear unbothered by the harsh treatment. But it is the rest of the film that thrums with energy, propelled by a combination of archive footage and anime – such was the Witches’ success that they inspired the volleyball manga Attack No. 1, subsequently adapted into an animated TV series.

The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics runs from 26 July to 11 August.

Many of the official films of the Olympic Games can be streamed for free on the Olympics website.