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Best Documentary Movies

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2,279 results

2,279 results

145. Varda by Agnès

Nov 22, 2019 • Rated Not Rated

The final film from the late, beloved Agnès Varda is a characteristically playful, profound, and personal summation of the director’s own brilliant career. At once impish and wise, she acts as our spirit guide on a free-associative tour through her six-decade artistic journey, shedding new light on her films, photography, and recent installation works while offering her one-of-a-kind reflections on everything from filmmaking to feminism to aging. Suffused with the people, places, and things she loved—Jacques Demy, cats, colors, beaches, heart-shaped potatoes—this wonderfully idiosyncratic work of imaginative autobiography is a warmly human, touchingly bittersweet parting gift from one of cinema’s most luminous talents. [Janus Films]

146. The Endurance

Sep 21, 2001 • Rated G

This documentary tells the story of the survival of British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and the crew of his vessel 'The Endurance,' which shipwrecked in the ice floes and frigid ocean of the Antarctic in 1914.

147. Night Will Fall

Nov 21, 2014 • Rated Not Rated

Researchers discover film footage from World War II that turns out to be a lost documentary shot by Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein in 1945 about German concentration camps.

148. Exit Through the Gift Shop

Apr 16, 2010 • Rated R

Exit Through the Gift Shop, the first film by renowned graffiti artist Banksy, became the hottest ticket at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival where it made its world debut. Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post—hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner – with spectacular results. The film contains exclusive footage of Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Invader and many of the world's most infamous graffiti artists at work, on walls and in interview. As Banksy describes it, "It's basically the story of how one man set out to film the un—filmable. And failed." [Paranoid Pictures]

149. Let's Get Lost

Apr 21, 1989 • Rated Not Rated

Let's Get Lost looks at the life of jazz trumpeter and singer Chet Baker.

150. Tales of the Grim Sleeper

Dec 26, 2014 • Rated TV-MA

Nick Broomfield digs into the case of the notorious serial killer known as the Grim Sleeper, who terrorized South Central Los Angeles over a span of twenty-five years.

151. Festival Express

Jul 30, 2004 • Rated R

A rousing record of a little-known, but monumental, moment in rock n roll history. Set in 1970, Festival Express was a multi-band, multi-day extravaganza that captured the spirit and imagination of a generation and a nation. (ThinkFilm)

152. Street Fight

Feb 22, 2006 • Rated Not Rated

This documentary chronicles the bare-knuckles race for Mayor of Newark, N.J. between Cory Booker, a 32-year-old Rhodes Scholar/Yale Law School grad, and Sharpe James, the four-term incumbent and undisputed champion of New Jersey politics. (Marshall Curry Productions)

153. Love and Diane

Love is the 18-year-old daughter of Diane, a former crack addict who since losing her six children to foster care has managed to reassemble her family, however fragile the arrangement. Filmmaker Jennifer Dworkin spent five years with these women, riding an emotional roller-coaster, as past resentments inform each one's prospects for stability and happiness. (Film Forum)

154. Domestic Violence

This documentary by Frederick Wiseman profiles residents of a Tampa shelter for battered women.

155. Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Sep 14, 2018 • Rated Not Rated

An inspired and intimate portrait of a place and its people, Hale County This Morning, This Evening looks at the lives of Daniel Collins and Quincy Bryant, two young African American men from rural Hale County, Alabama, over the course of five years. Collins attends college in search of opportunity while Bryant becomes a father to an energetic son in an open-ended, poetic form that privileges the patiently observed interstices of their lives. The audience is invited to experience the mundane and monumental, birth and death, the quotidian and the sublime. These moments combine to communicate the region’s deep culture and provide glimpses of the complex ways the African American community’s collective image is integrated into America’s visual imagination. [Cinema Guild]

156. Neil Young: Heart of Gold

Feb 10, 2006 • Rated PG

Neil Young: Heart of Gold is filmmaker Jonathan Demme's intimate musical portrait of legendary singer/songwriter Neil Young, filmed on the occasion of the world premiere of Young's "Prairie Wind" concert at Nashville's hallowed Ryman Auditorium. (Paramount Classics)

157. In the Same Breath

In the Same Breath recounts the experiences of people on the ground in the earliest days of the novel coronavirus and the way two countries dealt with its initial spread, from the first days of the outbreak in Wuhan to its rampage across the United States. Directed with a deeply personal approach by Wang, who was born in China and now lives in the United States, the film explores the early confusion and parallel campaigns by authorities to try to contain the virus as well as shape the public narrative through misinformation, resulting in a devastating impact on citizens of both countries. [HBO]

158. Honeyland

Jul 26, 2019 • Rated Unrated

Hatidze lives with her ailing mother in the mountains of Macedonia, making a living cultivating honey using ancient beekeeping traditions. When an unruly family moves in next door, what at first seems like a balm for her solitude becomes a source of tension as they, too, want to practice beekeeping, while disregarding her advice.

159. Forbidden Lie$

Apr 3, 2009 • Rated Not Rated

Norma Khouri is a thief, a saint, a seductress or a sociopath, depending on who you talk to. Men want to marry her, Islamic extremists want to kill her, and the global publishing industry wishes she would just disappear. Khouri won fame and fortune with her 'true story' Forbidden Love, about a shocking honor killing in Jordan. The book was a runaway bestseller, translated into multiple languages and Khouri became the toast of the literary world. That was until July 2004, when esteemed Sydney Morning Herald journalist Malcolm Knox exposed her book as a work of fiction. Weaving between the literary salons of London, the mosque-lined vistas of Jordan, the beach side suburbs of Queensland and the seamy Chicago back streets of Norma's dubious past, Forbidden Lie$ pits Norma's tale against the stories of the those who believe she duped them: the publishers, the FBI, her next door neighbor...even her husband. But the most compelling character of all is Norma who, encouraged by director Anna Broinowski, journeys through every shade of gray that separates fact from fiction. Dir. Anna Broinowski. (Roxie Releasing)

160. Behemoth

Jan 27, 2017 • Rated Not Rated

Beginning with a mining explosion in Mongolia and ending in a ghost city west of Beijing, political documentarian Zhao Liang’s visionary new film Behemoth details, in one breathtaking sequence after another, the social and ecological devastation behind an economic miracle that may yet prove illusory. [Grasshopper Films]

161. Oasis Knebworth 1996

On 10th & 11th August 1996, 250,000 young music fans converged on Knebworth Park to see Oasis play two record breaking, era defining shows. The landmark concerts sold out in under a day with over 2% of the UK population attempting to buy tickets. This was a time when the UK was slowly recovering from a decade of recession. A surging confidence in arts and culture ushered in Cool Britannia and Oasis meteoric rise reflected the country's new found conviction and swagger. Featuring a setlist packed from beginning to end with stone cold classics, including Champagne Supernova, Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger, the Knebworth concerts were both the pinnacle of the band’s success and the landmark gathering for a generation.Oasis Knebworth 1996 is the story of that weekend and the special relationship between Oasis and their fans that made it possible. It is told through the eyes of the fans who were there, with additional interviews with the band and concert organisers.

162. One Child Nation

Aug 9, 2019 • Rated R

China’s One Child Policy, the extreme population control measure that made it illegal for couples to have more than one child, may have ended in 2015, but the process of dealing with the trauma of its brutal enforcement is only just beginning. From award-winning documentarian Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, I Am Another You) and Jialing Zhang, the sweeping One Child Nation explores the ripple effect of this devastating social experiment, uncovering one shocking human rights violation after another - from abandoned newborns, to forced sterilizations and abortions, and government abductions. Wang digs fearlessly into her own personal life, weaving her experience as a new mother and the firsthand accounts of her family members into archival propaganda material and testimony from victims and perpetrators alike, yielding a revelatory and essential record of this chilling, unprecedented moment in human civilization. [Amazon Studios]

163. Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin

Aug 26, 2020 • Rated Not Rated

When Bruce Chatwin was dying of AIDS, his friend Werner Herzog made a final visit. As a parting gift, Chatwin gave him his rucksack. Thirty years later, Herzog sets out on his own journey, inspired by Chatwin's passion for the nomadic life.

164. Starless Dreams

Starless Dreams plunges us into the lives of young teenage girls sharing temporary quarters at a juvenile detention center on the outskirts of Tehran. Director Mehrdad Oskouei, one of Iran’s most prominent filmmakers, spent seven years securing access to this all-female facility. As the New Year approaches, the girls bond, and reveal—with playfully disarming honesty—the circumstances and acts that resulted in their incarceration. They have killed their father, robbed a bank, or were arrested for carrying 651 grams of cocaine. Outside the prison walls, danger is everywhere, even within their own families. [Cinema Guild]

165. The Departure

Oct 13, 2017 • Rated Not Rated

Ittetsu Nemoto, a former punk-turned- Buddhist-priest in Japan, has made a career out of helping suicidal people find reasons to live. But this work has come increasingly at the cost of his own family and health, as he refuses to draw lines between those he counsels and himself. The Departure captures Nemoto at a crossroads, when his growing self-destructive tendencies lead him to confront the same question his patients ask him: what makes life worth living?

166. Restrepo

Jun 25, 2010 • Rated R

A feature-length documentary that chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soliders in Afghanisatn'ss Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, Restrepo, named after a platoon medic who was killed in action. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in the US military. This is an entirely experiential film: the cameras never leave the valley: there are no interviews with the generals or diplomats. The only goal is to make viewers feel as if they have just been through a 90-minute deployment. This is war, full stop. The conclusions are up to you. (Passion Pictures)

167. Dahomey

The journey of 26 plundered royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey exhibited in Paris, now being returned to Benin. Diop artistically voices a new generation's demands.

168. Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Jun 8, 2018 • Rated PG-13

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? takes an intimate look at America’s favorite neighbor: Mister Fred Rogers. A portrait of a man whom we all think we know, this emotional and moving film takes us beyond the zip-up cardigans and the land of make-believe, and into the heart of a creative genius who inspired generations of children with compassion and limitless imagination.

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