The Death of Yugoslavia (1996) [1] [2]. Won the BAFTA and Peabody awards that year.

It's a BBC documentary in six episodes about the conflict that caused the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the wars in the Balkans.

It stands out among many documentaries for being a truly dispassionate moment-to-moment record of events. No sensationalism, no grand-standing, just the facts.

If you're tired of the Netflix style of documentary — lots of talking heads quickly edited together for sound bites, dramatic music, re-enactments — then this is for you. Sadly, too few documentaries are produced in this style anymore.

Edit: Looks like the episodes are on YouTube [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Yugoslavia

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gfbpy

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj9Zw5fN3rE&list=PLdw7wnKe0w...

I really can't stand the new Netflix style documentaries as you call them. Like, there's no coherent sentence or point being made by the speaker when it's literally not even full sentences just parts of sentences being strung together. It's really disorienting and obviously any nuance that the original interviewee was trying to get across is completely lost when every word they say is taken out of context into whatever the point is that the editors wanted to make. How are people enjoying this?

I suppose it's all because of the topic or the content itself. They try to use any technique to keep the view and to make it longer. They sometimes build miniseries from something that could be an hour max.

Sort of loosely related.

when I first streamed netflix years ago - my queue was full of 5-star movies and shows to watch.

As I worked my way through my queue I developed a pattern. Everything I hadn't watched became 5-star documentaries.

I would develop "documentary fatigue" where there were so many well-documented, well produced and important issues to learn about, that I would quickly saturate and at that point I wouldn't watch documentaries anymore.

I would literally put 2-star scifi movies with unbelievable monsters or cataclysms before all the 5-star documentaries.

What do you mean by 5-star? 5 on netflix? imdb?

Is there a good example of this style?

The Netflix documentary "13th" comes to mind. At about the 19 minute mark:

Speaker 1: The election of ronald reagan was in many ways transformative in a negative sense

Speaker 2: President Richard Nixon was the first to coin the term "a war on drugs" but president ronald reagan turned that rhetorical war into a literal war

Reagan: It's back to school time for america's children, and while drug and alcohol abuse cuts across all generations, it's especially damaging to our young people on whom our future depends

Speaker 2: The modern war on drugs was declared by ronald reagan in 1982

Reagan: As we mobilize for this national crusade, I'm mindful that drugs are a constant temptation for millions:

Speaker 3: Popular opinion polls of the day show that it wasn't an issue for most people in the United States. But reagan was determined to put this onto the agenda to define it as a problem

Reagan: A war against drugs is a war of individual battles

Speaker 3: Reagan used his wife for example in this "just say no" campaign

Reagan: She has helped so many of our young people to say no to drugs. Nancy, much credit belongs to you

Clip of 80s anti drug commercial: This is your brain. This is drugs (cracks egg into pan). This is your brain on drugs.

Speaker 4: I joined it. And some people said...

I think that's a pretty decent example

There is this satire of Netflix documentaries that sums the style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BUrNe3Vhtk

I just came here to suggest the same, since I just watched it recently again. Coming from a Bosnia and born just before the war, it was really chilling watching it. I think it portrays the conflict in Balkans in some neutral and fair way.

Interesting story: during the high school, in 2006-2008, we weren't allowed to have lectures about the war. That didn't stop our history class teacher to play us this documentary. We would watch it during the class and it would take us couple of classes to finish, since it's pretty long.

Also, the full documentary is here [1] and not segmented like OP's link.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVUg-VoPAeA&ab_channel=Triac...

I just watched this while traveling in Croatia and Bosnia, and I thought it was an incredible documentary! It's also very interesting that it was made only 6 month after the Dayton Accords ended the war. It gives you a very in-the-moment view of events. Definitely worth checking out!

+1 An amazing documentary. It presents the war from unbiased perspective. Something that I wasn't able to get (been living there, including during the war). Learnt so much from it.

None of the documentaries related to this war paint an objective picture of what happened, everyone has a dog in the fight.

Didn't a guy putting a bottle in his ass start the demise of Yugoslavia? Do they mention him at all?

To save everyone one Google search: [1]. It is/was apparently not clear if the guy was masturbating or being assaulted - that's the point of the story.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90or%C4%91e_Martinovi%C4%8...

Unfortunately that style of documentaries far predates Netflix.

Fortunately, there are also more good documentaries being produced than ever!

“The Century of the Self” by Adam Curtis.

https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s

It goes through each decade of the 1900s and explains how Freud’s psychology and the new field of marketing completely reshaped society. For the first time in my life I feel like I understood the “why” of how things work in American society. This film is probably best if you’re age 40+ and actually remember some of the events.

+1 for any Curtis documentary. They aren't something you necessarily need to agree with to enjoy. Most of them involve him attempting to stitch together an over-arching narrative for events of our time.

Also see The Loving Trap for explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

Haha, came here to post this. it's a short explaier about Curtis, less than favourable. It does make you laugh though:)

Yup. Curtis does a great job of explaining unintended consequences, humans being wrong, the world is far more complex than you know.

Same here. I love watching them. They are very entertaining but don't care if his theme is sensible or not.

Amazed given the site we are on nobody mentions "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" by Curtis.

I loved it, even being in the industry at the center of the topic.

However the narrative is judged, it at least has a spark I find has died in our own.

I was really pleased to find this on The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-...

Adam Curtis is great.

I recommend even looking into his older material, such as The Mayfair Set (won a BAFTA Award in 2000). Another older documentary of his that I recommend is The Way of All Flesh (1997) which is a rather remarkable story on HeLa cells with a depth I hadn't encountered before. To give you an idea of the subject matter, here's a quote from Wikipedia:

"HeLa cell contamination has become a pervasive worldwide problem – affecting even the laboratories of many notable physicians, scientists, and researchers, including Jonas Salk. The HeLa contamination problem also contributed to Cold War tensions. The USSR and the USA had begun to cooperate in the war on cancer launched by President Richard Nixon, only to find that the exchanged cells were contaminated by HeLa."

Some of his material is viewabled on BBC iPlayer if you have access to that. His older material can be challenging to find. You can download his complete collection via torrents.

I really enjoy Adam Curtis’s documentaries, including “Can’t Get You Out of My Mind” but I always have to be careful watching any of his content because it tends to make me feel depressed.

I don't mind a bit of Adam Curtis, largely for the soundtracks. Still hugely enjoy this though https://www.tomscott.com/infinite-adam-curtis/

https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg obligatry response whenever anything by Adam Curtis is offered up. Sorry, I'm largely of the opinion that it is (well made) boomer-aimed catastrophe porn designed to give the viewer a smug sense of having "esoteric knowledge".

There is some truth to this parody, but there is also a lot to learn from Century of Self, if you weren't already aware of, say, Edward Bernaise and his role in American society. Now his doc HyperNormalisation, I took nothing away from it, but oh boy was it an amazing way to spend the evening. The music and imagery is fricking amazing.

i think you should watch it again. i feel like it has become significantly more relevant since it was released.

Nearly anything can be parodied in such a way to apparently diminish thentarget of the parody.

> boomer-aimed catastrophe porn designed to give the viewer a smug sense of having "esoteric knowledge"

I'll just balance it out with some TED optimism porn.

opens arms

Adam Curtis likes the parody.

I thought I was the only one feeling this way.

Yeah, I tend to agree.

I've watched a couple and they ask pretty good questions if the answers he gives require some additional research/critical thinking/knowledge of history.

The last documentary I watched, Hypernormalization, seemed to give platform to and justify the need for _more_ individualism via Trump-esque critique on Leftist ideologue. That is totally fine, but I can see how people can watch his documentaries accept many of the leaps in logic.

I have to put in a word for Kenneth Clark's series called Civilisation. There's also a book. You can find all the episodes on YouTube with a simple search. They have almost all of them in a playlist but for some weird reason the first episode was deleted from the playlist, but exists separately on YouTube so you can still watch all the episodes.

I watched it when I was 20 and it changed my life.

This is a work of art--I must say though that I remember thinking of his subject as a bit of a mirror for his work: in the first episode he remember him talking about propaganda in its many forms, and then getting the impression that he was using those exact techniques on the viewer within the documentary itself.

This would only be hypocritical if he claimed in the doc that the techniques weren’t effective or were unethical. Honestly I haven’t seen it recently enough to know if he does this, just saying.

I like it but frankly don't get a solid 'revelation' out of it. Hypnotic, that's about it (for me).

I thought how individualism is just something that was marketed uppon us was pretty powerful. Also how medical science became more about grouping symptoms than understanding where those things originated from.

  individualism (...) was marketed uppon us

Maybe but I tend to favor materialistic explanations before anything 'concerted'. So I'd say individualism was always here but blossomed fully when abundance came.

One should immediately watch “Human Resources” after this one.

Be prepared to feel rage and depression, but it’s so damn informative.

"Jiro Dreams of Sushi" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiro_Dreams_of_Sushi

If you're a developer / engineer you'll admire the professionalism. And more importantly value proposition of your work.

I think Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a fantastic documentary and recommend it also.

I came away with a different impression, in that I certainly don't admire or want to share Jiro's attitude to work, because the perfection-at-all-costs approach looked like it had a pretty devastating fallout on his wife and his two sons. It's a fascinating documentary in that you'll either come away saying "how inspirational!" or "I'm running 100 miles away from that", and that's interesting in itself.

I agree to with you on the cost of perfectionism - I also didn't care for how women were treated at the restaurant (seating arrangements etc), but like you mentioned it's a fantastic documentary.

I think for me, I came out thinking "damn I truly do may be only 25% dedication to my craft".

It was probably a typo, but just in case English is your second language: We tend to use "don't care for" or "didn't care for" in this context.

If you say "I didn't care for the way women were treated..", it expresses disapproval.

We use "don't/didn't care about" to mean exactly the opposite. "I didn't care about" means that it doesn't matter to you at all.

Thanks for the feedback - yes I'm not a native English speaker (I'm trilingual)

It's a weird quirk, now that I think about it, as a native English speaker. It's only a change in present / past tense and the preposition, but communicates something completely different.

I guess reflecting on something external is always assumed in the past tense (I didn't care for...), while reflecting on ones own opinions (I don't care for...) suggests personal belief.

And "for" (external) vs "about" (self) intensifies the above.

But there aren't any real logistical or constant rules for why the above is, in English. :(

It's a little odd yes, but I think it counts as a phrasal verb? (https://www.englishclub.com/vocabulary/phrasal-verbs-list.ht... - eg. "throw out" vs. "throw up")

I've been learning Russian lately and re-discovering English through my lessons. Phrasal verbs are very present in Russian (as prepositions mainly), and I didn't realize how when I learned English they kind of came to me naturally and now I'm having such a hard time with them.

But when you think about it, phrasal verbs are fucking weird. For example, the various particles you can put after "send" (send out, send in, send up, send down, send away, send for, send into) are all various synonyms of "dispatching"; whereas "turn" as a phrasal verb is WAY more diverse (turn out, turn in, turn up, turn down, turn away, turn into, turn for: all different meanings).

I often use past tense because in my tribe (Kalenjin for those interested)- when you do historical commentary you don't interject with your current feelings. You say what you felt then (e.g while watching the documentary) unless you talking about how you feel now vs then. It's very contexual.

Rules in English can be confusing [1] ;)

[1] - https://youtu.be/kXH3HDE9Czo

I gather most people from eastern or central Africa are polyglot and much better at switching languages than I am. On behalf of English, I apologize for its irregularity. ;)

So in your first language, how would you express the idea of "I saw a documentary in the past, felt some way at the time, and now feel a different way?" To the extent translation is possible.

Languages fascinate me. Especially in terms of the constructs or concepts they can or can't express.

If you use present tense then it’s how you feel now with no reference when you started feeling so. Past tense implies you felt so then and you still feel so now (linear feeling is assumed). If your feelings have changed then you say how you felt originally and qualify it for the present (now I feel).

as someone that lived in Japan for over a decade I found it made up. The documentary people could have picked almost any indie sushi restaurant in Japan. I'm not sure what made Jiro special

I agree tho it's a good documentary for seeing someone taking their work so seriously and the fallout from it as well as for seeing how much work might go into certain kinds of food prep and therefore making me appreciate it more.

I think the Michelin three star rating for the restaurant is why it was picked. A line I remember and found hilarious was that Jiro’s place was the only three star restaurant without its own bathroom.

I just watched “10 years with Miyazaki” and had the exact same sentiments.

you may well be correct but society would be a lot less advanced if not for the works of 'unbalanced' individuals

In a way I do agree with you. See Newton, Einstein, MLK, Jobs, Musk, all have (arguably) revolutionary impacts on the world and yet they didn't do much for their family life. It is not commendable, and yet, it does seem to be the case that certain individuals who pursue their work above all else end up with qualitative progress in their fields.

One documentary that demonstrates finding flow (happiness) in work is Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011), which is the story of Japanese master chef Jiro Ono, who is a Shokunin, an expert craftsman who strives for perfection and feels great fulfillment and joy from yearning to improve bit by bit. He explains it thusly,

"You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That’s the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably. […] . Even at my age, after decades of work, I don’t think I have achieved perfection. But I feel ecstatic all day. I love making sushi. That’s the spirit of the Shokunin."

From:

https://moviewise.substack.com/p/going-through-an-existentia...

And after watching that, I would recommend the Documentary Now! episode Juan Likes Rice and Chicken.

That was an hilarious parody! Thanks

What do you mean by value proposition? I don't remember seeing much that would apply to my work.

The waiting list is like a year long - even with high cost! Most of us would devalue our craft by opening up bigger restaurant or even multiple locations.

For me that translated to valuing my craft enough that people are willing to wait for and pay for it at whatever cost I set.

I would say it’s mostly an attitude around quality that is likely applicable to any sort of craftsmanship.

Just finished watching it, it was great. Thanks for the suggestion!

The greatest documentary to me is not a film but a series - The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski.

It charts the cultural and technological milestones that brought humanity to where it is today. Well, the 1970s rather than today, since it is quite old. However don't let that put you off! It is a BBC documentary of the highest calibre. David Attenborough commissioned its production.

Bronowski is an incredible, if unusual, presenter - he has an interesting history (he personally knew Einstein, Von Neumann, and others), is knowledgeable in many fields, and doesn't waste a word. His off the cuff monologue at Auschwitz where some of his family died at the hands of the nazis is both heart-wrenching and profound. But thays just one of many incredible moments.

I have watched this countless times, and am always struck by the scope, scale, and beauty of the production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Man

I watched The Ascent of Man when it first came out - I was probably 8 or 9 at the time.

That scene at Auschwitz where he walks into the pond is burned into my memory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltjI3BXKBgY

Edit: It was many years later that I noticed the reference to Leo Szilard, reminding me of this quote from The Making of the Atomic Bomb:

"In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilard stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come..."

I'm not sure how I originally came across it, it was certainly well before my time. But I'm glad I did. It is incredibly dense - especially when compared to today's TV shows - but perfectly understandable. Bronowski's passion for the subject matter is evident at all times, and his humanist take on science lends an endearing quality.

That's a beautiful excerpt, thanks for sharing.

I doubt if I actually took very much in from watching it - other than wanting to be a scientist! My dad seemed to thing getting me to watch it would be good for me.

However, I still remember that scene nearly 50 years later.

That moment when he stands in front of the remnants of Auschwitz, kneels down, reaches into the sludge of ashes and says, “We need to touch people”.

It would be an Ask HN in and of itself to ask: What broadcaster today, YouTube or otherwise, comes even close in education, trust in the intelligence of their audience, and sheer balls?

I'd love contribute to that thread. I'd suggest ~10am PST on a Tuesday, as that seems to be the best time for threads to get going. I'd love to have some more heroes to put up on the wall for kiddos.

As for the question: I'd say Hodan Nalayeh who was killed by Al-Shabab in 2019. Her work in Jubaland is sorely missed these days. She was more of a journalist/influencer/founder though, so I'm not sure if it totally fits.

I posted it. Didn't get any traction though. Maybe you should try. I think it would be a great thread. Just a matter of timing and luck.

There's an accompanying booklet which comes with the DVD box set that explains how in most other scenes he does many takes, but for that scene in Auschwitz he does it in one, unscripted. Truly a powerful moment.

I'd love to see such a thread! I personally can't think of anyone comparable to Bronowski given those criteria. But even someome in the same ballpark would be interesting to hear about

Ok then. Tuesday at ten it is.

Gary Hustwits design trilogy:

Helvetica - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica_(film)

“about typography and graphic design, centered on the eponymous typeface.”

Objectified - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectified

“examining the role of everyday non-living objects, and the people who design them, in our daily lives.”

Urbanized - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanized

“discusses how cities are designed, and it features interviews with urban planners and architects“

They are beautifully made films, and he interviews some of the most influential designers of the last century.

It funny how many times I’ve told people to watch Helvetica and they have just looked at me and asked how there could be a film about a “font”. It’s so much more, the films really cover design methodology and how it influences our every day lives.

Of you like the Helvetica story then try the excellent episode "Jonathan Hoefler: Typeface Design" on the Netflix documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design

Another masterpiece of his is https://www.hustwit.com/rams and I'm quoting directly from the website:

> Rams is a documentary portrait of Dieter Rams, one of the most influential designers alive, and a rumination on consumerism, sustainability, and the future of design.

I watched it during initial COVID lockdown when Gary offered it for free for 24 hours it was an amazing experience to watch...and I'm a programmer, not a designer (LOL!) and loved it like crazy!

These are some of my favorites. I have Helvetica and Objectified posters in my house.

Yes, same here. I have the objectified poser above my desk.

How dare you objectify a poser!

The World at War - BBC documentary series about WWII. Shows humanity simultaneously at it's best and worst.

The Vietnam War - Ken Burns documentary series. Very balanced and sobering take on the Vietnam war, events leading to the Vietnam war, and unrest in the US during that period.

The Fog of War - Errol Morris doc about Robert McNamara.

The Salt of the Earth - Doc about photographer Sebastião Salgado

Alone in the Wilderness - Dick Proenneke films himself building and living in a remote cabin in Alaska

Also can't go wrong with Adam Curtis.

Any of Ken Burns' documentaries are good, The Civil War and Vietnam being two of the best. Even his take on Prohibition and Baseball are very watchable.

I loved the Civil War, and I think the quality of Vietnam was great too, but it made me so angry I had to stop watching it. I am not of an age where I was in danger of going, but I had siblings that were. They luckily did not go.

I liked his Jazz one too.

> I loved the Civil War, and I think the quality of Vietnam was great too, but it made me so angry I had to stop watching it.

I'm just curious - what particularly made you angry about it?

My father served in the military, but was posted as a medical orderly to West Germany rather than Vietnam at the time, this was in the early 70's. He tended to some of the wounded guys getting repatriated after getting physical therapy, and said the experience had destroyed far more lives than just KIAs on the battlefield.

> what particularly made you angry about it

There were lots of things all pointing to essentially the same issue; the fact "we" (I'm American) _KNEW_ that it was almost certainly unwinnable and kept it going despite all the facts and just kept throwing young people at the problem.

And partially because it was my country doing it. The lack of transparency and outright lying. It's something I need to just get over I guess; it's what gov'ts do.

I'm really surprised Ken Burns isn't higher in this thread.

Basically anything he made is a gem (though Civil War could use a slight correction these days, mainly because all the work done on the consequences - "Reconstruction" by PBS would probably be a good complement).

Just finished Dick Proenneke’s books, which the movie was based on. Such a great read that sounds boring - reading a guy’s journal as he lived alone in Alaska for nearly 30 years - but it felt like a warm blanket each time I’d dip into the books.

Want to note that he didn’t like the documentary. He felt it was too staged and inauthentic and didn’t use his voice as the voiceover. He mentioned that he wouldn’t do it again if asked.

In a similar vein to Dick Proenneke's book, have a read of "An Island to Oneself" by Tom Neale. It's about a guy who lived alone on a remote island in the Pacific. Incredibly calm and peaceful book about living a life completely removed from the endless complications of modern life. It's out of print but pretty sure you can download it as an ebook.

Sorry to nitpick but The World at War is Thames Television. I think they became ITV.

I also used to think it was BBC because of the quality and dignity of the production, I wouldn't be surprised to hear some people claim this is an example of the Mandela effect.

Yes it was originally made by Thames Television. Now only available on DVD as far as I can tell.

They can be found on DailyMotion.

https://www.dailymotion.com/brutalcombat/videos

You are correct.

Love seeing Dick Proenneke mentioned here. My grandpa (also named Dick) built a hunting cabin with Proenneke on the adjacent lot.

Both structures are still there at Twin Lakes, and are operated by Alaska State Parks now.

We have some cool photos and stories from that time.

Similar to "Alone in the Wilderness" I recommend a recent doco series "The Last Alaskans". Unlike most recent reality/doco style shows it's not the usual melodramatic, exaggerated rubbish. The characters speak for themselves and its allowed to "breathe". The TV series is inspired by the book "The Final Frontiersman" by Heimo Korth. Heimo is one of the characters in the series.

The fog of war is amazing.

I'd be more careful when using the word "amazing".

I agree that technically it's well done, but IMO it leaves too much space to McNamara to write his own narrative.

McNamara's role in the escalation of Vietnam War and the U-turn he did in the Senate hearings towards the end of his term as Secretary of Defense is something he IMO never properly tried to reflect upon...

He's still a human being and I think he showed incredible reflection. It is apparent that the events of the past still weigh on him. I came out with more respect than I had going in. The Vietnam war was a tragedy.

For a different view look at the Rumsfeld doc. Rumsfeld doesn't give a single inch but I probably wouldn't either if being asked about a still ongoing conflict.

Well, comparison to Rumsfeld is just setting the bar too low.

Don't take me as saying that Fog of War is bad or that McNamara is completely missing self reflection. Far from it. On first seeing some 15 years ago I have been impressed as well.

It's only over the years as I kept finding more and more about just how much responsibility for Vietnam does McNamara bear that I found that he's somehow trying to present himself as a technocrat without much in the way of a moral responsibility. Sort of a Nuremberg defense by steering clear of the ethical aspects almost altogether.

The World at War was actually produced by Thames TV for ITV, not the BBC, back in the days when they made documentaries. It’s an excellent series though. Laurence Olivier is a great narrator.

Is that actually Dick building the cabin, or is it a reenactment based on his diary/book?

He filmed (and narrated) himself, AFAIK.

Oh cool

Fires of Kuwait - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tUzkF_Dp8M

A first hand account of the firefighters who were sent to cap the oil wells that Saddam set on fire during his attempt to invade the country.

Senna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aPLOQeSHrM The story of famed F1 driver. I'm not a racing fan but this one was amazing.

Apollo 11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Co8Z8BQgWc Completely new footage was found of the complete Apollo 11 mission. The best doc of the space race, by far.

I would also recommend Moon Machines[0] for an amazing in-depth experience of the Apollo program:

Part 1: The Saturn V Rocket

Part 2: The Command Module

Part 3: The Navigation Computer

Part 4: The Lunar Module

Part 5: The Space Suit

Part 6: The Lunar Rover

Available on vimeo[1] and youtube.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Machines

[1] https://vimeo.com/673970849

For a poetic treatment of the fires of Kuwait, see Lessons of Darkness by Werner Herzog:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104706/

Trailer: https://youtu.be/vMIM-ma2juo

Ive got that one on my watchlist, as well as Baraka once I find somebody with an 8k setup.

Yep, love it, too. But definitely more of an acquired taste.

If you like documentaries about the space race, the Washington Post has a fantastic podcast series called "Moonrise" (https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/).

I would also recommend Senna. I don't care for F1 or racing at all but I couldn't stop watching because it was so gripping.

+1 on Fires of Kuwait, I saw that in a theater in the `90's and I've never forgotten the shot that starts at 2:28 in the YT video although it is minor in comparison to more recent footage (from Beirut and Ukraine for example).

> A first hand account of the firefighters who were sent to cap the oil wells that Saddam set on fire during his attempt to invade the country.

Just watched the first few minutes and this line strikes me as inaccurate, just based on other things I've read/watched about Saddam's burning of oil wells:

"In a final act of vengeance, Saddam ordered the detonation of almost 700 oil wells"

I could be misinformed, but wasn't Saddam using the burning oil wells to limit visibility from above once it became clear he was doomed as long as the eyes in the sky were unimpeded? AIUI it wasn't some purely vengeful act.

You may be right, but it really has no bearing on this film/story at all. I just rewatched some of it and forgot how amazing the cinematography is!

5 years old - https://www.alphagomovie.com/

It's extremely well done and shows how Google beat the best Go player with AI to the surprise of everyone, especially those native to Asia, where Go is part of spiritual ideas and practices. They were certain the machine would fail and when it won with moves of sublime beauty the entire Go community was stunned and humbled. The movie says it was China's "Sputnik moment"

The Up Series[0]. It's a series that follows a group from children from age 7 through old age, and it's still going (in theory - the creator died last year). Seeing entire lives compressed into a few hours was very impactful to me.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/The-Up-Series/dp/B074MGWDPF

The Wikipedia description may be more informative:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_(film_series)>

Can’t upvote this enough. It’s fascinating what happens to each of the kids as some of them drop out of the series and then come back later. I hope it lives on past Michael Apted’s death in 2021.

Already so many good recommendations here, so just a few I enjoyed but haven't seen mentioned:

— This excellent 2013 re-working of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (not a proper doc, but if you like Adam Curtis, you'll probably like this). If you like to consider whether the world we've built is good for us, look no further: https://vimeo.com/60328678

— Pump Up The Volume, a 2001 BBC doc about the rise of House music. Maybe the best work on this topic ever produced, covering the early years as disco evolved into Daft Punk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_Hz6FQyVJ8

— Paris Is Burning, a slice-of-time doc about the 80's Ballroom drag scene in NYC. You can see the roots of many elements of popular culture documented here, shown through performances and conversations featuring some of the stars of the scene at that time. This one's on HBOMax these days, but I'm sure it can be found elsewhere online.

Paris Is Burning is such a fantastic documentary. I can't recommend it enough. Such a vivid look into this unique gay community, with all the memorable characters. Also a great slice of NYC in the 80's.

Nate Harrison's "Can I get an Amen?" on the history of the Amen break: https://archive.org/details/NateHarrisonCanIGetAnAmen

"pump up the volume" is also a cool movie about high school pirate radio

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_Up_the_Volume_(film)

Exit Through the Gift Shop - an amusing documentary about somebody trying to find Banksy (a street artist), and much more, supposingly directed by Banksy himself.

There is some debate if it is documentary or not (the story is almost too good), but it seems the evidence suggests it is real.

EDIT: sorry, I missed the "last 4 years" part in the question. This film is older than that.

I still think about the final line from banksy often, paraphrasing here:

“I use to encourage everyone to make art. I don’t do that much anymore.”

Definitely this, my subconscious can't let go of the question as to whether this documentary is an exquisitely elaborate hoax or a rare capture of a "truth is stranger than fiction".

And if the goal was to create that confusion... meta-wow.

Masterpiece, one of my top 3 films about art, along with “Achilles and the Tortoise” and “Vincent and Theo”

The Act of Killing - it's hard to even describe the premise. Its a present-day (2012) profile on participants in the 1960s mass killings in Indonesia. An absolutely brutal look into human nature.

It is hard to describe this doco in any way that does it justice. Fascinating, compelling, horrifying, disgusting, surreal. The breadth of discussion it opens up both on the individual events it covers and the implications for humanity.

I have never seen a movie like this before and I doubt I ever will again. It is in a total category of its own.

I watched that shortly after release. Very memorable. It was quite bizarre to hear someone freely discuss his day job of murdering people in such a casual context.

I could not finish that documentary, it was too brutal.

It reminded me of the movie Man Bites Dog which was just a parody, https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0103905/

> fter release. Very memorable. It was quite bizarre to hear someone freely discuss his day job of murdering people in such a casual context.

Sadly this is pretty common https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#:~:tex....

This, extremely interesting and unique documentary.

"Searching for Sugar Man" (2012) took the Oscar that year and for good reason.

If you like cultural/arts/music stuff, just go watch it.

protip: don't read up on it before since nearly any write-up may include spoilers. Not even the liner notes on whatever streaming platform you find it. Just hit play.

I loved it..but when I learned the true story after I watched it, I felt lied to, way past what is acceptable. Like, he played large venues in an Australian tour in 1979, and returned in 1981, but that wouldn't fit the story the documentary wants to tell at all, so is not mentioned.

edit: I just learned his 1979 album Alive was recorded live in concert in Sydney. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga5aR0MwWOs

Dominion: https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko

It’s about the cruelty that happens in the animal industry. Minks, dogs, gooses, cows, pigs, horses, camels and a lot more. Watching that has changed my life quite a bit.

Agreed - this is a great documentary. When considering the scale and brutality of the meat industry, it opened my eyes that this is probably the greatest crime humanity has ever committed.

Not just for the animals, but for the PTSD endured by the workers in this industry as well.

How is that relevant?

Are you saying that because cruel things happen in the wild we should be fine doing cruel things? I doubt we would accept someone justifying other acts by showing how it occurs in the wild such as stealing all the way to something extreme like cannibalism.

I made the same "assumptions", along with another commenter. So maybe you should clarify your post.

Do you want to explain how it's relevant then?

Could you elaborate on that? I don’t get it.

What animals do in the wild is vastly different from what we do to animals.

The Dawn Wall. It is about a climber (Tommey Caldwell) making attempts on a new route up El Capitan. The climbing scenes are spectacular and gruelling. Along with the climbing it mixes in the poignant and inspirational life story of Tommy Caldwell.

Some other great climbing documentaries:

- Touching The Void (It's an older movie but maybe the most harrowing survival story I've ever heard).

- Meru

- Free Solo

- The Alpinist

- Valley Uprising

9/11, directed by the Naudet brothers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_(2002_film)

Notable for containing the only footage I know of that shows the first plane hitting the tower, because they were already in the middle of filming a documentary about New York firefighters. Here’s a clip of that part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miA8Td4oNcY

Check out Debris, it came out today. About 9/11 with unseen footage in it.

https://youtu.be/HdEBQsE_YKw

My Octopus Teacher https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/05/harvard-panel...

I LOVE this one too. I can't believe I even cried about an octopus.

Sometimes after watching these documentaries, I feel like I know absolutely nothing!!

Here's another one I fell in love with:

Featuring Mr. T and Kinky Tail, 2 bad ass male lions did the unthinkable and unheard of as brothers as tight as a glove.

I now have mad respect for these two jungle tyrants.

Mad, mad respect.

Enjoy: https://archive.org/details/the.lions.of.sabi.sand.brothers....

This got a lot of on the internet, but I found it so incredibly boring.

Logically, it should be boring.

But for whatever reason it made me feel emotions about something I would have never have thought would reach me that way. I think what struck me the most personally was the relationship the maker established with his son. But plenty of others I know have reacted to it in very different (but still highly positive) ways.

Can you explain why? I found it such a deft exposition on both zoology and philosophy. So good.

I don't know, because my memory of it is vague at this point. The octopus is definitely fascinating, I love all that stuff, but the narrative didn't really grab me and I think maybe it felt long winded and all that combined with the hype left me feeling a bit high and dry.

Not GP. Instead of duplicating what I posted in another comment on the criticism of it, here’s the link to my HN comment. [1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32806378

Umm yeah, just couldn't make it past the whole "post-colonial meta-narrative [for white people]" bit. That's pretty much a good summing up of all the criticism I've read of the film: that because it was made by some relatively-well-off white dude in South Africa, that there can be nothing of value to learn from it.

I'll take the one that required dedication and hard work to obtain never-before-seen footage of animal behavior over a snarky YouTube hot-take criticism any day.

I would recommend people not to watch it and instead watch this well done critique (and criticism) titled “My Octopus Teacher & Environmental Horror” by Maggie Mae. [1]

I could’ve spent my time better if I’d watched this and avoided “My Octopus Teacher” altogether.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whb4unrhy44

Sorry but I really tried watching that and nothing about it made me want to either a) keep watching past the first few minutes or b) accept that she actually had a point.

Which she probably did, but certainly not to the level that I'd agree watching your suggestion would be more enriching than watching the original documentary.

In fact, now I want to watch My Octopus Teacher for the 4th time, despite all the excellent alternative suggestions in this thread!

Samsara [1] is not a typical documentary, but is well worth watching. It's visually stunning, and gives the viewer a great sense of the mechanisms of civilization.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara_(2011_film)

Koyaanisqatsi, a film in a similar vein, had a profound impact on me when I first watched it in my twenties. The cinematography is also done by Ron Fricke, but it’s directed by Godfrey Reggio with a Philip Glass score.

Samsara and Baraka are both great!

Not from the last 4 years, but so good I watched some of the series twice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_historic_farm_series

In each series, a team of historians/archaeologists/anthropologists live for a year on a farm of a specific era, doing things the way they are understood to have been done in that era.

They are like first-person documentaries and lots of fun to watch. You really get the feeling of how life would have been like back then.

Fantastic series. Ruth Goodman is a national treasure, and Peter Ginn and Alex Langlands are also extremely watchable.

I'm personally partial to Victorian Farm, both because it's at a very interesting point in time — much of it pre-machinization, but also an age of scientific discoveries and agricultural improvements — and because I feel like it's the season where they are the most self-reliant (the farm they move into is disused and they have to renovate it) and living in the most realistically re-enacted environment.

This sounds amazing, reminds me of a similar show where some families moved into an older farm (maybe it’s related?), but this one looks more interesting due to the experts.

I recommend Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control by Errol Morris. It’s a series of interviews with passionate geniuses in various areas, including a naked mole rat scientist.

I watched it in the 90s and gave me awareness that there’s people who have very deep interest in a subject and achieve fulfillment in studying and working in an area.

Morris directed many other good documentaries- Thin Blue Line, Fog of War- but I think FCOoC is his best.

Also Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (there’s a documentary and a fictional portrays) is interesting to show how someone can work on a seemingly pointless and impossible task. This was helpful in programming as frequently areas of interest seem so confusing to people outside my mind.

"The Civil War" by Ken Burns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Civil_War_(miniseries)

Detailed. Unagitated text. No reenactment. Based on contemporary documents only (almost). Competent experts, some quite characters. Reserved but impressive music.

It’s received a fair amount of criticism the last few years and in my opinion a lot of it is valid. I would never recommend it to someone who isn’t already familiar with the politics of the several war — at least they’ll be able to have a good chuckle when Foote opens his mouth.

If you’ve not seen it, I’d also recommend The Civil War on Drugs

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2316000/

And surprisingly emotional at times. Even the part about Lincoln's death gave me a lump in a throat feeling. It's been years since I watched it.

The historian Shelby Foote is the star of the series.

First of all, Foote isn’t a historical, or he wasn’t during filming. He’s a cloying sycophant who egregiously who thinks the civil war wasn’t in fact w war to abolish the institution of slavery. No, Mr Foote (a writer by trade) wants you know the whole thing was just the result of a “failure to compromise.”

Yikes.

Dear Zachary was written, directed, produced, and edited by one guy (Kurt Kuenne) and its budget was incredibly low even for indie film standards.

However, I can think of very few documentaries that come close to what it achieved and how it made me feel when watching it. Kurt put every fiber of his being into making it, and it shows. However, it's not an easy watch and I'd be hesitant to watch it again all the way through.

If you decide to check it out, please do not read up anything about it. Don't go onto Wikipedia or its IMDB page, don't search for reviews on it. Don't search for it at all. Just watch it.

Edit: You can watch it here, for free: https://pluto.tv/en/on-demand/movies/dear-zachary-a-letter-t...

> not an easy watch

Quite the understatement. Just thinking about this documentary makes me sick.

That is an extremely difficult film. For me it was on par with watching Schindler’s List.

Incredible film, top of my list too.

Tim’s Vermeer : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim's_Vermeer

Produced and directed by Penn and Teller who I thought were just magicians. It mixes art and technology with a little bit of historical puzzle solving. As someone who knows little about art history, I found it fascinating.

I second this. The last thing it is really about is painting.

Tim is amazing and the lessons on playful (albeit obsessive) learning are important IMHO

It's good, there's enough science in it for the nerds and enough painting for the Arts majors. I liked especially the part where they wheel in the patio heater into their art studio, turn it on for a few minutes and immediately start feeling a bit weird.

Tim is also a legend in the Amiga and TV/audiovisual community. Just listened to a fascinating interview with him on the Retro Hour podcast. Highly recommend it. I still need to watch Tim's Vermeer.

"Fog of war" about the life of Robert McNamara. He is quite candid about some of the mistakes he made.

Yeah, this is a very well filmed documentary. The combination of the Phillip Glass score and some camera techniques that make the interview feel very in person and vivid definitely work. It's a fascinating and surprisingly frank look at someone that helped shape the last century, including making decisions that resulted in the deaths of 100's of thousands of people.

Fog of War is incredible. I haven't really seen anything else like it in the sense that powerful people very rarely publicly examine themselves and their lives the way McNamara does. The follow-up with Rumsfeld is so different because he doesn't.

Also anything by:

Werner Hertzog

Adam Curtis

Brian Cox (the physicist)

Also “The Unknown Known”

The contrast between the two is very interesting.

Into the Inferno - Werner Herzog. Documentary on volcanoes where the director allows the filming locations to bring other topics to the forefront.

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World - Werner Herzog. Film about the internet.

The Thin Blue Line - Erol Morris. Film about a murder of a police officer that comes to a different conclusion than the court did about who the murderer is and led to the release of an innocent man and the incarceration of the guilty one.

The Civil War - Ken Burns. There's a reason it's a classic!

Good Intentions - Walter Williams. Film about how economic policies that sound good often have the reverse effects that they intend to have.

Came here to see who else likes The Thin Blue Line. But please, do not reveal the outline. I went in completely unawares and was kept on the edge throughout.

Came to mention The Thin Blue Line.

With the line that sings to my cynical soul, "Any good prosecutor can get a jury to convict a guilty man but only great prosecutors can get a conviction for an innocent man."

A little late to the thread, but two come to mind:

Hoop Dreams (1994) - Explores inner-city poverty through the eyes of two young boys in Chicago who want to use basketball as a way to escape their environment. I haven't seen it in a long time, but my biggest takeaway from it is how narrow the bridge to "success" can be for some. If you grow up in a well-to-do upper middle class environment, you can make a shocking number of youthful mistakes, yet still get saved by your parents, school, society. Others really only have one or two chances to make things work.

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013) - A must-watch if you're an admirer of Hayao Miyazaki movies. Goes into his creative processes; how he thinks about his work, the world at-large, etc.; and his long-standing friendship with his producer, Toshio Suzuki.

I remember watching the "The Farmer's Wife" on PBS and it having a similar effect on me as Hoop Dreams. It gave me a glimpse into the realities faced by those not as privileged as me and my upper middle class suburban upbringing.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/farmerswife/

I saw a 2-hour-long documentary about the Standard Model of particle physics, sometime around 1980. It was basically a presentation, by one man, with graphics (which were pretty good for back then). The presentation was sober, and completely free of gee-whizz hype. I think it must have been BBC.

As I remember it, it was a really good presentation of the discoveries that had recently been made in particle physics. I've spent hours searching archives, just to find a trace of evidence of this programme having ever been broadcast. Nothing. If I only knew the name of the presenter, that would help, because he wasn't a famous TV presenter; I believe he was a physicist. But the presenter's name is linked to the documentary - his name might be in the title.

I'd love to get a clue about how to track down this show.

The sheer amount of incredible mind-expanding content that is held in the BBC archives but not readily accessible (even to a UK taxpayer with a TV license) really kills me inside.

I have a feeling that the programme may have been written and presented by Nigel Calder, former editor of the New Scientist. I'm having no luck tracking down the documentary itself, though. The title might be "The Key To The Universe", for which I've seen a couple of reviews that are consistent with the show I remember.

He seems to have published a book of the same title. The show was screened in 1977, possibly twice, and the show is indeed two hours long. I have a review here that says: "Level: popular science, but viewers without some knowledge of high-energy physics would be handicapped". That sounds about right (when I saw it, my knowledge of high-energy physics was roughly zero, and it's not much better now).

Thr sounds pretty good

"Triumph of the Nerds"

Discusses the history of computing and the rise and fall of tech companies as the industry changed. It's old but worth it imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNVbmzVCyLU

I loved seeing that one in the past, it's so inspiring.

They Shall Not Grow Old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Shall_Not_Grow_Old

Added this to my list. Is Peter Jackson just focusing on documentaries nowadays?

I really enjoyed The Phenomenon if you're into UFO's - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onEXmLX2ZZQ

Also this reddit post has a bunch of old UFO documentaries going back to the 50's before there was so much "Alien" and modern Scifi out for those that are interested in the topic. Really interesting:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOVHS/comments/nwxot9/ufovhs_colle...

The Power of Nightmares (BBC / Adam Curtis) [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430484/] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK3wz-OyR1U

Adam Curtis is great, but his stuff is better described as commentary. He basically does James Burke's 'Connections' [0] as polemic. Can't get enough personally.

[0] Burke's 'Connections' and 'Day the Universe Changed' are definitely worthy of mention on this post.

^^^ Thank you! ^^^ Came here to reccommend Connections by James Burke and glad to see someone else has mentioned it. It's a masterpiece of popular science production made better with the grainy film patina of the 70s and 80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ

Code Rush, a one-hour glimpse into Netscape Communications in 1998, just as they open source their browser: https://youtu.be/4Q7FTjhvZ7Y

I get very tired whenever I watch it for some reason.

I randomly re-watched it a month or 2 ago and still liked it. It resonated.

It probably helps that I worked in Mountain View about 10 years later. It felt very familiar, and the ideas and people were still relevant and reverberating

Free Solo, It's the documentary of Alex Honnold in his preparation and eventual accomplishment of climbing the "El Capitan" without ropes

That thing it's awesome, you know the guy ends up ok, but the journey made my hands sweat like crazy

From the last four years: (I'm a professional critic, thus watch almost everything)

1. Gunda. A mother pig.

2. An insignificant man. Politics in India.

3. Mr Bachmann and his class. A teacher.

4. Icarus. The doping scandal.

All time:

https://letterboxd.com/rurban/films/ratings/genre/documentar...

Gunda, The real dirt on Farmer Joe, Models (Seidl), Warheads (Karmakar), The Land of the Enlightened, Close-Up (Kiarostami), The Wild Parrots of Telegraf Hill, ...

The Great War and World War 2 in Real Time, produced and narrated by Sparty Olson and Indy Nidell. Covering, as the name implies, both world wars on a weekly basis in real time. The most in depth stuff on those topics I have seen and now. Well, at somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes of YouTube content per week for the duration of both wars, 4 years for WW1 and 5.5 years for WW2 that's quite some content to watch. The WW2 series is still on going and currently at the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943. They even have a minute by minute special series covering Pearl Habour.

Edit: Everything with David Attenborough, because of course. He did one about the crusades decades ago that was great!

I'm going to list just a few of the best I have seen so far:

- The Last Dance [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8420184/]

- Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13651632/]

- Indie Game: The Movie [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884/]

- The Staircase [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0388644/]

- Making a Murderer [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5189670/]

- Icarus [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6333060/]

- Apollo 11 [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8760684/]

You can see Indie Game for free on Mailchimp.com https://mailchimp.com/presents/film/indie-game-the-movie/

Ed: “If you can’t get the work done, then the past two years are basically worth nothing … There were at least five times, a good five times, where I totally broke down and I just didn’t want to do it anymore … I was actually really worried that either Tommy or I would die in the process of making this.”

From:

https://moviewise.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/indie-game-the-mo...

I absolutely loved the Last Dance but I really like basketball. I wouldn’t recommend it to non-fans of basketball though (basing this off a small sample size of friends).

FWIW, I was absolutely captivated for all of Last Dance, and I don't watch basketball. But I do have an affinity for "30 for 30"-style docs on the human interest side of sports.

I’m not into sports and I don’t follow basketball. I couldn’t tell you beyond really famous basketball players who the majority of players are. And although I grew up in Jordan’s era of basketball, I didn’t watch his games. All that to say, I enjoyed it.

If you like something, recommending it is fine. Let the people decide if it’s a topic they’re interested in it or not.

I am not into basketball but I found The Last Dance excellent.

+1 for Icarus. Until just a few years ago, cycling was up to its eyeballs and doping. Wasn’t just one American, one Italian, or one German. It was nearly everyone.

This is the best WWII documentary I've ever seen, and it's available free: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5O9I5AUXI

What makes it great is (a) that the filmmaker tried only to use source material, including audio narration, created during WWII, and (b) that the film sources were shot in color (rare for the time).

There's a YouTube channel called "CHRONOS-MEDIA History" that has a lot of archival footage from that era. A couple ones I found interesting were a clip with American and German officers casually working together to coordinate a German surrender/withdrawal at the end of the war, and a German propaganda piece from before the war (?) where the skyline of the village they're in matches 1:1 with one of my vacation photos.

"The world at war" is an amazing documentary of WWII, even if it is quite old now.

"Stalingrad" is a horrifying documentary about the battle. It's recounted by the German and Soviet soldiers who took part. The takeaway was that given the right incentives human mass depravity is bottomless.

Edit: https://youtu.be/VnJJQxZ0hu8

This link is to "Practical Deep Learning for Coders 2022".

Black humour at it's finest?

Harlan County, USA

Classic documentary about coal miners going on strike in the 70s. Deeply moving images, and incredible soundtrack from local artists. Won an Oscar too.

The Long Way Round (2004) - a British television series documenting the 19,000-mile (31,000 km) journey of Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman from London to New York via Eurasia on motorcycles. It is a lot of fun and covers incredible terrain and the trials and triumphs of lesser travelled roads and countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Round

There are an additional two series, Long Way Down (2007), Scotland to Capetown and Long Way Up (2020) over South and North America, both fantastic follow ons! Enjoy.

“Streetwise” by Martin Bell follows the lives of a few homeless youths on the streets of Seattle in the 80s (I think it was the 80s, at least). I heard about it via a song by The Avalanches that sampled part of the film. Just pretty interesting to see how some people’s lives are. I also think it’s interesting to get a raw look at how people talked, behaved, dressed, etc in the past.

Also enjoyed “Man on Wire”. First saw it when I was in high school and just remembered feeling really inspired by it. To have a goal and overcome the odds to try and achieve it, etc.

Inside Job (2010) - documentary about the 2008 financial crisis and policies leading up to that years before. Sort of like the documentary version of The Big Short. Narrated by Matt Damon. Interesting and informative about the catalysts for the crisis.

Full movie on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/T2IaJwkqgPk

I only see Hoop Dreams mentioned once, without comment, so:

It's a 3-hour doc about two urban black teenagers who are basketball phenoms, and are recruited by a white suburban high school to play for them. Three hours is long enough for an extended meditation on what their lives were like, and what they hoped to get out of basketball.

Read the Roger Ebert review of it.

It's not mentioned because OP asked for documentaries from the last 4 years, and Hoop Dreams must be over a quarter century old at this point.

Great film though.

Saw that, but a lot of the other answers were for older flicks, too.

Freedom to choose by Multon Friedman

Black gold saga — a 4 hour documentary about oil, from discovery to the present. It really helps to understand how short sighted were some EU countries with Russian gas.

For anyone into music and art, just recently I have seen "B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989" (2015) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4291066/ and I can't get the soundtrack out of my head. Genius edit on tons of rare video material!

Make sure you have English subtitles just for a few scenes if you don't understand German.

Ah, and one can ask how come it was finished in 2015 and Mark Reeder the main character haven't aged in staged scenes? No VFX ;) Read after watching https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/b-movie-...

Command and Control

Details the events of the 1980 deadly and nearly disastrous accident at the Titan II nuclear missile complex in Damascus, Arkansas.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/command-an...

Maybe a little older than 4 years, but posting because it's really well done.

Missing Allen (2001) by my late father Christian Bauer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOXSI_vcqK8

Around the turn of the century, my dad's good friend and longtime collaborator Allen Ross vanishes from one day to the next, just after they have finished shooting a film about the Mississippi. Years later, my dad returns to the US to find out what happened to his friend.

It's his most personal film for sure, and I remember him going off to the US for weeks and faxing us letters to keep in touch. It's also the one that had him most scared, he took out life insurance before he left because of the people he was looking into.

_Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control_, I believe by Errol Morris. Four totally unrelated subjects, but Morris finds connections and echoes between them. Delightful, fascinating.

_When We Were Kings_, about the Rumble in the Jungle between Ali and Foreman in the 1970s, really awesome. Young Ali is so quick witted, warm, and charismatic.

And the recent doc about Apollo 11, for its 50th anniversary, was breathtaking.

Fantastic Fungi

https://fantasticfungi.com/

https://www.netflix.com/us/title/81183477

"Dig!", the documentary about a band named the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Introduced me to psychedelic rock, and lead singer Anton Newcombe is the prototypical mad musical genius. I got the impression that he and his lead guitarist Matt Hollywood had kind of a modern-day Mozart/Salieri relationship, and tambourinist Joel Gion adds such a funny dynamic to the group.

You might enjoy the 2005 documentary about Roky Erickson: "You're gonna miss me":

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0791268/

F for Fake by Orson Welles. Documentaries on art forgers (not 'how this art forger was caught!' which is of secondary importance) all tend to be interesting, but this is transcendent.

The Pervert's Guide to Ideology' by Slavoj zizek/Sophie Fiennes.

Hypernormalization* is an Adam Curtis doc so you'll love or hate it, but I think it's his best one.

Steve Jobs: One Last Thing (2011)

Woody Allen (2012)

SlingShot (2014)

With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story (2010)

Breaking the Maya Code (2008)

Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037 (2007)

From:

Six Films That Leave You Better Off

https://moviewise.substack.com/p/six-films-that-leave-you-be...

"ILM - Industrial Light & Magic: Creating The Impossible". A documentary about how the special effects team behind Star Wars and other science fiction movies was created. It's basically the story of a start-up, a start-up that could be any Silicon Valley start-up, but because they were in the movie business, they filmed everything. This makes for a great documentary.

It's actually a series. It's in the Star Wars section of Disney+ if you go up there to watch Season 3 of "The Mandalorian".

Worth mentioning that employees of ILM and the vfx industry in general view that film as propaganda to distract from the past decade of labor abuses they endured.

Isle of Flowers: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097564/ It is one of the best, if not the best short-documentaries (13 min) made in Brazil.

It starts by telling the saga of a tomato, that is planted, goes to the supermarket, rots and then goes to the garbage dump site. From there it uses an acid humor to talk how tomatoes, pigs and humans (that live by collecting food from the dumping site) are different.

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga by Dmitry Vasyukov. The English narration was written/voiced by Werner Herzog and matches the tone of the documentary perfectly. If you’ve ever had any interest in homesteading, or just getting away from it all, I would highly recommend it.

I watched this, and enjoyed it, but was later surprised to learn that Herzog had started with a completed documentary but made major changes to the narrative---for the worse! There are few scenes that he edited to tell a different story than they did in the original, seemingly with minimal concern for truth. It really hurt my image of Herzog.

So I'd second the recommendation, but add that if you get a chance, you should try to view Vasyukov's original as well. Herzog's version might be a bit snappier, but I don't think it's actually better. The original is available in four parts on Youtube. Here's part one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbhPIK-oBvA

So many great suggestions.

I'll add Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. It documents the filming of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The film's footage was shot by Coppola's wife, Eleanor Coppola. A really remarkable look behind the making of an iconic film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_of_Darkness%3A_A_Filmma...

"A year in the taiga" [0], by Dmitry Vasyukov, blessed by Werner Herzog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_People:_A_Year_in_the_Ta...

Assassins (2020). Unraveling the audacious airport assassination of the exiled and estranged half-brother to North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, ASSASSINS is a riveting dissection of infamous dynasty dynamics and the surprising tale of two young women recruited to secure the uncontested leadership of Kim Jong-un.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11394276/

Expo: Magic of the White City

https://youtu.be/f6HuBYiQEeM

I'd have never even gave it a 2nd thought except it is narrated by Gene Wilder and he retired in the late 80s so I though "wow, I wonder how this would bring him out of retirement???"

The first 10 mins are hokie but it was great after that.

It's about the 1893 Chicago Exposition (think Worlds Fair) where electricity was introduced to the public and many other things

David Attenborough's documentaries. Each of them are great. A few especially phenomenal ones: 1. Life on Earth (1979) 2. Blue Planet II (2017) 3. Planet Earth II (2016) 4. Our Planet (2019) [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135095/ [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6769208 [3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5491994/ [4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9253866/

Surprised nobody else posted this one - "Meet the Stans" a great four part travel documentary about Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtxJN3o5kkY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFVcQ7ZxC1o

Oliver Stone's The Untold History of the United States

An eye opening tour through lots of stuff I didn't previously know about the US (and UK to some extent): corporate nazi collaboration, CIA coups, Vietnam, Hiroshima, that kind of thing.

I loved Koyaanisqatsi, trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PirH8PADDgQ Not your typical documentary.

Anything by Werner Herzog is incredible as well, I find his approach extremely sympathetic and respectful to the subjects but without sacrificing detail (EG Grizzly Man)

Not strictly a documentary, but Threads by the BBC is a researched film depicting life in the UK if every city was hit by a nuke and it was incredibly disturbing and informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)

Carl Sagan's Cosmos has to be one of the most charming and moving documentaries I've ever watched - arguably a little out of date now but it reached a place the subsequent Cosmos series just couldn't reach.

MayDay! Air crash investigations are all amazing documentaries that manage to balance pretty intense technical information with real life suffering very skilfully and they are incredibly engaging.

Einstein's Brain

"English filmmaker Kevin Hull crossed America in search of the truth about the stolen brains, together with the Japanese scientist Kenji Sugimoto, who has been studying Einstein for over thirty years."

https://www.idfa.nl/en/film/35af3499-a6ce-498f-a5ae-cbba455e...

The only issue is good luck finding a legitimate copy anywhere.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xM4m-Z0nAio

Edit:

Triumph of the Will

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-triumph-of-th...

(Goes better with the commentary by Anthony Santoro)

General Idi Amin Dada - A Self Portrait

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5609-general-idi-ami...

Forgot all about Orozco the Embalmer, from Wiki:

It follows a Colombian embalmer named Froilan Orozco Duarte, who is shown living in El Cartucho, an impoverished and crime-ridden area of Bogotá, Colombia, where the homicide rate is high and corpses can be seen on the streets.

This does show him working on corpses, children included very NSFW.

1. "Chef's Table BBQ", S1E1: "Tootsie Tomanetz" - a mouthwatering documentary on an 85yo Tootsie's job as a pitmaster. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12922502/

2. "Tiny House Nation": https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3869500/

3. "Don't F*k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer" - **WARNING: MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE TO SOME AUDIENCES**: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11318602/

4. "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing" - investigating the Boeing 737 Max incidents killing 346 people: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11893274/

I watched all four on Netflix.