Television series
The Century of the Self
Adam Curtis's four-part epic traces how Sigmund Freud's theories of the unconscious were repurposed by his nephew Edward Bernays into the founding tools of modern public relations, then adopted wholesale by governments and corporations to manage rather than serve the public. It plays like a gripping conspiracy theory built entirely from archive footage and hypnotic narration, and it quietly rewires how you think about your own desires.
If you liked this
HyperNormalisation2016
Curtis's most feverish and prophetic work, connecting fake news, Assad, Trump, and the internet into one dizzying theory about how power gave up on explaining reality altogether.
But Nearly three hours of unbroken assertion with no counterargument - thrilling until you start wondering if it's actually true.
The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear2004no page yet
Made in the shadow of 9/11, it argues neoconservatives and Islamists invented each other as convenient monsters - the same Curtis toolkit, aimed squarely at the war on terror.
But Its central argument about al-Qaeda's coherence was controversial even at the time, and asks you to sit with real discomfort.
Mad Men2007
Fiction gets you inside the rooms Bernays built - watch the actual seduction techniques of postwar advertising play out on beautiful, damaged people instead of archive footage.
But Seven seasons is a huge commitment, and it's slow, moody prestige drama rather than argument - patience required.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
A Face in the Crowd1957
This is Bernays's PR revolution dramatised as fiction in the very decade Curtis's story begins, proving the warning was available all along to anyone willing to look.
A drunk hobo is packaged into a folksy TV demagogue by an ad man, and the film watches the machinery of manufactured charisma with real dread - decades before anyone called it branding.
But Broad, theatrical 1950s performances and a moralising streak modern viewers may find heavy-handed.
More like this (8)
The Corporation2003
A rigorous case that corporations behave like psychopathic personalities - the same institutional self-interest Curtis traces, argued with legal and psychological precision instead of montage.
But Two and a half hours of earnest experts stacking evidence; persuasive, but never as hypnotic as Curtis's editing.
Merchants of Doubt2014no page yet
Shows the PR playbook - manufacture uncertainty, hire a friendly scientist - refined first for tobacco, then climate change. A tight, angry sequel to everything Bernays started.
But Narrower and more polemical than Curtis, with a clear villain and a clear conclusion it wants you to reach.
The Social Dilemma2020
Silicon Valley's own architects admit their algorithms are Bernays's techniques running at machine speed - genuinely unsettling if you've never thought about your phone this way before.
But The dramatised family subplot is clumsy, and the tech-guilt confessional format has curdled into its own cliché.
The Great Hack2019
Cambridge Analytica as Bernays's great-grandchild: psychological profiling sold as an election-winning product, told at a true-crime pace that makes the theory feel urgent and present.
But Simplifies a genuinely complicated scandal into heroes and villains, lacking Curtis's patience or historical depth.
Bitter Lake2015no page yet
Curtis stripped of narration for long stretches - just images of Afghanistan set against a story about power abandoning coherent explanation. Strange and hypnotic, unlike anything else he's made.
But Deliberately fragmented and slow; without the crutch of a strong voiceover it can feel like staring into fog.
Get Me Roger Stone2017
A single, gleeful practitioner of Bernays-style spin decades on, admitting on camera it's all theatre. Smaller and punchier than Curtis, but the same rotten mechanics exposed.
But One man's ego fills the whole film, flattening the wider argument into a character portrait.
The Truman Show1998
Where Curtis shows institutions managing the public's desires, this imagines that logic taken to its purest extreme - one person's whole self curated for someone else's profit.
A man's entire life is engineered, marketed and sold as entertainment without his knowledge - the same anxiety Curtis documents, played as a wistful, funny, ultimately moving satire.
But It's a crowd-pleasing studio comedy-drama; if you want rigour rather than metaphor, this won't scratch that itch.
The Act of Killing2012
Curtis's thesis is that the self can be shaped by image and story; this documentary shows that process at its most extreme, where self-mythology becomes a way to survive committing horror.
Indonesian death-squad leaders re-enact their own massacres as movie-genre pastiche - gangster film, musical - revealing how completely people can narrate their way out of atrocity.
But Genuinely disturbing and morally vertiginous; this is not comfortable viewing, and it offers no relief or resolution.
People
Cast
Adam CurtisNarrator
Production
- Stephen LambertExecutive Producer
- Adam CurtisProducer
- Lucy KelsallProducer
Recommended by
They Live, The Prisoner, Pluribus, Thank You for Smoking, HyperNormalisation, Civilisation