Film

Leviathan

Name: Leviathan
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2013
Cast: Declan Conneely, Johnny Gatcombe, Adrian Guillette, Brian Jannelle, Clyde Lee

Leviathan drops you onto a New England trawler with cameras lashed to nets, hulls and fishermen's bodies, turning a night's catch into something closer to abstract cinema than reportage. There's no narration, barely any dialogue — just gulls, chains, blood and diesel roar. It's less a film about fishing than an experience of it, made for viewers who want cinema to disorient rather than explain.

TMDb rating

6.5

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Deadliest Catch2005

If Leviathan gave you the sensation of commercial fishing without the facts, this fills in every blank — same brutal Bering Sea labour, but now with skippers, quotas, and years of crew drama to get attached to.

But It's reality TV through and through — manufactured tension, reused footage, editing built for cliffhangers rather than art.

Sweetgrass2009

The directors' own earlier film, following the last sheep drive through Montana's mountains with the same camera-as-witness patience. Slower and quieter, but the same refusal to explain what you're watching.

But Even slower than Leviathan, with long stretches of near-silence that will test anyone hoping for a story.

Samsara2011

A globe-spanning, wordless tone poem shot on 70mm — factories, deserts, prayer, slaughterhouses — that shares Leviathan's faith that images alone can carry a film's argument.

But Its beauty can tip into travelogue prettiness that Leviathan's grime and salt spray never allow itself.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Man of Aran1934

Robert Flaherty staged this documentary about Irish islanders wresting a living from the same brutal Atlantic eighty years before GoPros existed — proof that cinema has always tried to put audiences inside the fisherman's body, just with different tools.

Silent-era images of currachs launching into monstrous surf and men hauling nets by hand — astonishingly physical filmmaking from a director who staged 'documentary' scenes for maximum visceral impact.

But It's openly manufactured — reenacted rituals dressed as ethnography — which sits oddly if you want Leviathan's unmediated rawness.

Baraka1992

Ron Fricke's earlier non-narrative epic, stitching together rituals and machines from around the world into something closer to meditation than documentary — the ancestor of Leviathan's method.

But More reverent and less abrasive; it wants awe rather than the queasy disorientation Leviathan goes for.

Honeyland2019

An intimate, unnarrated documentary about a beekeeper in rural North Macedonia — small in scale where Leviathan is vast, but built from the same trust that watching quietly is enough.

But It's tender and personal rather than sensory-overload; expect faces and relationships, not machinery and chaos.

The Perfect Storm2000

A mainstream dramatisation of the same world — New England fishermen against a monstrous sea — with movie stars, a score, and a plot where Leviathan gave you none.

But It's a studio disaster film at heart, sentimental and CGI-heavy where Leviathan is raw and unmediated.

All Is Lost2013

Robert Redford alone on a sinking yacht, almost no dialogue, the ocean filmed as something indifferent and enormous — a narrative feature that shares Leviathan's sense of the sea as adversary.

But It's a survival thriller with a clear arc, a very different animal from Leviathan's plotless immersion.

Manakamana2013no page yet

Another Sensory Ethnography Lab production, shot entirely from inside a cable car in Nepal — same unblinking camera, same trust in duration, wildly different subject.

But It's static and repetitive by design; if Leviathan's chaos appealed to you, this stillness might feel like the opposite pleasure.

Gunda2021

A black-and-white documentary that puts you at eye level with a pig, chickens and cattle on a farm — no music, no narration, pure animal-eye immersion in the same spirit as Leviathan.

But It's gentle where Leviathan is violent; nothing here will match the sensory assault of the trawler.

Microcosmos1996

Same instinct to strap a camera where a human eye has never been and let alien textures do the talking — Leviathan does it with fish guts and hull cameras, this does it with dew drops and beetle legs.

Extreme macro photography turns a French meadow into another planet — ants, snails and beetles filmed with such intimacy that scale itself becomes the subject, just like Leviathan's disorienting camera placements.

But It's gentle and often funny where Leviathan is grim; expect wonder, not dread.

The Wages of Fear1953

Swap the trawler for two trucks of nitroglycerin on South American mountain roads — same premise underneath: desperate men doing lethal, unglamorous work for money, filmed with total commitment to physical tension.

A tense, sweat-soaked thriller about men trucking explosives through jungle roads for a paycheck — dangerous labour filmed with a director's obsessive eye for procedure and dread.

But It's a tightly plotted narrative thriller with dialogue and characters — the polar opposite of Leviathan's abstraction, if that's specifically what you wanted more of.