Documentaries are the most effective and inspiring clips. It can change a person’s mind and can inspire him/her to be something from,m nothing. So here is the list of the top 10 documentaries that you must watch right now. So just grab some popcorns and let that good information sink in.
Grey Gardens
If watching a documentary that features subjects who legitimately go by Big Edie and Little Edie, doesn’t interest you, then we’re not sure what will. Grey Gardens is regarded as an all-time greatest documentary for good reason—following the two Edies as they live shuttered lives in a run-down New York mansion.
Amy
Amy Winehouse had a voice that sealed her destiny as a music icon at a young age, but her fate became more twisted than anyone could have ever expected. This heart-wrenching biopic destigmatizes Winehouse’s infamous “party girl” record, providing a second look into the once-in-a-generation talent’s personal life and career, as well as a retrospective into how the world lost her.
The Act of Killing
Between 1965 and 1966, an anti-communist purge took place in Indonesia, a mass killing that historians have estimated a total of 400,000 to 3,000,000 victims. Half a century later, director Joshua Oppenheimer (along with Christine Cynn and an anonymous Indonesian filmmaker) crafted The Act of Killing, a compelling and brutal look at former members of the death squads—now revered for creating the society in which they now live.
13th
Ava DuVernay follows up her acclaimed film Selma with a searing documentary that looks at the mass incarceration of minorities following the passage of the 13th amendment. As the documentary points out, it’s not just ingrained cultural racism that results in the widespread incarceration of African-Americans and other minorities. There’s a financial incentive as well, and it’s good business to lock people up. 13th systematically goes through the decades following the passage of the 13th amendment to show how black people were targeted by the media, by the government, and by businesses to create a new form of slavery.
My Octopus Teacher
The movie follows filmmaker Craig Fosterwho goes snorkeling off the coast of South Africa and encounters an octopus. He resolves to interact with the octopus every day and learn as much as he can about the creature. Through their stunning underwater photography, we see a magnificent and startling intelligent animal working its way to survive in a dangerous kelp forest. The film never anthropomorphizes or cheapens the complexity of this underwater world, while also never losing sight of the majesty it presents. Even if you’re not much for nature documentaries, you’ll likely be enchanted by My Octopus Teacher.
Tiger King
Each installment of the seven-episode docuseries Tiger King is crazier than the last, to the point that you may find yourself saying multiple times, “Well surely things can’t possibly get any weirder than this.” You’d be 100% wrong. Tiger King follows the exploits of Joe Exotic, a flamboyant and extremely confident owner of a private big cat zoo in Oklahoma. The story of Joe Exotic is stranger than fiction, involving lies, guns, a bid for the U.S. presidency, and a murder-for-hire plot. This is a thing that must be seen to be believed.
Miss Americana
The Taylor SwiftNetflix documentary Miss Americana is far from your typical music doc. It isn’t even really all that focused on Swift’s music so much as it is on Swift as a person. More specifically, it’s a film about Swift’s long journey to figuring out how not to care what people think about her, and how that manifests in her feminist awakening and decision to publicly express her political opinion—which we see occur in real-time. The film’s true moments of insight are hard to ignore, and it’s fascinating to watch Swift come to terms with who she is as a human being while also being one of the most famous people on the planet.
Formula 1: Drive to Survive
The excellent docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survivetakes an entire season of Formula 1 racing and condenses it into its best moments and storylines with each episode approaching a riveting angle divorced simply from who’s the best team or who’s winning in the standings. Instead, the filmmakers find a unique angle in every episode whether it’s a team’s two drivers who don’t get along, a driver who is struggling with a series of crashes, a manager who doesn’t know how to get the best performance out of his team, and more. This is then paired with some really incredible footage that emphasizes the speed and agility of these magnificent vehicles. If you’ve looked at Formula 1 and just see a bunch of cars going around a track countless times, Drive to Survive shows there’s so much more happening under the hood.
Long Shot
The less you know about Jacob LaMendola’s 40-minute documentary Long Shot the better because its twists and turns are absolutely shocking even if its larger point should be burned into viewers’ memories by now. Overall, the documentary focuses on Juan Catalan, who was accused of a murder he didn’t commit, and the lengths he had to go to in order to prove his innocence. While our justice system likes to tout that the accused are “innocent until proven guilty,” Long Shot shows in its brief runtime that the truth is just the opposite. Despite the flimsy evidence against Catalan, he had to be extraordinarily lucky to prove his innocence and that we have a system that incentivizes detectives and prosecutors simply to close cases rather than find justice. The brilliant thing about Long Shot is that it never has to come right out and say it. The case speaks volumes on its own.
Five Came Back
I absolutely adore this documentary. Five current acclaimed directors (including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola) help tell the story of five famous movie directors from the ’30s and ’40s who did frontline work during the Second World War. It wraps their legacies alongside the impact of the war itself into a truly compelling story of Hollywood’s golden age.
So these were the top 10 best documentaries that you should watch. If you liked it then also read more amazing lists by clicking here.
Piyush goel
Content writer writing content for various organisations. A perfect SEO writer with a affective amount of knowledge regarding content building and searching.