Elephant (2003, Van Sant)
A violent incident rocks the students and faculty at a high school in Portland, Oregon.

Gus Vant Sant fails miserably to tell a conventional story. (Not that he was trying to do that anyway.) Instead he gives us a beautiful pseudo-documentary about a regular day in a school that goes brutally wrong. He doesn't give us any reasons as to why the massacre reasons, no insight into the psyche of the two killers. Instead he shoots it as a regular day, lets the events unfold, gives us no backstory. That's part of the greatness of this film. The idea of casting non-actors and just regular kids was brilliant, it made this film all the more realistic and haunting.

Definitley one of the best of the 2000's (so far).