Hollywood delivers plenty of love stories every year, but several great documentaries have also explored matters of the heart, putting compelling relationships right at the center of the story. Seeing real-life couples navigate their issues in front of the camera can be intoxicating—not to mention reassuring to the rest of us that every relationship encounters rough patches. Below, in chronological order, are 10 stellar documentary love stories, each of them insightful in their depiction of devotion and commitment. 

“A Married Couple” (1969)

Long before there was reality television, there was this stunning Allan King documentary, in which the Canadian filmmaker was granted permission to chronicle a couple’s unraveling relationship in their own home. “They will appear at first glance to be a typical married couple,” King said of “A Married Couple.” “But people are not generalities. They are individual, unique, and special.” What King uncovered was both people’s inclination to perform in front of the camera and the tendency for real life to be more dramatic than fiction. As a result, the viewer is put in the then-strange position of being a voyeur watching the intimate machinations of a warring couple. Rarely anything as visceral or violent has happened on “Couples Therapy.”

“Sherman’s March” (1986)

No doubt many aspiring male filmmakers got into their chosen profession to meet girls. But few of them pursued that goal as straightforwardly as Ross McElwee in his landmark documentary. Initially, he was planning on putting together a film about William Tecumseh Sherman, the Civil War general who helped defeat the Confederate Army. But after enduring a tough breakup, McElwee called an audible, retracing Sherman’s “March to the Sea” while simultaneously talking to women along the way—with his camera rolling, of course. Rather than coming across as cringey or creepy, though, “Sherman’s March” documents a melancholy soul trying to figure out love and relationships, allowing him to be present while also not. “[T]hat’s the whole notion behind cinéma vérité, that you can remain a silent observer behind the camera,” McElwee once said, later adding, “[W]hen life has been rough I’ve taken some solace in simply ceasing to try to understand it and simply recorded it, collect it, and store it away for future analysis.” With “Sherman’s March,” he lets us inside his broken heart.