It’s a stretch to call what he does journalism, but I suppose it depends on where you draw the circle around “journalist”. He uses real world events and people as his raw materials, but the subjects of his films are his own perspectives even if he isn’t up front about that. I wouldn’t classify Erol Morris as a journalist either, but he is much more in that category than Curtis because he is more interested in making the unknown known than presenting his own philosophy.

While I don’t think that Adam Curtis can hold a candle to Chris Marker as an artist, or in terms of telling an interesting story or conducting an investigation, I would put his work in the same category of “film essay”.