Some of the most cognitively and practically important questions we can ask of a motion picture concern whether it is a work of fiction or non-fiction, and why it is one rather than the other. These questions pertain to the kinds of effects that filmmakers seek to have on us, and to the sorts of assumptions they wish us to make about the relation between their movies and parts of extra-cinematic reality, including their own states of mind. Yet in place of cogent insights into the documentary’s difference, scholarship for the most part has sown conceptual confusion. Although it could never banish all ambiguity and error from our thinking about this topic, a pragmatic account of what it is that causes a movie to be non-fiction is the best available theoretical option for anyone committed to reducing the confusion.