Film
Rams
Other titles called Rams: the 2015 film.
- Slow-burning
A seventy-four-minute portrait of Dieter Rams at eighty-six, reckoning with a lifetime spent making beautiful objects in a world drowning in beautiful objects. It's part design masterclass, part philosophical unraveling—one man's growing horror at the machine he helped build. Essential for anyone who cares how things look or why we buy them.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you care how objects are made and what they say about the way we live, and you enjoy a quiet, reflective film built around one man's careful, unhurried thinking.
Skip it if you want a crisp design-history survey with product histories and technical detail, since this leans on one man talking and reflecting more than on facts.
What it asks of you: It runs just 74 minutes at a slow, contemplative pace, asking you to sit with stillness and let its questions about excess settle.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Helvetica2007
A documentary about a typeface that became a meditation on design's reach into every corner of visual culture. If you loved Rams' thinking about restraint and function, this explores the same territory through typography and corporate America.
But It's a film about a font. Even at 79 minutes, that premise takes real commitment to care about.
The True Cost2015
Documents the human and environmental cost of fast fashion's relentless cycle. Shares Rams' moral urgency about consumption, but applies it to the clothes industry—where the stakes are visible and devastating.
But Becomes polemical in stretches. It's angrier and less interested in nuance than Rams' quieter despair.
Objectified2009
Gary Hustwit's design documentary sits in the same space—interviewing living designers about their philosophy and influence. Wider scope than Rams, but with that same devotion to how objects shape consciousness.
But Can feel like design-world cosiness. It celebrates the field rather than questioning whether it should exist.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Rams
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Story of Stuff2007
Both are elder statesmen confronting what their industries wrought; Rams through quiet regret, this through righteous fury. They're opposite angles on the same reckoning.
A brisk animated essay tracing manufactured goods from resource extraction to landfill. It's made in a completely different register—zesty, populist, angry—but diagnoses the exact global system Rams now sees as his legacy.
But Feels didactic and reductive next to Rams' lived complexity. No space for ambiguity or the genuine beauty of good design.
More like this (5)
Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things2015
Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus apply Rams' design philosophy to lifestyle. It's lighter than Rams, but speaks directly to the same hunger for less, better things.
But Sometimes tips into aspiration and Instagram aesthetics—the very consumerism it claims to reject.
Rivers and Tides2001
A portrait of artist Andy Goldsworthy making beautiful, temporary sculptures from natural materials. It's about creating things that vanish—the opposite of Rams' eternal Braun products, but animated by the same thoughtfulness.
But Meditative to the point of being slow. If you want answers, not questions, this will frustrate you.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth2012
Documents a modernist housing complex hailed as visionary, then demolished as a failure. A stern lesson about design's inability to solve social problems—something Rams seems newly aware of.
But Densely researched and academic. Requires patience with urban planning history.
Jiro Dreams of Sushi2011
A meditation on mastery, repetition, and the pursuit of perfection through a single craft. Speaks to the obsessive discipline visible in Rams' work, even as Rams questions whether that discipline was worthwhile.
But Can feel like it's romanticizing workaholism. The film doesn't share Rams' late misgivings about dedicating your life to refinement.
The Long Goodbye: The Kara Tippetts Story2019
Both wrestle with mortality and what endures. Rams wonders if his designed objects matter; this asks what truly does when everything fades.
A five-part series following a photographer documenting his mother's decline from Parkinson's. It's about legacy, memory, and the objects we leave behind—but filtered through intimate family grief rather than industrial philosophy.
But Profoundly personal and sometimes difficult to watch. Not a polemic, just a man processing loss. Requires emotional availability.
People
Cast
Dieter RamsSelf
Directing
- Gary HustwitDirector
Production
- Jessica EdwardsExecutive Producer
- Gary HustwitProducer