THAT DOCUMENTARY is a kind of fiction is a truism today. But an aura of truth still hovers around the genre, despite its unavoidable manipulation. The artist Hito Steyerl has developed the term documentality to describe the kinds of truth—whether evidentiary, scientific, or journalistic—typically used to establish a shared reality, thereby lending authority to particular worldviews. In her own work, Steyerl aims to understand why some forms of documentary appear “truer” than others: She accords a special position to self-reflexive documentary films that, rather than asking viewers to take their