---
title: "Documentary films"
canonical: "https://film.one/films/genre/documentary"
region: "US"
total: 151
shown: 60
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Documentary films

We judge a documentary on the attention it pays, not the size of its subject. The question is whether whoever cut the footage decided what they thought and shows us how they got there. We mark down narration that repeats what we have just seen and music that does the feeling for us. We mark up patience, and the nerve to let someone talk until they say something they did not intend. The shelf leans towards music and history, and Errol Morris and the Maysles brothers keep turning up.

Start with [The Thin Blue Line](/film/the-thin-blue-line) (90), Errol Morris's Dallas murder case and still the model for true crime. Then [Hoop Dreams](/film/hoop-dreams) (92), which follows two young basketball players through school and family and earns every one of its 174 minutes. Then [Man on Wire](/film/man-on-wire) (90), a heist film that happens to be true. After those, set aside a week for O.J.: Made in America, and then, when you are ready, Shoah.

For US. 151 titles; 60 listed here. Add `?region=XX` for another country.

- [*NAZA*](https://film.one/film/naza.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 82 · NR · 1h 20m · Documentary
  Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor put Israeli intelligence officers on a rooftop at night, hide their faces and let them explain how Gaza was targeted. It is journalism first and cinema second, and we found it as frightening as anything we have watched in years.
- [*Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore?*](https://film.one/film/pulp-what-do-you-do-for-an-encore.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 65 · 1h 38m · Documentary/Music
  Garth Jennings’s film about Pulp is warm and funny whenever it looks backwards, and Jarvis Cocker is good company throughout. When it reaches the O2 stage, where it ought to come alive, the cameras stand too far back to catch what the band is doing.
- [*You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution...*](https://film.one/film/you-had-to-be-there-how-the-toronto-godspell-ignited-the-comedy-revolution.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 77 · NR · 1h 38m · Documentary/Comedy
  Nick Davis makes warm, funny company of the Toronto *Godspell* cast, using animation and surviving audio to compensate for missing footage. The friendships matter more than the famous names, though the film does not always seem convinced of that.
- [*Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger*](https://film.one/film/oasis-dont-look-back-in-anger.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 74 · R · 2h 03m · Documentary/Music
  The concerts are stirring and the Gallagher humour survives the reverence. This is good company for those who love the songs, though the fan tributes run long and the reconciliation gets little examination.
- [*American Doctor*](https://film.one/film/american-doctor.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 80 · 1h 31m · Documentary
  Poh Si Teng follows three American doctors into a Gaza hospital and does not look away; the wards are as hard to sit through as anything we have seen. The scenes at home, in front of cameras and microphones, are less sure of what they are for.
- [*Jackass: Best and Last*](https://film.one/film/jackass-best-and-last.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 72 · R · 1h 32m · Action/Comedy
  *Jackass: Best and Last* is funny, affectionate and too reliant on old footage. The friendships still justify an evening, but the new stunts do not quite give this farewell enough of its own.
- [*Lorne*](https://film.one/film/lorne.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 58 · R · 1h 41m · Documentary · on Peacock
  Morgan Neville’s portrait of the man who has run *Saturday Night Live* since 1975 is well made, good company and almost entirely on its subject’s terms. Fans will enjoy the clips; anyone hoping to learn something new will leave as they arrived.
- [*The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist*](https://film.one/film/the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 56 · PG-13 · 1h 45m · Documentary · on Netflix
  Daniel Roher has the access and the good faith, and his tour of the people building, studying and fearing artificial intelligence is never dull. It is also never quite an argument, and his own worry is asked to do work the interviews never do.
- [*EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert*](https://film.one/film/epic-elvis-presley-in-concert.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 81 · PG-13 · 1h 38m · Music/Documentary · on Paramount+
  Baz Luhrmann’s concert documentary is absorbing whenever Elvis Presley is singing, and the restored footage gives us plenty to enjoy. The biographical passages are too protective, but the performances make a strong case for spending the evening here.
- [*Cover-Up*](https://film.one/film/cover-up.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 80 · R · 1h 57m · Documentary/History · on Netflix
  Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus make the painstaking work of investigative reporting absorbing, using Seymour Hersh’s archive and difficult presence to good effect. Their admiration is earned, though the questions about his own methods deserve more time.
- [*2000 Meters to Andriivka*](https://film.one/film/2000-meters-to-andriivka.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 85 · NR · 1h 48m · Documentary/War
  Mstyslav Chernov brings us close enough to the fighting for every pause to feel precious. This is a harrowing, humane documentary whose combat footage is stronger than the narration laid over it.
- [*Apocalypse in the Tropics*](https://film.one/film/apocalypse-in-the-tropics.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 73 · PG-13 · 1h 49m · Documentary · on Netflix
  Petra Costa makes a gripping account of religion’s influence on Brazilian politics, helped by close access to public figures. We recommend it for that proximity, with reservations about how little it tells us about ordinary believers.
- [*Becoming Led Zeppelin*](https://film.one/film/becoming-led-zeppelin.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 70 · PG-13 · 2h 02m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  The three surviving members tell the story of their first two years, and the concert footage, left to run whole, is the reason to go. It is an authorised account and it behaves like one: nothing said here would trouble a lawyer.
- [*Black Box Diaries*](https://film.one/film/black-box-diaries.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 82 · 1h 43m · Documentary
  *Black Box Diaries* is a forceful, often upsetting documentary whose private recordings carry more weight than its investigative passages. Shiori Itō makes the personal cost of seeking justice painfully clear, even when the evidence needs fuller explanation.
- [*Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story*](https://film.one/film/super-man-the-christopher-reeve-story.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 80 · PG-13 · 1h 44m · Documentary · on HBO Max
  Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui make a moving family portrait that allows Christopher Reeve his flaws. The heroic framing is sometimes too insistent, but the archive and his children’s memories give the admiration substance.
- [*Will & Harper*](https://film.one/film/will-and-harper.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 78 · R · 1h 54m · Documentary/Comedy · on Netflix
  Will Ferrell and Harper Steele make warm, funny company, and their frank conversations give this documentary its worth. The carefully managed journey limits what it can tell us about life without a famous companion.
- [*Daughters*](https://film.one/film/daughters.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 81 · PG-13 · 1h 48m · Documentary · on Netflix
  Natalie Rae and Angela Patton make a moving documentary about daughters preparing to dance with their imprisoned fathers. Its attention to the girls earns our trust, though the programme itself needs harder questioning.
- [*American Symphony*](https://film.one/film/american-symphony.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 73 · PG-13 · 1h 44m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  Matthew Heineman finds warmth and feeling in Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad’s shared life. The music-making gets less attention than it deserves, but their company makes this uneven documentary worth an evening.
- [*20 Days in Mariupol*](https://film.one/film/20-days-in-mariupol.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 92 · NR · 1h 34m · Documentary/War
  We strongly recommend Mstyslav Chernov’s documentary about the siege of Mariupol, with a firm warning about its distressing images. The civilian testimony commands attention, although the sombre narration sometimes presses harder than it needs to.
- [*WHAM!*](https://film.one/film/wham.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 75 · NR · 1h 32m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  Chris Smith’s documentary is an affectionate, enjoyable account of Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael’s friendship. Its archive brings them close, though the fondness too often discourages the questions that would make this more revealing.
- [*STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie*](https://film.one/film/still-a-michael-j-fox-movie.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 80 · R · 1h 35m · Documentary · on Apple TV
  Davis Guggenheim’s affectionate documentary gives Michael J. Fox space to be funny and candid about a difficult life. Inventive editing keeps the biography lively, though some harder questions go unasked.
- [*Rebellion*](https://film.one/film/rebellion.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 67 · NR · 1h 32m · Documentary
  This absorbing but selective documentary is worth seeing for its personal stories and the friction between UK climate activists. Maia Kenworthy and Elena Sánchez Bellot are less persuasive when those encounters have to explain the movement.
- [*All the Beauty and the Bloodshed*](https://film.one/film/all-the-beauty-and-the-bloodshed.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 86 · NR · 2h 02m · Documentary · on HBO Max
  Laura Poitras makes Nan Goldin’s photographs and campaigning equally gripping, with the artist’s own voice doing the hardest work. The crowded structure occasionally makes us wish she would stay put, but this is an angry, moving film worth the attention.
- [*All That Breathes*](https://film.one/film/all-that-breathes.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 82 · 1h 37m · Documentary/Drama · on HBO Max
  Shaunak Sen’s documentary about caring for injured birds in Delhi is absorbing and quietly moving. Its patient photography rewards attention, though its account of the city’s environmental problems leaves questions that a little more explanation might have settled.
- [*Moonage Daydream*](https://film.one/film/moonage-daydream.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 78 · PG-13 · 2h 15m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  Brett Morgen’s archive portrait of David Bowie is worth seeing for the concert footage and the force of its sound. The restless editing can be exhilarating, though the reverence and 135-minute running time require some patience.
- [*Fire of Love*](https://film.one/film/fire-of-love.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 76 · PG · 1h 34m · Documentary · on Disney+, Hulu
  Sara Dosa’s documentary is built from the Kraffts’ own footage of erupting volcanoes, and that footage is astonishing. The narration laid over it is less sure of itself, and the film is best when it stops talking and lets the lava do the work.
- [*Navalny*](https://film.one/film/navalny.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 78 · R · 1h 38m · Documentary · on HBO Max
  Daniel Roher’s *Navalny* is a tense, accessible documentary about the investigation into an attempt on its subject’s life. The close access pays off, though its limited interest in his political history leaves important questions unanswered.
- [*Flee*](https://film.one/film/flee.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 83 · PG-13 · 1h 29m · Documentary/Animation · on Tubi
  Jonas Poher Rasmussen sits his friend on a rug, asks him where home is, and draws the answer. The result is patient, frightening and far funnier than its subject suggests; the animation stiffens whenever nobody is in danger, and it hardly matters.
- [*Keyboard Fantasies*](https://film.one/film/keyboard-fantasies.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 80 · 1h 11m · Documentary/Music · on The Roku Channel, Tubi
  Posy Dixon’s affectionate documentary makes Beverly Glenn-Copeland excellent company and gives his music room to persuade us. Its admiration could use more questioning, but the warmth between him and his younger bandmates makes this an easy recommendation.
- [*Becoming Cousteau*](https://film.one/film/becoming-cousteau.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 74 · PG-13 · 1h 34m · Documentary · on Disney+, Hulu
  Liz Garbus makes a warm, absorbing introduction to Jacques Cousteau, with underwater archive footage that earns the admiration. The biography is less satisfying when it needs to question him.
- [*The Rescue*](https://film.one/film/the-rescue.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 78 · PG · 1h 47m · Documentary/Drama · on Disney+
  Chin and Vasarhelyi’s account of the Tham Luang rescue is as tense as anything they have made, and the British divers at its centre are odd, dry and admirable company. It sees too little of the boys and goes soft at the close.
- [*Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)*](https://film.one/film/summer-of-soul-or-when-the-revolution-could-not-be-televised.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 87 · PG-13 · 1h 57m · Music/Documentary · on Disney+, Hulu
  Questlove’s first film as director takes the tapes of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, unseen for fifty years, and puts Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and Mahalia Jackson back in front of a crowd. The music is extraordinary. We only wish he had let more of it finish.
- [*The Whole World is Watching: Inside Aaron Sorkin's Trial of the Chicago 7*](https://film.one/film/the-whole-world-is-watching-inside-aaron-sorkins-trial-of-the-chicago-7.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 52 · 28m · Documentary
  A tidy half-hour in which Aaron Sorkin and his cast explain why the 1969 trial matters now. Everyone is articulate and nobody is challenged, and the archive footage from Chicago does more in thirty seconds than the interviews manage in twenty-eight minutes.
- [*The Dissident*](https://film.one/film/the-dissident.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 72 · PG-13 · 1h 59m · Documentary · on The Roku Channel, Tubi
  Bryan Fogel lays out the killing of Jamal Khashoggi with a prosecutor’s thoroughness, and the Turkish transcripts alone justify the two hours. He is on shakier ground whenever animated bees and a swelling score step in to tell us how to feel.
- [*Collective*](https://film.one/film/collective.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 88 · 1h 49m · Documentary · on Tubi
  Alexander Nanau’s documentary follows sports reporters from a nightclub fire into the hospitals that killed its survivors, then into the ministry that let them. It is patient, angry and unusually clear, and it loses a little of its grip when it changes protagonist.
- [*Time*](https://film.one/film/time.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 84 · PG-13 · 1h 21m · Documentary · on Amazon Prime Video
  Garrett Bradley folds two decades of one family’s home video into a black-and-white portrait of a wife waiting for a prison to give her husband back. It is short, exact and quietly furious. Anyone wanting the facts of the case laid out will have to look elsewhere.
- [*David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet*](https://film.one/film/david-attenborough-a-life-on-our-planet.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 80 · PG · 1h 23m · Documentary/Drama · on Netflix
  We recommend this moving, plainly spoken account of environmental loss, built around Attenborough’s own experience. Its wildlife images and quiet delivery are persuasive; the practical questions about changing course receive less attention than they need.
- [*My Octopus Teacher*](https://film.one/film/my-octopus-teacher.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 75 · 1h 25m · Documentary · on Netflix
  The octopus is the best thing in it, and the footage from a cold South African kelp forest is close, patient and often lovely. Craig Foster’s narration tells us what she is thinking a good deal more often than it should.
- [*Rising Phoenix*](https://film.one/film/rising-phoenix.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 74 · PG-13 · 1h 46m · Documentary/Sport · on Netflix
  Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui make an affecting, handsome introduction to Paralympic sport. The athletes and competition footage earn our attention, though the insistent music and crowded storytelling sometimes make admiration feel over-organised.
- [*American Factory*](https://film.one/film/american-factory.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 78 · NR · 1h 50m · Documentary · on Netflix
  Bognar and Reichert filmed inside a Chinese-owned Ohio plant and made a fair, patient film about two ways of working under one roof. It has more people than it has time for and a score that keeps consoling them, but it earns your evening.
- [*Honeyland*](https://film.one/film/honeyland.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 82 · 1h 29m · Documentary · on Tubi
  Kotevska and Stefanov’s documentary about a lone beekeeper in the Macedonian hills is patient, plainly shot and quietly furious. It is cut to play like a drama and hides the seams too well, but the woman at its centre is worth every minute.
- [*For Sama*](https://film.one/film/for-sama.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 88 · 1h 40m · Documentary/War
  Waad al-Kateab filmed the siege of Aleppo from inside a hospital and addresses the result to her infant daughter. It is the most direct account of that war we have seen, and one of the hardest to sit through. Sit through it.
- [*The Great Hack*](https://film.one/film/the-great-hack.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 65 · 1h 54m · Documentary · on Netflix
  Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim offer a useful, unsettling introduction to data harvesting. Their documentary is worth considering for its account of lost privacy, but it never properly establishes how much political persuasion the stolen information achieved.
- [*Maiden*](https://film.one/film/maiden.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 80 · 1h 33m · Documentary
  Alex Holmes makes a gripping sailing documentary from candid interviews and the crew’s own footage. The rush through their lives leaves questions unanswered, but the women’s skill and stubbornness give the familiar underdog story its force.
- [*Diego Maradona*](https://film.one/film/diego-maradona.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 76 · 2h 10m · Documentary/Sport · on HBO Max
  Asif Kapadia’s documentary is worth seeing for its football and its unnervingly intimate archive. It is less persuasive about Diego Maradona’s choices, and its 130 minutes could use a firmer cut.
- [*Apollo 11*](https://film.one/film/apollo-11.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 85 · G · 1h 33m · Documentary/History · on Netflix
  Todd Douglas Miller has assembled the moon landing from NASA’s own film and audio, with no narrator and no one looking back. The launch is as frightening a piece of cinema as we have seen in years; the quieter stretches in the capsule show where the archive runs thin.
- [*They Shall Not Grow Old*](https://film.one/film/they-shall-not-grow-old.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 81 · R · 1h 39m · Documentary/History
  Peter Jackson’s First World War documentary is moving and carefully assembled, with veterans’ voices that hold us throughout. Its restored images deserve attention, and some caution: added colour and sound cannot tell us exactly how it was.
- [*Free Solo*](https://film.one/film/free-solo.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 82 · PG-13 · 1h 40m · Documentary/Adventure · on Disney+, Hulu
  Chin and Vasarhelyi have filmed something that should not have been filmable, and the final stretch on the wall is as frightening as anything we have watched in years. The hour of preparation around it is honest but thinner than the film thinks.
- [*Quincy*](https://film.one/film/quincy.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 63 · 2h 04m · Documentary/Music · on Netflix
  *Quincy* is an engaging introduction to Quincy Jones, with archive material that makes the history feel close. Alan Hicks and Rashida Jones are less persuasive when admiration needs to give way to a difficult question.
- [*Fahrenheit 11/9*](https://film.one/film/fahrenheit-11-9.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 60 · R · 2h 08m · Documentary · on The Roku Channel
  Michael Moore’s angriest film since *Fahrenheit 9/11* is a sprawl of stunts, montages and arguments he starts and does not finish. In the middle of it is forty minutes on the poisoning of Flint that is as good as anything he has made.
- [*Three Identical Strangers*](https://film.one/film/three-identical-strangers.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 74 · PG-13 · 1h 37m · Documentary · on Tubi
  Tim Wardle’s documentary starts as a tabloid delight, three strangers with one face, and turns into something that made us angry. It is built like a thriller, which is why it grips and also why it sometimes seems too pleased with its own twists.
- [*Won't You Be My Neighbor?*](https://film.one/film/wont-you-be-my-neighbor.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 80 · PG-13 · 1h 35m · Documentary
  Morgan Neville’s portrait of Fred Rogers is a tribute rather than an investigation, and it leans heavily on the archive. But the archive is remarkable, and we were more moved than we expected to be by a slow-talking man and a shy tiger puppet.
- [*RBG*](https://film.one/film/rbg.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 74 · PG · 1h 38m · Documentary
  Betsy West and Julie Cohen make an absorbing, affectionate portrait of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, strongest on the patient legal work and her marriage. Their admiration is earned, though their reluctance to question it limits the film.
- [*A Cambodian Spring*](https://film.one/film/a-cambodian-spring.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 67 · 2h 07m · Documentary · on MUBI
  Chris Kelly spent years with the people fighting the sale of a Phnom Penh lake, and the footage he brought back is remarkable. The film he cut from it is long, crowded and often hard to follow, and the anger survives anyway.
- [*Jane*](https://film.one/film/jane.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 78 · 1h 30m · Documentary · on Disney+, Hulu
  Brett Morgen builds a portrait of Jane Goodall from more than a hundred hours of film nobody had looked at in half a century, and the footage is remarkable. The woman talking over it is better still. Only Philip Glass gets in the way.
- [*An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power*](https://film.one/film/an-inconvenient-sequel-truth-to-power.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 58 · PG · 1h 40m · Documentary
  Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen’s follow-up to the 2006 slideshow is better looking and more human, and its Paris section has real tension. But this is a film about Al Gore before it is one about the climate, and it admires him too much.
- [*Icarus*](https://film.one/film/icarus.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 76 · 2h 01m · Documentary/Sport · on Netflix
  Bryan Fogel set out to film himself cheating at amateur cycling and ended up with the man who ran Russia’s anti-doping laboratory telling him everything. The first hour is self-indulgent; the second is a proper thriller, and nearly all of it is Grigory Rodchenkov.
- [*City of Ghosts*](https://film.one/film/city-of-ghosts.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 78 · R · 1h 30m · War/Documentary · on Amazon Prime Video
  Matthew Heineman’s film about the citizen journalists of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently is the plainest account we have seen of what Isis did to a city. It loses its grip in Germany and the music never stops, but see it.
- [*Faces Places*](https://film.one/film/faces-places.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 82 · 1h 34m · Documentary · on Tubi
  Varda and JR drive a camera van through rural France and paste the faces of farmers and workers onto the walls they live behind. It is slight and occasionally pleased with itself, but the faces are enormous and so, unexpectedly, is the feeling.
- [*Dawson City: Frozen Time*](https://film.one/film/dawson-city-frozen-time.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 77 · 2h 00m · Documentary
  Bill Morrison builds a history of a gold-rush town, and of early cinema, from reels nobody wanted back. The pictures are remarkable and the rot eating at them is the point; the score is not, and two hours is too many.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/films/genre/documentary