[5][6] In 1978 he co-directed with Gérard Mordillat a feature documentary His Master's Voice,[7][8] in which a dozen bosses of big industrial groups discuss power, leadership, hierarchies and the role of unions.

Between 1985 and 1987, he made several films about mountains and adventure for TV, then turned to making feature-length documentaries for theatrical distribution: La Ville Louvre (1990), Le Pays des sourds (1992),[9] Un animal, des animaux (1995),[10] La Moindre des choses (1996) [11] - at the psychiatric clinic of La Borde, as well as an experimental film with the pupils of the theatre school Théâtre national de Strasbourg, Qui sait?

In 2001, Nicolas Philibert made Être et avoir, about daily life in a single class school on a small village in the Auvergne.

[12] With Retour en Normandie (2007),[13] he revisited the traces of a previous films, made thirty years earlier by René Allio, with local peasants playing the lead roles.

Over the last fifteen years there have been more than 120 retrospectives or 'homages' to Philibert organised internationally including the British Film Institute (London) and the Museum of Modern Art (New York).