The Unfinished Frame: Ethical Reflection in Autobiographical Documentary

This paper explores the ethical complexities of contemporary documentary film- making through the lens of autobiographical practice. Drawing on nearly three decades of experience as a filmmaker and scholar, I examine how the act of self-inclu- sion—both as subject and storyteller—can foster a more transparent, responsible, and reflexive mode of documentary production. The autobiographical approach challenges traditional hierarchies between filmmaker and subject, inviting a reconsideration of authorship, power, and representation.
By foregrounding the filmmaker’s own positionality and emotional investment, this mode facilitates a horizontal relationship with participants and audiences alike, offe- ring a potential pathway to ethical clarity in a genre often marked by ambiguity and imbalance.
Drawing on case studies—particularly my own documentary practice—as well as personal reflection and theoretical frameworks like psychoanalysis and performative documentary theory, I argue for autobiography not as narcissistic indulgence, but as an ethical tool that destabilizes truth claims and foregrounds subjectivity as a site of inquiry. Special attention is given to ethical dilemmas involving vulnerable or decea- sed subjects, and how self-reflexive strategies can mediate issues of consent, gaze, and symbolic power. Ultimately, this paper calls for a renewed discourse on ethics in docu- mentary filmmaking—one that embraces introspection and subjectivity, rethinking the documentary filmmaker’s responsibility in the 21st century.