Film

Weiner

Weiner is the rawest access documentary about American politics ever made — filmmakers embedded so deep in Anthony Weiner's 2013 NYC mayoral comeback that they seem to vanish into the wallpaper. What starts as a redemption story curdles into a slow-motion public unraveling, filmed with a closeness that borders on unbearable. Compulsively watchable, often funny, finally about the gap between self-knowledge and self-control.

TMDb rating7.3

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Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer2010

Alex Gibney's forensic look at another political sex scandal, with the added ambiguity of a possible smear campaign against the man who'd taken down Wall Street. Sharp, twisty, still relevant.

But Less intimate than Weiner — you're reconstructing events from outside rather than living inside the collapse as it happens.

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer poster

The War Room1993

The original fly-on-the-wall campaign documentary, trailing Clinton's 1992 strategists James Carville and George Stephanopoulos through chaos, spin, and eventual triumph. Essential viewing for the genre.

But A winning campaign, not a collapsing one — the tension here is tactical rather than personal, so it lacks Weiner's sense of dread.

The War Room poster

Knock Down the House2019

Follows four insurgent congressional candidates, including a then-unknown Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with the same intimate access to hope, exhaustion, and the grind of running for office.

But Optimistic where Weiner is bleak — if you want another gut-punch about political self-destruction, this isn't it.

Knock Down the House poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

BoJack Horseman2014

Same core question as Weiner — why does a man keep torching the thing he wants most? — asked through a cartoon horse instead of a camera crew, with just as much real grief underneath the jokes.

An animated sitcom about a washed-up sitcom horse that deepens, season by season, into one of the most precise studies of self-sabotage and compulsive attention-seeking ever made.

But It's a cartoon with talking animals and jokes — the tonal whiplash from comedy to devastation might feel like a bait-and-switch at first.

BoJack Horseman poster
More like this (8)

Get Me Roger Stone2017

A gleeful, alarming portrait of the operative who helped build the modern spin machine that eventually swallows men like Weiner. Great on the theatre of political survival.

But More admiration-horror than tragedy — it's fascinated by an unrepentant provocateur rather than a man wrestling with shame.

Get Me Roger Stone poster

Icarus2017

Starts as a personal experiment and spirals into a scandal caught on camera by filmmakers who had no idea what they were walking into — same vertigo, different arena.

But Sports doping and state conspiracy, not sex and politics — a big subject swerve even though the shape of the unraveling rhymes.

Icarus poster

Mitt2014no page yet

Six years of astonishingly candid home-movie access to Mitt Romney's family across two presidential runs, capturing the private cost of public ambition with real tenderness.

But Sympathetic and gentle where Weiner is squirmy and exposing — a very different emotional temperature altogether.

Our Nixon2013no page yet

Built from Super 8 home movies shot by Nixon's own aides, it's an eerie, intimate portrait of a White House about to implode, made by the people inside it.

But Archival and recut rather than immediate — you're watching decades-old footage, not a scandal unfolding in real time.

The Fog of War2003

Errol Morris interviews Robert McNamara alone, and watches a powerful man try to explain, justify, and understand his own worst decisions. Devastating self-examination.

But A single long interview, no campaign footage or chaos — a much quieter, more meditative film than Weiner.

The Fog of War poster

Boys State2020

Teenage boys running a mock government in Texas reproduce every ugly, thrilling instinct of real politics — ego, spin, betrayal — with startling clarity.

But No real stakes, no real scandal — a thought experiment about political nature rather than a portrait of one man's fall.

Boys State poster

Primary1960

Every unguarded moment in Weiner exists because this film's cameramen first proved a politician could be filmed close enough to disappear — it's the direct ancestor of that access.

The film that invented the fly-on-the-wall political documentary — Robert Drew's crew trails Kennedy and Humphrey through the 1960 Wisconsin primary with a rawness nobody had captured before.

But Slow, silent stretches, no narration, and stakes that feel quaint next to a modern scandal — it asks patience rather than delivering drama.

Primary poster

The Loudest Voice2019

Same machine at work — a man convinced his talent excuses his conduct, brought down by the exact impulse that made him powerful — just filmed as prestige drama instead of vérité.

Russell Crowe, unrecognizable, plays Roger Ailes as Fox News's founder is undone by the same mix of power, denial, and scandal that ends careers like Weiner's — but scripted, with a novelist's shape.

But It's dramatized, not documentary — you lose the vertiginous feeling of watching an actual collapse happen in real time.

The Loudest Voice poster

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