The paper aims to examine the problem of conceptualizing daily life in the cinematography field. The major focus of the paper is to analyze the issue of defining the specificity of non-fiction cinematography in the context of daily life representation. The relevance stems from concern to develop philosophical-cultural methods as well as a conceptual apparatus for examining the representation of daily life. The theoretical novelty lies in the fact that the author examines the specificity of the distinction between documentary and fiction types of art in relation between cinematographic and the daily life. The specificity of the documentary effect is described and the cinematographic techniques by which it emerges are outlined. Using the notions of "representation" and "construction" as different cinematographic techniques enables an interpretation of the fiction/documentary distinction not as a strict genre and typological dichotomy at all. Consequently, the author suggests evaluating documentary as a cinematic stylization, a feature of the construction of cinematic reality. Thus, it is possible to identify its "traces" in feature films in the form of the documentary narrative approach, shooting techniques as well as the construction of plans, which have a functional meaning within the film as an artistic, cinematographic reality.