Frederick Wiseman, a prominent documentary filmmaker, has died. He was 96 years old.
The filmmaker's death was announced by his family on Monday in a statement released by Zipporah Films, Wiseman's distributor.
In a career that spanned nearly 60 years, Wiseman produced and directed 45 films from 1967's “Titicut Follies,” a documentary about the inpatients of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Massachusetts, to 2023's “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros,” a documentary about the Troisgros family's three-Michelin-star restaurant in Ouches, France. His latest film earned universal critical acclaim and was recognized as the best non-fiction film of 2023 by the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. Awards and National Society of Film Critics.
“Wiseman, whose observational approach has often been mischaracterized as objective or omniscient, here abandons any pretense of neutrality, so potent and overwhelming is his sense of kinship with a fellow artist,” wrote Justin Chang in his 2023 review. “The coming together of sensibilities in front of and behind the camera is the stealthiest encounter in 'Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros,' and the most unexpectedly satisfying.”
A scene from “Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros” by Frederick Wiseman.
(PBS)
The filmmaker considered both Cambridge, Massachusetts and Paris his homes. His films, to a certain extent, reflected that transatlantic residence in their freshness of perspective. They display innate curiosity and surprising degrees of empathy, intelligence, and insight, with topics ranging from public and social institutions to cultural and specialized spaces and the minutiae of human interactions.
Wiseman's other films include “High School” (1968), “Welfare” (1975), “Juvenile Court” (1973), “Public Housing” (1997), “La Danse” (2009), “National Gallery” (2014), “Ex Libris – The New York Public Library” (2017) and “City Hall” (2020). The diverse body of work garnered three Emmy Awards and an honorary Academy Award. Wiseman also received fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur awards.
Beyond documentaries, the director also made three fiction films, “Seraphita's Diary” (1982), “The Last Letter” (2002) and “A Couple” (2022). Reviewing the latter, Chang wrote: “I suspect that [Wiseman] It is no more likely to prevail in one of his fictions than in one of his documentaries, which 'A Couple' may be more similar than it seems. Wiseman has spent a career investigating the complex inner workings and painful human errors of American institutions, but in marriage itself, he may have found the most fraught, mysterious, and unreformable institution of all.”
Nathalie Boutefeu in the film “A couple”.
(Film Forum)
Frederick Wiseman was born on January 1, 1930 in Boston. He graduated from Williams College and Yale Law School before embarking on a film career in the mid-1960s. He remained staunchly independent and founded Zipporah Films, named after his wife, in 1971, to maintain control over the distribution of his work.
In addition to his film career, Wiseman worked as a theater director and actor, including a recent appearance in Rebecca Zlotowski's 2025 film “A Private Life,” starring Jodie Foster.
Wiseman's wife of 65 years, Zipporah Batshaw Wiseman, died in 2021. He is survived by his two sons, David (Jennifer) and Eric (Kristen Stowell), and his three grandchildren, Benjamin, Charlie and Tess, as well as his friend and collaborator Karen Konicek, with whom he worked for 45 years.
