Film
Thin
- Drama
- Very dark
Thin is an unflinching documentary following four women in residential treatment for eating disorders in Florida. Shot over months, it reveals the psychological machinery of anorexia and bulimia—the bargaining, the denial, the small victories. This isn't inspiration-porn recovery narrative. It's intimate and difficult, for anyone trying to understand these diseases or themselves.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you want a documentary that stays close to people living inside an eating disorder, listening rather than explaining, and you can sit with hard, unvarnished honesty about illness as it is lived day to day.
Skip it if you need some distance from a subject this painful, since it stays with its subjects' pain for long stretches, with little relief to break the weight.
What it asks of you: Expect a patient, unhurried watch of about an hour and forty minutes, with long quiet takes that let each moment sit.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Senna2010
Asif Kapadia's portrait of obsession, perfection and self-destruction across a life. Like Thin, it finds the person inside the compulsion—what drives them, what they're willing to sacrifice, why they can't stop.
But It's about Formula 1 racing. If that sounds boring, the film won't change your mind about the subject, only make you care desperately about one man.
Crumb1995
Terry Zwigoff's portrait of cartoonist Robert Crumb and his fractured family. Like Thin, it's about people whose internal lives have become visible—through art instead of bodies, but the exposure is equally brutal.
But It's deliberately unsexy and unresolved. The film doesn't redeem anyone or wrap things up neatly. Some will find that honest; others, depressing.
Beware of Mr. Baker2012
A documentary about Ginger Baker that refuses to soften its subject. He's talented, brilliant, terrible and self-sabotaging. The film respects him by not forgiving him. That respect matters more than comfort.
But Baker is often unpleasant to watch, and the film doesn't excuse that. If you need to like the person at the center of a doc, this will frustrate you.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Thin
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Wasting Away
Where Thin uses documentary's directness, this uses animation's formal distance to achieve something equally raw. Both ask the viewer to witness without flinching or turning away.
An animated short that uses rotoscope to follow a woman through the physical reality of starvation. Animation renders the invisible visible in ways live-action can't; it strips away the human being and shows only the body's logic. Devastating and precise.
But It's animated, which might feel like the wrong choice for such a serious subject—but that's the point. The abstraction is harder to look away from, not easier.
More like this (6)
Blackfish2013
Gabriela Cowperthwaite's investigation of orca captivity at SeaWorld. Like Thin, it tracks systems designed to contain and control, and what happens when those systems fail. The parallels between institutional abuse and addiction are stark.
But It's activist documentary—the argument is predetermined. If you prefer films that don't lead you by the hand, this won't satisfy you.
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present2012
A documentary about endurance, control, and the body as art. Abramović disciplines herself ruthlessly. The film asks the same question Thin does: when is dedication transcendent and when is it pathological?
But Abramović herself is an acquired taste, and the film loves her perhaps too uncritically. Some will find her self-absorption exhausting.
Pumping Iron1977
An early documentary about obsessive bodybuilding that's endlessly entertaining and oddly moving. It captures the psychology of control over the body with humor and genuine affection for its subjects' strange discipline.
But The bodybuilding world it documents is dated and very male. If that environment bores you, the film's appeal diminishes significantly.
Tickled2016
A documentary that begins as curiosity and becomes something far darker—about control, shame, and the internet's capacity for cruelty. The investigative energy is propulsive, and the moral questions linger long after it ends.
But The subject matter (competitive tickling with dark undertones) requires a leap of faith. If you can't commit to that premise early, the film loses you.
Synecdoche, New York2008
Both are about systems built to contain chaos and maintain control—treatment centers, theater productions, the body itself. Both suggest those systems are always already failing.
Charlie Kaufman's film about a theater director building a life-sized replica of New York inside a warehouse—a vision of obsession, control, and the failure of both. It's strange and occasionally maddening, but it's genuinely about the architecture of compulsion.
But It's a three-hour art film that refuses linear narrative or emotional clarity. If you need things to add up by the end, this will infuriate you. Even admirers find it difficult.
The Act of Killing2012
Like Thin, it's about how deeply internal narratives—the stories we tell ourselves about who we are—shape physical reality. Both films show people trapped inside their own justifications.
Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary asks former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their murders. It's about how we justify ourselves, how narrative becomes truth, how performance erases accountability. Watching people construct their own mythology is hypnotic and sickening.
But It's long, formally audacious, and morally vertiginous. You will not feel comfortable. If documentaries should provide clarity or closure, this one actively resists both.
People
Directing
- Lauren GreenfieldDirector
Production
- R.J. CutlerProducer
Recommended by
Foxfire, A Band Called Death, Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising's Image Of Women, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, America The Beautiful, The Decline of Western Civilization Part III, Journeys with George