Vigo’s poignant view of the city of Nice is a creative "document" in the style of Dziga Vertov, and was in fact shot by Vertov’s brother, cameraman Boris Kaufman. The film rests mainly on the contrast between the idlers sprawled out in the sun, enjoying the luxuries of the hotels and casinos, and the poor sections of the old town.

Buñuel’s documentary marks a shift from the surrealism of his early films to the direct engagement with reality of his later work. An account of the monstrous living conditions in the poorest district of northern Spain, "Las Hurdes," the film juxtaposes images of human degradation with matter-of-fact, travelogue-style commentary written by the poet Pierre Unik. The work was banned by the Spanish government.

One of France’s most important documentary filmmakers, Georges Franju established an international reputation with this poetic portrait of the slaughterhouse of La Vilette in Paris. The work of the abattoir is depicted with painful directness, in stark contrast to the calm domesticity of the surrounding Parisian suburb. In attempting "to restore to documentary reality its appearance of artifice," he created a classic postwar document whose forcefulness and poetry remain undiminished today.