The Act of Killing.
Photo: Drafthouse Films/Everett Collection
True stories have been a foundational part of the success of streaming services. When we fire up Netflix, we do it to learn about the impossible, exceptional, traumatizing, and historical real world as much as to experience fictional movies or TV. And the streaming giant is more than just a true-crime docuseries factory; it has won multiple awards for its original documentaries and takes seriously the curation of its nonfiction section. Netflix’s documentary library has grown over the years to span several subcategories, so we’ve divided this regularly updated list into five sections: Award Winners, Music, History, Sports, and Stranger Than Fiction — the place for the stories too weird to be fake. All 20 of these very different films are worth a look.
Year: 2012
Runtime: 2h 39m
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
One of the best documentaries of the new century, this 2012 film was co-produced by nonfiction legends Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, so you know it’s legit. Josh Oppenheimer uses a daring technique to unpack the mass murders in Indonesia in the ’60s, having the killers themselves reenact their crimes. It’s a stunning piece that doesn’t just serve as a history lesson but a commentary on the power of filmmaking itself. Netflix also has the moving companion piece, The Look of Silence.
Year: 2013
Runtime: 1h 23m
Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
It’s impossible to go to SeaWorld again after you see this movie. A hit for Magnolia and CNN Films, this BAFTA nominee is the story of Tilikum, an orca who was held in captivity at the theme park before being involved in the deaths of three people. Cowperthwaite reveals the practices of facilities like this that lead to tragedy, and her film helped shape the public perception of places like SeaWorld.
Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 30m
Director: Kirsten Johnson
The brilliant journalist and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson delivered her most personal work with this experimental, hysterical, surreal documentary — the story of her father’s imminent passing. Winner of a Special Jury Award at Sundance, it features Kirsten’s dad, Dick Johnson, in a series of short re-creations of what could lead to his demise due to his increasing dementia. A film that’s equally strange and funny, Dick Johnson Is Dead is unlike anything else on Netflix.
Year: 2017
Runtime: 2h 1m
Director: Bryan Fogel
The winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary, this is the story of an international doping scandal that rocked the world. It starts with the filmmaker himself investigating illegal drugs in sports, particularly in his own ventures into amateur cycling, which bring him into the world of Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Russian anti-doping laboratory. When his new Russian friend reveals that there was a government-sponsored doping scandal in Russia, the film becomes something else entirely. With the 2024 Olympics around the corner, it might be the perfect time to catch up with this one.
Year: 1988
Runtime: 1h 41m
Director: Errol Morris
The entire true-crime industry — and it really is an industry now — owes a debt to Errol Morris’s 1988 masterpiece, a film that told the story of the trial and conviction of Randall Dale Adams, sitting in a prison cell for the murder of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood. While doing research for the film that would become his excellent Dr. Death, Morris discovered the story of Adams. The film ultimately led to Adams’s release and ended up on more top-ten lists that year than any other movie.
Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Matthew Heineman
More than just a traditional bio-doc of a musician, Heineman’s film explores the intersection between the personal struggles of his subject, Jon Batiste, and one of the most ambitious projects of Batiste’s career. The Oscar winner (for Soul) works on his first symphony and lands 11 Grammy nominations during the year that Heineman chronicles, but he also copes with the leukemia that his wife, Suleika Jaouad, battles. A deftly assembled look at the professional and personal lives of a public figure, Heineman’s moving film unpacks how emotion and creativity intertwine in an artist like Batiste.
Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 37m
Director: Bao Nguyen
“We Are the World” was a pop-music venture like no other, a gathering of some of the biggest stars in the world to write a song to help world hunger. Nguyen’s film features insightful interviews with many of the key players, led by Lionel Richie, who co-wrote the song with Michael Jackson. While music bio-docs can be a little stale, this one really puts you in the room on a night that history was made. Was it the greatest? You decide.
Year: 2019
Runtime: 2h 17m
Director: Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Ed Burke
While it’s not quite Lemonade, this project from Beyoncé is an underrated chapter in her notable pop legacy. The form-shaping musician put together an incredible set for the 2018 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and decided to make a film around the project that details the creative preproduction along with the show itself. It’s an amazing stage production that features Beyoncé at her most magnetic. It will eventually be seen as one of the best music performances of its era, and this documents why.
Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 25m
Director: Lana Wilson
Just before she would go on a pop-culture dominance run that arguably has made her the biggest star in the world, Taylor Swift headlined this documentary that premiered at Sundance in 2020. Director Lana Wilson followed Swift for a few years, revealing her creative process and the pressure of fame. So much has happened in Swift’s life and the world since it came out that it almost feels like a sequel is overdue.
Year: 2019
Runtime: 2h 22m
Director: Martin Scorsese
Scorsese has dabbled in music documentaries a few times, making notable films with the Band and the Rolling Stones, among others. When he chose to tackle the story of Bob Dylan’s landmark 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour, he knew it couldn’t be a traditional collection of archival clips, which leads to a film that plays with truth versus reality in a way that reflects Dylan’s complex persona. It’s a fascinating piece of work that sits at the creative intersection between two of the most important American creators ever in Scorsese and Dylan.
Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 40m
Director: Ava DuVernay
The director of Selma and Origin helmed this 2016 documentary named after the 13th Amendment to the United States, the one that abolished slavery. DuVernay makes a convincing case that slavery merely shape-shifted into other parts of American culture, particularly the prison system and how it profits off incarceration, typically of nonwhite inmates. It was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary (and should have won).
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Margaret Brown
Africatown is a small community just south of Mobile, Alabama. It’s where the last known U.S. slave ship, the Clotilda, reportedly wrecked off the coast, making some of its residents descendants of enslaved Africans, brought here decades after the practice had been abolished. Brown’s film tells the stories of the residents of this community and the conflict over the ghosts resurrected when people try to raise the wreckage.
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 30m
Director: Rory Kennedy
After dozens of people died in two plane crashes in 2019 and 2020, Boeing finally had to ground its fleet of 737 Max aircraft, once deemed to be the top of the line. Rory Kennedy’s expertly constructed documentary details the stories of the crashes and how the families of the deceased fought for answers. It reveals how many corners were cut to get this product on the market, again revealing how easily greed can lead to tragedy.
Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 58m
Director: Robert Greene
You won’t see a more moving film on Netflix than this one. The excellent Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine) followed six men who suffered horrific abuse at the hands of Catholic priests in their youth. The incredibly courageous men have agreed to participate in a program to reenact the crimes in order to help with their trauma. It’s a shattering piece of work that reminds one how much collaboration and creativity are vital to the human ability to survive.
Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 32m
Director: Roger Ross Williams
The nonfiction book of the same name, by Ibram X. Kendi, serves as the foundation for this exploration of systemic racism, about how the same concepts and imagery have fueled racist beliefs for generations. Kendi appears as an interview subject alongside other experts on the subject, while Williams’s approach avoids the trap of the film ever feeling like a dry history lesson. It’s also got the rare 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 44m
Directors: Bonnie Cohen, Jon Shenk
The scandals around U.S. Gymnastics have been heartbreaking and infuriating, and this Netflix original doc is the best at unpacking everything that went wrong. It follows a team of journalists at The Indianapolis Star as they uncover the crimes of Larry Nassar, a doctor who abused so many of his gymnast patients, and the system that covered it up. It will make you furious.
Year: 2021
Runtime: 1h 10m
Director: Floyd Russ
Consider this one something of a placeholder for the entire Untold collection of feature films about scandals within the sports industry. While the third season was kind of a bummer, the first two years have some excellent offerings, especially Breaking Point, The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, and this gem about the brawl at the Palace and, importantly, how the narrative of it was shaped by sports media.
Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 35m
Director: David Farrier
The director of HBO’s unforgettably strange Tickled returned with another almost impossible tale: an investigation into a man named Michael Organ, who … well, it’s hard to explain. Who is Mr. Organ? It starts with an investigation into an antique store in Auckland that was behind a car-clamping operation, but it becomes a battle between the subject and the filmmaker. Accusations, restraining orders, and increasingly odd behavior ensue and make this surreal story all the more memorable.
Year: 2019
Runtime: 1h 25m
Director: Ed Perkins
This one is a lot. Alex Lewis is a twin who lost his memory at age 18 in a motorcycle accident. His twin, Marcus, helps him regain the lost chapters of his life, but he omits certain traumatizing details. The film follows these men as the truth is revealed over many years, leading to questions of how memory works, particularly when it comes to repressed trauma.
Year: 2017
Runtime: 1h 35m
Directors: Myles Kane, Josh Koury
Journalism icon Gay Talese tells the story of Gerald Foos in this true-crime story like no other. Foos owned a motel in Aurora, Colorado, where he made a habit of spying on his guests. Foos reveals his elaborate planning, including a platform he built in the motel’s attic to watch people through vents. It’s a truly unusual viewing experience, a peek behind the curtain into the life of a subject who wouldn’t normally get this kind of profile, while also allowing for the interpretation that maybe he shouldn’t.
