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Found Footage Lost Its Pioneer: Filmmaker Peter Watkins Dies at 90 on Halloween Eve 2025

By. Chris Vander Kaay

                                           

 

No one has left a longer legacy in the world of found footage and fake documentary filmmaking than Peter Watkins, and yet most horror fans wouldn’t know his name. They may have seen and enjoyed Punishment Park, one of the most chilling portrayals of authoritarianism, fashioned as a near-future dystopia documentary, but they don’t remember him. Peter Watkins passed away on Halloween Eve 2025, and his stunning achievements in film and his hand in inventing found footage filmmaking deserve to be remembered by horror fans and cinephiles everywhere.

 

His film Culloden, a faux documentary focused on the real-life Battle of Culloden that took place in 1746, was a groundbreaking achievement and only the second fake documentary ever made when it aired on BBC in 1964. His follow-up film was the notorious The War Game in 1966, a documentary-style exploration of the aftermath of nuclear war that was so realistic and disturbing that it was banned from airing on television.

 

                                                       

 

Watkins instead released the film theatrically, and what happened after was singular in its historical significance. It was nominated for, and won, the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1967. It is and will remain the only work of fiction ever given that award, and it speaks to the power of the work that voters chose it over other true stories that same year.

 

Watkins never waned in his passion for pioneering the medium through other fake documentary projects, even extending into the arena of the artist’s biopic in 1974’s Edvard Munch and early tabloid critique in 1967’s Privelege. He also never stopped exploring the dark heart of humanity, seen in Punishment Park and The Gladiators, movies that both lay bare the machinations of war and violence, and how humanity and media are complicit in their furthering.

 

All of his films were socially conscious in a way that made broadcasters and distributors uncomfortable, which is why his nearly-40-year career contained only 14 films. His compassion and skill gave the world a body of work that is critically revered, heavily awarded, and unfortunately mostly forgotten or overlooked by the people who benefitted from him the most.

 

                                                         

Without Peter Watkins, there is no The Blair Witch Project or Man Bites Dog. There is no Paranormal Activity or Cloverfield. His work on The War Game legitimized the phenomenon of fictional stories recorded as if they were real, and Punishment Park proved that documentary style could be used to devastating emotional and visceral effect.

 

Decades of filmmakers, from Daniel Myrick and JJ Abrams to Tim Robbins and Christopher Guest, owe Peter Watkins a debt of gratitude for cutting a difficult path to acceptance for the found footage and fake documentary genre, and I am proud to count myself as one of those filmmakers.

 

If you’ve never seen one of Mr. Watkins’ films, please give yourself the treat of watching any of his greatest works from Culloden right up to his final film, 2000’s La Commune. Enjoy his work, remember his genius, and share his name with other film fans. Few filmmakers can claim to have changed cinema forever, but Peter Watkins has an Oscar statuette to prove it.

 

You can watch Culloden here and Punishment Park here. And La Commune is streaming on Apple Tv.