Best Documentary Filmmaking Movies & TV Shows

Raising Bertie is a longitudinal documentary feature following three young African American boys over the course of six years as they grow into adulthood in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina. Through the intimate portrayal of these boys, this powerful vérité film offers a rare in-depth look at the issues facing America's rural youth and the complex relationships between generational poverty, educational equity, and race. The evocative result is an experience that encourages us to recognize the value and complexity in lives all too often ignored.

In a uniquely hilarious odyssey of self-discovery and cultural observation, documentary filmmaker and self-described "anxious New Yorker" John Wilson covertly and obsessively films the lives of his fellow New Yorkers while attempting to give everyday advice on relatable topics. The awkward contradictions of modern life are eased by Wilson’s candid, unpolished commentary. Building upon Wilson’s previously released "how to" short films, each episode takes wildly unexpected turns but is grounded in John's refreshing honesty.

Ed Asner tells the story of RKO Pictures from the 1920s to the 1960s.

Vampire housemates try to cope with the complexities of modern life and show a newly turned hipster some of the perks of being undead.

Although it was shot on the set of director Mel Gibson's controversial epic The Passion of the Christ, this thought-provoking documentary is not about the making of the movie. Rather, filmmakers Francesco Cabras and Alberto Molinari delve into the nature of divinity and spiritual beliefs through revealing interviews with Gibson and members of his cast and crew -- including stars Jim Caviezel and Monica Bellucci.

An ophthalmologist's mistress threatens to reveal their affair to his wife, while a married documentary filmmaker is infatuated by another woman.

30 for 30 is the umbrella title for a series of documentary films airing on ESPN and its sister networks and online properties. The series, which highlights people and events in the sports world that have generally received small amounts of attention, has featured two "volumes" of 30 episodes each, a 13-episode series under the ESPN Films Presents title in 2011-2012, and a series of 30 for 30 Shorts shown through the ESPN.com website.

This feature-length documentary takes a look at one of the most successful film franchises of all time as it goes behind the scenes of John Carpenter’s Halloween, the frightfest that redefined the horror genre in the late 1970s.

Different experts make a stand against today's putatively criminal and harmful health system, focusing on Anthony Fauci and his role in the shaping of the AIDS and COVID-19 epidemics. The Real Anthony Fauci - based on the book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Boxer "Irish" Micky Ward's unlikely road to the world light welterweight title. His Rocky-like rise was shepherded by half-brother Dicky, a boxer-turned-trainer who rebounded in life after nearly being KO'd by drugs and crime.

This documentary recounts the life and work of one of most famous, and yet reviled, German film directors in history, Leni Riefenstahl. The film recounts the rise of her career from a dancer, to a movie actor to the most important film director in Nazi Germany who directed such famous propaganda films as Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. The film also explores her later activities after Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945 and her disgrace for being so associated with it which includes her amazingly active life over the age of 90.

Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending of their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.

Based on the life stories of the eccentric aunt and first cousin of Jackie Onassis raised as Park Avenue débutantes but who withdrew from New York society, taking shelter at their Long Island summer home, "Grey Gardens." As their wealth and contact with the outside world dwindled, so did their grasp on reality.

Documentary about the making of Sam Peckinpah's 1971 film "Straw Dogs."

The Executive Empress explores the entrepreneurial lives of several Florida women, who have turned their unique passions into successful businesses.

A documentary on the making of "Pumping Iron" to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Aired on Cinemax.

The dramatic stories of Fritz Wiessner’s 1939 K2 expedition and Charlie Houston’s return in 1953. K2 is one of the hardest mountains in the world to climb. This film focuses on the expeditions of Fritz Wiessner and Charlie Houston in 1953. An award winner at the Banff, Telluride, Trento and Prague film festivals.

In 1922 the first documentary in the genre sense came on the big screen, "Nanook of the North" (1922). Kabloonak is the story of the making of this movie for which the story was partially staged by his director 'Robert Flaherty'.

Gladys Glover has just lost her modeling job when she meets filmmaker Pete Sheppard shooting a documentary in Central Park. For Pete it's love at first sight, but Gladys has her mind on other things, making a name for herself. Through a fluke of advertising she winds up with her name plastered over 10 billboards throughout city.

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? Director Christopher Bell explores America's win-at-all-cost culture by examining how his two brothers became members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream.

A 60-minute salute to American International Pictures. Entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff founded AIP (then called American Releasing Corporation) on a $3000 loan in 1954 with his partner, James H. Nicholson, a former West Coast exhibitor and distributor. The company made its mark by targeting teenagers with quickly produced films that exploited subjects mainstream films were reluctant to tackle.

BBC Arena's documentary on the Dames of British Theatre and film featuring Maggie Smith, Elieen Atkins, Judi Dench and Joan Plowright on screen together for the first time as they reminisce over a long summer weekend in a house Joan once shared with Sir Laurence Olivier.

Bruce Macdonald follows punk bank Hard Core Logo on a harrowing last-gasp reunion tour throughout Western Canada. As magnetic lead-singer Joe Dick holds the whole magilla together through sheer force of will, all the tensions and pitfalls of life on the road come bubbling to the surface.

Inquisitive journalist Grace Collier is horrified when she witnesses her neighbor, fashion model Danielle Breton, violently murder a man. Panicking, she calls the police. But when the detective arrives at the scene and finds nothing amiss, Grace is forced to take matters into her own hands. Her first move is to recruit private investigator Joseph Larch, who helps her to uncover a secret about Danielle's past that has them both seeing double.

Following Casey and Van Neistat, The Neistat Brothers is a autobiographical documentary following the lives and adventures of the two brothers. The series follows their travels around the world and New York as they tell their stories about six week chunks of their lives in their signature vlog-like style

Film geek Josh is looking for the subject of his new documentary when a chance meeting puts the perfect star in his sights—Dylan, his school's most popular junior. But Dylan's hopes of using the film to become Blossom Queen don't quite match with Josh's goal to make a hard-hitting exposé about popularity. Will Josh shoot the film as planned, or show Dylan as the truly interesting person she is?

Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.

A pushy, narcissistic filmmaker persuades a Phoenix family to let him and his crew film their everyday lives, in the manner of the ground-breaking PBS series "An American Family".

Pushed to his breaking point, a master welder in a small town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains quietly fortifies a bulldozer with 30 tons of concrete and steel and seeks to destroy those he believes have wronged him.

Too shy to make a proper introduction, a recent college grad devises to shoot a documentary about the NYC nightlife scene in order to meet the go-go guy he’s cyber-obsessed with.

A brother and sister are sent to their grandparents' remote Pennsylvania farm for a week, where they discover that the elderly couple is involved in something deeply disturbing.

A journalist and his girlfriend get pulled in while they investigate a cult whose leader claims to be from the future.

Paul, an American composer, arrives in the desert town of Real de Catorce where his father recently died. For the past ten years, Paul has been consumed with the task of composing an ending for the masterpiece of an early twentieth century musician. Being isolated from the world, he sees an opportunity to finish the symphony. However, Paul is caught up in a new mystery, the disappearance thirty years ago of a woman named Marianne.

A raucous story of the interweaving lives and loves of small-town delinquents, shady cops, pretty good girls and very bad boys. With Irish guts and grit, lives collide, preconceptions shatter and romance is tested to the extreme. An ill-timed and poorly executed couple's break-up sets off a chain of events affecting everyone in town.

A documentary team gets a grant to do a film on a rare fatal disease that is attacking homeless people. However, they quickly find the film too depressing. Ducking into a nightclub, they discover a young Manhattan comedienne and decide instead to follow her as she makes the circuit of auditions in L.A. as she tries to get a TV pilot. Unfortunately, she has failed to tell her boyfriend of this move. He decides he will trail her out west. There, the boyfriend runs into an old friend who has already made a break on a TV pilot. Seizing the opportunity, the actress turns her attentions to the established actor. However, the actress goes nowhere in auditions, but her ex-boyfriend is suddenly noticed and becomes the next hot prospect.

More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.

An uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.

Documentary filmmaker Erik and closeted lawyer Paul meet through a casual encounter, but they find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers — compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity and to be true to himself.

Samuel Fuller discusses his career as a filmmaker, illustrated by plenty of clips.

When neighbors John and Levi witness supernatural events in their LA apartment building, they realize documenting the paranormal could inject some fame and fortune into their wasted lives.

The hunky John is a closeted small-town cop who moves to L.A., where he is quickly seduced into the gay life of workouts and dusk-to-dawn parties. With actual circuit party footage and mounds of glistening and chiseled flesh, the pulsating Circuit is bound to get your juices flowing.

An adult swim class sets the stage for this sexually charged comedy-drama about love, loss, and second chances. Three strangers -- inextricably connected through personal heartbreak -- find themselves entering deep water as they learn that life isn't always about diving right in -- it's about getting your feet wet once in awhile.

While working on a documentary on his old neighborhood, a young film school graduate shifts the focus of his production onto the disappearance of a local resident and the strange characters who are conducting the search to find him.

A documentary about actor/director Dennis Hopper, showing him at his home and studio putting together his film "The Last Movie."

After botching the capture of a notorious serial killer, idiosyncratic detective Michael Burrows loses his job with the San Francisco Police. He becomes an investigator for an insurance company and joins forces with a cynical field agent to probe suspicious and unusual deaths.

An exploration of the making of b-movie sci-fi cult classic "The Creeping Terror" and its con-man director Art "A.J." Nelson/Vic Savage.

After making a disastrous 3-hour documentary on New York City's water supply, two young filmmakers focus on the goings-on of life in the LA offices of Boone and Murphy, private investigators. Cheating husbands and missing dogs fail to bring in the big bucks, however, and after sleeping with the wife of one of their clients Murphy leaves. To stop Boone from having to close down the business, the filmmakers must resort to a more hands-on approach in the investigations to ensure the completion of their movie.

Pretty, popular, and slim high-schooler Aly Schimdt had plans of earning a sports scholarship to college but a knee injury ruins her chances. She decides to enter a documentary contest in the hopes of winning money for college. She believes that overweight people, like her mom and brother, seem to make excuses about how the world perceives them. So Aly decides to attend a rival high school as a heavily overweight person for the documentary, but not change her personality. Aly intends and hopes to prove that personality will outshine physical appearance. But when she's met with ridicule, harassment, and name-calling she begins to see things differently.

Three students went missing in October 2018. Sarah McCormick, Kyle Miller, Joseph Moore. Authorities have now come forward with the information that video surveillance was found inside of the abandoned Yost home that shows the crews last few moments documenting the Shadow People before their mysterious disappearance.