# Personal Documentary — Format

> Filmmaker's own life / journey / family / experience. Vulnerable. First-person.

## Format basics

- Length: 60-120 min
- Filmmaker as subject (often)
- First-person POV
- Vulnerability central
- Subjective lens
- Often family / relationship focused

## Structure

```
OPENING (5-10 min)
- Filmmaker introduced
- Specific question / journey

ACT 1 (10-30 min)
- Personal background
- Why this matters

ACT 2 (30-75 min)
- The journey unfolds
- Family / relationships
- Discoveries / vulnerabilities

ACT 3 (75-100 min)
- Insight / change
- New understanding

OUTRO (100-110 min)
- Where filmmaker stands now
- Open question
```

## Famous personal documentaries

- "Stories We Tell" (Sarah Polley)
- "Flee" (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
- "Faces Places" (Agnès Varda + JR)
- "The Velvet Underground" (Todd Haynes — personal-essay hybrid)
- "Honeyland" (about a beekeeper, but personal)
- "Be Natural" (about Alice Guy-Blaché — personal essay)

## Sample personal documentary concept

```
TITLE: "My Father's Coffee"

CONCEPT: Filmmaker (woman, 35) returns to Baku after 15 years
abroad to make peace with her recently deceased father. He owned
a coffee shop she resented as a child. Now she runs it for one
year, learning who he was through the daily rituals he loved.

LENGTH: 80 minutes

STRUCTURE:

OPENING (0-8 min):
- Filmmaker arriving in Baku
- Walking to the coffee shop
- Standing outside, looking through window
- Voiceover: "I left Azerbaijan when I was nineteen. I told myself
I wasn't running from him. I was. Now he's gone and I have to
finally face what I left behind."

ACT 1 (8-25 min):
- Opening the shop alone
- Discovering his routines
- Talking to longtime customers
- Reading his old notebooks
- Resentment surfacing

ACT 2 (25-60 min):
- The year unfolds
- Specific customers tell stories of her father
- She slowly learns who he was as a person, not just her father
- The shop becomes hers
- Brother visits (also estranged)
- Their reckoning

ACT 3 (60-75 min):
- Anniversary of his death
- She holds a small gathering at the shop
- Customers gather
- They tell stories
- She accepts him

OUTRO (75-80 min):
- The shop the next morning
- Filmmaker pouring coffee for first customer
- "Every morning, I make coffee. The way he taught me. The way
his father taught him. I am part of something I refused to be
part of. I think he would be glad."
- Final shot: empty cup on her father's old table.
```

## Key principles

### Vulnerability is the project
- Don't sanitize
- Real emotions
- Audience trust through honesty

### Specificity
- Specific person, specific journey
- Universal through specific

### Family ethics
- Family members involved
- Their consent matters
- Honor their stories

### Process visible
- Filmmaker's growth
- Don't hide behind smoothness

### Resolution honest
- Don't manufacture closure
- Real resolution (or its absence)
- Truth of the journey

## Sub-types

### Family memoir
- Family relationships
- Often parent or child focus

### Identity exploration
- LGBTQ+, racial, cultural identity
- Personal becoming political

### Journey / quest
- Specific search
- Geographic or emotional

### Coming-to-terms
- Trauma / loss processing
- Recovery / acceptance

### Memoir-style
- Life's chapters
- Reflection

## When to use

- Personal story to tell
- Vulnerability available
- Family / community willing
- Festival / awards aspiration
- Cultural / political moment

## Common mistakes

- Self-indulgent (audience must care)
- Avoiding the real vulnerability
- Manipulating family
- Sentimentality without earning
- Hiding behind smoothness
- Missing universal angle
