At first look, it seems that not much has changed in Alexander Nanau's Collective, which, unexpectedly, has been nominated for Best Docudrama and Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, a double nomination that fits the film's dual character. The subgenre is fly-on-the-wall documentation, but the plot is constructed as an investigative journalism conspiracy thriller, in which an inquiry into a specific issue reveals a far broader pattern of corruption. The cinematic visual is dull, featureless, and a touch washed out, owing in part to practical considerations and in part to a deliberate aesthetic decision.

The Collective movie is titled after Colectiv, a Romanian nightclub where a fire in 2015 killed over 50 people - including three of the six members of "Goodbye to Gravity", a local metalcore band performing for the audience. At the beginning of Collective, guests' cell phone video of the catastrophe is shown. Soon after, Nanau started to follow the story, attaching himself to a bunch of journalists at Bucharest's Sports Gazette. as these people started to ask how these fatalities might have been averted.

What ensues is almost too horrifying to be considered entertaining, yet if Nanau expected further drama, his story sense did not deceive him. The success of Collective earns it a spot on our list of the best movies about journalism.

Year of Release: 2019

Stars: Alexander Nanau, Antoaneta Opris

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99%

The Dissident movie is not just about who murdered the Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi. We are already aware of that. A prosecutor from Turkey, addressing the issue for the very first time, explains the mechanics of the situation.

In October 2018, a team of fifteen Saudis traveled to Istanbul, taking advantage of Khashoggi's need to go back to the Saudi consulates to retrieve a document. On October 2, 2018, he went there around midday and never left. Hatice Cengiz, his fiancée, waited outside for about 12 hours, unable to accept the fact that the worst had occurred. She notified some of his journalistic colleagues, who then launched a campaign to compel the Saudis to clarify. Khashoggi had hesitancy in departing. He had already been in exile, having departed the country to escape imprisonment some years before. His Saudi wife was coerced into divorcing him. In order to remarry, he was required to provide documentation of the divorce.

The remainder of The Dissident movie is a remarkable piece of work that embraces and organizes several levels of knowledge with courage and artistry. If our society needs new forms to capture the complexities of contemporary existence, The Dissident offers a path ahead. The film is both riveting and disturbing, comparable to a Bourne thriller about our real world.

Year of Release: 2020

Star: Omar Abdulaziz, Fahrettin Altun

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

In some cases, casting is everything. A city room is an accumulation of personalities, and the most effective way to convey that in a journalism film - like The Post - is the approach chosen by director Steven Spielberg: bringing together a group of your favorite actors and letting them go for it, with the level of permissible cheesiness set by Meryl Streep, whose performance as Kay Graham is the kind of "bravura" that you never forget even just for a second. Whenever you watch her perform a scenario, you will want to put up a sign reading "10 out of 10"!

Almost every significant character in The Post is portrayed by someone we recognize from elsewhere and are happy to see again. Some examples include Rhys Matthew from The Americans, Jesse Plemons and Bob Odenkirk from Breaking Bad, Tracy Letts from Lady Bird and Homeland, and Carrie Coon, his wife, from Fargo. We cannot disregard Michael Stuhlbarg, either; he seems to be in every movie these days, but his Boardwalk Empire role is the one many audiences will remember most.

Year of Release: 2017

Star: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bruce Greenwood

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Agnieszka Holland is most known for her epic films that examine the dehumanization of World War II, including the Oscar-nominated "Europa, Europa" and "In Darkness," both of which are set in German-controlled territories during the war. In a sense, her latest picture, "Mr. Jones," also shares the same notion. The film opens with a scene of a young Welsh reporter, who warned British diplomats in 1933 of the perils presented by an ascending Adolf Hitler.

It doesn't take long, though, for "Mr. Jones" to gradually shift from Nazi Germany and Hitler and get on to another authoritarian dictatorship and historical disaster. The title "Mr. Jones" refers to Gareth Jones, a journalist who went to the Soviets in 1933 and discovered proof of the Holodomor, a type of artificial starvation that killed millions of Ukrainians.

It seems like Holland is the perfect fit for such a sensitive topic. Not only has the director created gigantic pictures of historical disasters, but she was also detained by the Soviet-backed regime in Czechoslovakia, following the Prague Spring and expelled from Poland by its commutation rule.

Year of Release: 2019

Stars: James Norton, Vanessa Kirby, Peter Sarsgaad

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

In "Official Secrets", Katharine (by Keira Knightley) is a Chinese translator at the Government Information Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham, England, which is the headquarters of British signals intelligence. She has black hair (the actual Katharine in real life has blonde hair), little makeup, and is maybe a touch shabby. In 2003, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, and the president of the United States, George W. Bush, were pressing for a fight against Saddam Hussein. They would like the U.N. Security Council to endorse the invasion plan so that both nations may proclaim it lawfully. Still, the ballots of the interim Security Council members are not reliable.

Keira Knightley's casting as Katharine Gun for "Official Secrets" may seem risky at first, but Knightley has honed her acting skills since "Bend it Like Beckham", in which she played a klutzy kid. In retrospect, acting seemed like a strange land she would never explore. Keira will always be lauded for her beauty rather than her acting; nevertheless, the actress has successfully portrayed Gun with passion and as much realism as possible. The plot hinges on her being an "ordinary" person who achieves something spectacular. And by any measure, Gun's actions were just that.

Year of Release: 2019

Stars: Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Matthew Goode

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%

Another highly recommended movie on our list is the Long Shot. Long Shot is helmed by Jonathan Levine and, based on a screenplay by Liz Hannah and Dan Sterling, seems to be unable to stop making fun of Rogen.

State Secretary Charlotte Field (by Theron) starts dating left-wing reporter Fred Flarsky (Rogen), whom she has always known ever since she helped babysit him as a teenager. At the same time, her senior adviser, Maggie (by June Diane Raphael), warns her against the dangers of the relationship. Maggie creates a presentation of fictitious couples, such as Guy Fieri and Princess Di or Danny DeVito and Kate Middleton, and displays polling data demonstrating that the public does not want to see Field and Flarsky together. What will happen to Charlotte and Fred's relationships?

Long Shot has been a critical success, and this movie differs from Knocked Up in that it utilizes the couple as a symbol of the need for collaboration in the United States' two-party system.

Year of Release: 2019

Stars: Charlize Theron, Seth Rogen, June Diane Raphael

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

The French Dispatch begins with a brief introduction to the universe built by Wes Anderson: Bill Murray portrays Arthur Howitzer Jr., the director behind The French Dispatch, a fictitious New Yorker-style magazine that started as a Sunday addition to the Evening Sun, Kansas, Liberty, which aims to bring the world back to Kansas."

The movie is a "portmanteau", consisting of a series of shorter stories. It features an editor's note, "The Cycling Reporter" by Herbsaint Sazerac (by Owen Wilson); the feature stories "The Concrete Masterpiece '' by J.K.L. Berenson (by Tilda Swinton); "Revisions of a Manifesto" by Lucinda Krementz (by Frances McDormand); and "The Private Dining Hall of the Police Commissioner" by Roebuck Wright (by Jeffrey Wright), as well.

The French Dispatch is an ode to France and traditional print journalism, especially travel writing. (As an editor, Howitzer Jr.'s famous mottos are "No sobbing" and "Just attempt to make it appear as if you did it on purpose."). It has everything we have grown to anticipate from Wes Anderson: meticulously designed aesthetics, flawless color palettes, and elaborate actor tableaus.

Year of Release: 2021

Stars: Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Timothée Chalamet, Tilda Swinton

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

With an ensemble as impressive as Bombshell's, it was inevitable that the film would capture your interest. The interesting title "Bombshell" also plays a huge part as well. Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie star in this political thriller about the collapse of larger-than-life media mogul Roger Aile - the former leader of Fox News who faced allegations of sexual misconduct and misbehavior before being fired with a $40 million golden parachute.

Bombshell attempts to capture the disturbing tones of the controversy by sharing the tale via two significant women, Fox News tie-downs Megyn Kelly (by Theron) and Gretchen (by Kidman), along with a fictionalized young producer, Kayla (Robbie), who is meant to represent a composite of more junior employees captured in Ailes' (John Lithgow) malignant orbit.

If you have not figured out the double meaning of the term Bombshell by now, it alludes to both how you characterize a scandal of this size and all the "blonde bombshells" that Fox News was renowned for putting in front of the lens, per Ailes' strict order. The movie's realistic storytelling and amazing acting from the main cast earn it the title of one of the best movies about journalism.

Year of Release: 2019

Stars: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 67%

Based on a journalist's undercover examination of Islamic State recruiters, "Profile" is one of the most innovative, well-acted, and stressful films of the year to date. Amy Whittaker (Valene Kane), a British investigative journalist, is writing on the topic of European women being lured into joining the Islamic State. She creates a phony Facebook page under the name "Melody Nelson," a 19-year-old new Muslim convert, and posts a terrorist video. He makes startlingly quick contact with her.

As the employer, Abu Bilel Al-Britani (by Shazad Latif), insists on teleconferencing with her and probes into her past through hundreds of daily sessions. As the borders between personal and professional blur, a game of deceit with life-or-death stakes ensues.

Timur Bekmambetov, director and co-writer of the "Night Watch" series, employs the "screen life format" for this movie. As in "Searching" and "Unfriended," which he also produced, we only see the event unfold on Amy's computer screen. Amy has in-character Skype conversations with Bilel while receiving calls and alerts from friends, coworkers, and her boyfriend, and hence, increasing her stress even further. Profile's unforgettable depiction of emotional trauma makes it one of the best journalism movies thus far.

Year of Release: 2018

Stars: Valene Kane, Shazad Latif

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 61%

Even if the email is not addressed to her, an anonymous snail email is enough to drive any girl crazy, especially in our current era of emojis. While investigating an obituary, a features writer named Ellie (played by an adorably silly Felicity Jones) and the historian Rory (portrayed by Nabhaan Rizwan) discover a cache of love letters. They are dated 1965 and pertain to Jennifer Stirling (Shailene Woodley of Big Little Lies), a wedded American aristocrat who was having a fling with the British journalist Anthony O'Hare (played by Callum Turner).

Based on the 2008 best-selling book by Jojo Moyes, this exquisitely attired romantic drama, The Last Letter from Your Lover, alternates between contemporary London and some glimpses of the French Riviera, in which Anthony and Jennifer fall in love with the background of beautiful sunsets and hotel beds.

It turns out that indecision and misunderstanding are ageless. A slightly unfortunate drawback of The Last Letter from Your Lover is that both Jones and Rizwan are unable to match Woodley and Turner's sizzling connection in terms of sexuality.

Year of Release: 2021

Star: Shailene Woodley, Felicity Jones, Nabhaan Rizwan, Callum Turner

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 55%