Much of the experience of watching a film consists of having our expectations about actions and motivations denied or met. It is very rare to go into a filmwith a blank slate, without specific prior expectations framed by our knowledge about the likely events and forms that transpire within a particular genre. Other times however, it has been a way of assessing the merits of an individual film, as well as discerning patterns and themes which are inherent in a whole body of work, not just one specific film. Their production techniques, funding and distribution are significantly different. So too are their makers' intentions, their forms and the expectations which audiences bring bear to them.
Some films deliberately blur the boundary between fiction and documentary.
For example, Jill Godmilow's Far from Poland intersperses fictional and documentary techniques to depict the Solidarity uprising in Poland in the mid-1980s. Within the broad category of fiction film lies a series of genres or types. These can generally be identified either by what they do to the viewer, such as the suspense genre, or by their thematic and iconic traits, such as the western or the musical. Suspense films can be set in any era or any setting. What they share is the intent to manipulate the viewers's emotions, often by playing with the amount of information a viewer knows relative to what characters know.