The article presents new conditions for the production of nationaldocumentary movies at the beginning of 21st century, as well as the creativeatmosphere and style searches of filmmakers in the field of studying the innerworld of our contemporary. The traditional film portrait of a documentaryhero used to present them as part of a holistic public space and therefore therelationship between an individual and the society was the key issue in thedocumentary of previous decades. New times have primarily focused on theprivate space of a particular person, distanced from the help of or confrontationwith the society. The conflict between good and evil unfolds on the material ofthe individual’s independent choice. The form of relations between the filmmakerand the hero changes, instead of the traditional observation, a dialogue of peersappears, giving rise to new forms of stylistic and genre solutions. The articleoffers a wide panorama of thematic searches for a documentary portrait, aswell as a study of style innovations: manifestation, construction, composition,docudrama. Among the movies revealing the new artistic moves of documentaryfilmmakers of the first decade of the 21st century: “Mother” by P. Kostomarovand A. Katten, “Last Bow. Victor Astafiev” by M. Litvyakov, “Sister” and “Lisa”by P. Fattakhutdinov, “G. Zhzhenov. Russian Cross” by S. Miroshnichenko, “Warand Peace of Colonel Kersky” by M. Rezvushkina and others.