214 Best Documentary Movies to WatchMovies Like Interstellar (2014) (Page 4)

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They say art imitates life, but nothing gets to the heart of humanity like documentary filmmaking. Whether you want to flex your history knowledge or binge a true crime, here are the best documentaries and docuseries available to stream now.

"Interstellar," directed by Christopher Nolan, is a mesmerizing cinematic experience that seamlessly weaves together awe-inspiring visuals, intricate science fiction, and heartfelt storytelling. Set against a backdrop of Earth's environmental collapse, the film follows Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and his team of scientists and astronauts as they embark on a perilous journey through a wormhole in search of a new habitable planet. Nolan's commitment to practical effects and meticulous attention to detail is evident in the film's stunning visuals, which bring the vastness and beauty of space to life. Hans Zimmer's hauntingly emotive score adds depth and intensity to the narrative, enhancing the overall cinematic experience. "Interstellar" challenges its audience with complex scientific concepts, yet it treats them with respect, avoiding oversimplification. This intellectual depth adds layers to the story, making it particularly rewarding for viewers who appreciate a more thought-provoking approach to science fiction. The performances, especially McConaughey's portrayal of Cooper, are outstanding, grounding the film's emotional core in the midst of its cosmic spectacle. While the film's deliberate pacing may test some viewers' patience, those who embrace its intellectual challenges will be rewarded with a profound and unforgettable journey through space and time. "Interstellar" stands as a visionary work of science fiction, exploring themes of love, sacrifice, and the human spirit's indomitable will to survive in the face of the unknown.

This movie narrated by Nicolas Cage is the incredible story of actor Anton Yelchin (Star Trek, Like Crazy): from being born to a Jewish Russian family in Leningrad to moving to the U.S. and ending with his sudden death at age 27. Anton, or Antosha as his loved ones called him, was a gifted kid: he was making his own movies at seven years old, taking highly sophisticated notes on Fellini movies, and picking up playing guitar in a short time. He took photographs that still show in exhibitions around the world. He led an extraordinary life, portrayed here, one that was cut way too short.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Anthony Hopkins, Anton Yelchin, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ben Foster, Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pine, Drake Doremus, Frank Langella, Guillermo del Toro, J.J. Abrams, Jennifer Lawrence, Jodie Foster, Joe Dante, John Cho, Jon Poll, Jon Voight, Kristen Stewart, Martin Landau, Nicolas Cage, Simon Pegg, Sofia Boutella, Willem Dafoe, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana

Director: Garret Price

Rating: R

Long Strange Trip was originally a four-hour movie before Amazon cut it to a six-part TV show. Produced by Martin Scorcese, it tells the full story of the band The Grateful Dead. It’s an account so detailed that it will satisfy the biggest Deadheads, but it also can be appreciated by anyone. The focus is the band, but it’s also the band’s significant impact on Rock history, and by extension, on American culture. I didn’t know much about the band and I couldn’t stop watching.

Genre: Documentary, Music

Actor: Al Franken, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir, Brent Mydland, Donna Godchaux, Jerry Garcia, Keith Godchaux, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Ron McKernan, Vince Welnick

Director: Amir Bar-Lev

Rating: R

How to Change the World is an insightful and candid documentary about the formation of Greenpeace in 1971 by a small group of environmentalists and activists in Vancouver, British Columbia. Beginning with their attempt to disrupt U.S. nuclear testing in Amchitka, Alaska, the film follows their subsequent efforts to thwart commercial whaling in the Pacific, their anti-sealing campaign in Newfoundland, and their ongoing efforts to defend the natural world against what they perceive as excessive human intervention and abuse. How to Change the World is as much a poignant tale of inspired activism as it is an interesting study of the organization’s early tribulations: idealism vs. anarchy, social movement vs. organizational structure (or lack thereof) and leadership vs. disunity. The voice of co-founder Robert Hunter (de facto leader of Greenpeace from inception) is heard posthumously throughout via narrator Barry Pepper, and it adds an impassioned air of gravitas to the film, detailing the many complexities Greenpeace experienced over the course of its early years of growth and development. A compelling and educational viewing experience.

Genre: Documentary, History

Actor: Bill Darnell, Bobbi Hunter, David Garrick, Emily Hunter, Jerry Rothwell, Paul Watson, Rex Weyler

Director: Jerry Rothwell

Rating: Not Rated

The question mark in the title represents the central idea of this fascinating documentary: what if worshipping Satan is the only way of ensuring religious freedom for everyone?

That's what a group of young members known as The Satanic Temple believe, led by a determined and well-spoken Harvard graduate. They embark on a journey across the U.S. to challenge corrupt officials and the prevalence of religious biases in government agencies. They always request that their belief system (Satanism) is given the same favorable treatment as Christianity, effectively proving that authorities will really only accept a show of religion if it's one religion: Christianity.

But their intoxicating energy comes with costs: divisions within the organization and growing pains. This documentary perfectly illustrates not only a misunderstood religion (in the documentary it's referred to as "post-religion") but the difficulties of establishing grassroots movements in general.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Anton LaVey, Bill O'Reilly, Billy Graham, Cecil B. DeMille, Chalice Blythe, Charlton Heston, Chris Hayes, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Geraldo Rivera, Greta Van Susteren, Jex Blackmore, Lucien Greaves, Malcolm Jarry, Mamie Eisenhower, Megyn Kelly, Mike Pence, Nicholas Crowe, Penny Lane, Rick Scott, Sal De Ciccio

Director: Penny Lane

Rating: R

Biographical documentaries tend to depict exceptional people– people who are so great that everyone wants to know about them, and people who are so terrible that they serve as a warning. Great Photo, Lovely Life depicts a serial sexual abuser in photojournalist Amanda Mustard’s family, able to get away with nearly all his crimes each time he skips over state lines. It’s not an easy film. It’s deeply uncomfortable. There are certain interviews that will trigger anger, despair, and bewilderment over how someone so evil can remain out of bars all his life. Great Photo, Lovely Life doesn’t provide any easy, comforting sequence as a balm to sexual abuse survivors around the world, but it’s an urgent reminder of the consequences of maintaining silence.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Amanda Mustard

Director: Amanda Mustard, Rachel Beth Anderson

, 2022

The film unfolds in the rhythm of a cow’s life: birth, mating, feeding, milking, checkups. Soon, these events become regular occurrences. Instead of showcasing the more ‘spectacular’ parts of these animal lives in order to build a narrative that's engaging in a more conventional sense, British director Andrea Arnold opts for intimacy through banal instances. Even if female cows are symbolic of labour (reared for milk, meat, and reproduction), the actual cows in the documentary are not actors in a traditional sense. Yet, Cow opens up the dialogue about the on-screen role of animals beyond the call for activism. In it, the protagonists dictate the camera movements and positions just as any other human subject would, but since Arnold is an intuitive and sharp filmmaker, she embraces the opportunity to challenge cinema's status quo. A beautiful addition here is the presence of pop music needle drops, through which the film jolts us into being more attentive, helping us to experience everything we consume in everyday life unperturbed (milk, meat, or pop songs) anew.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Lin Gallagher

Director: Andrea Arnold

, 1993

Part documentary yet part surreal daydream, director Derek Jarman’s final film is one last rallying cry into a blue void. Against an unchanging screen of International Klein Blue, most of the film is Jarman’s voice, drifting through various subjects, from day-to-day complications of AIDS to contemplations about the color blue. Some of his frequent collaborators chime in. Choirs singing about damnation occasionally pop up too. While essentially a radio drama, the combination of voices, foley, and scores all merge together into an ethereal, haunting soundscape, that sticks in your head long after the film ends. Mirroring his partial blindness, Jarman’s last experiment leaves an impression of his own experience. It’s absolutely devastating.

Genre: Documentary, Drama

Actor: Derek Jarman, John Quentin, Nigel Terry, Tilda Swinton

Director: Derek Jarman

Rating: Not Rated

What makes Apollo 11 stand out is its sharp minimalist approach, allowing the archival footage of the mission to the moon to speak for itself. It’s stunning to think that at one point or another we had collectively seen a bulk of the footage in this film, and yet somehow let it lay dormant until the moon landing had been reduced to black and white stills in our collective imaginations. Not only does this film reinvigorate the moon landing with the power that it once held, but it does so in a way that is more thrilling than anything the Marvel CGI wizards could muster. The vibrant score adds a layer of ferocious tension, while the breakneck pace gives the feel of a rollercoaster ride. If there is any fault to find here, it is most definitely with the film’s MAGA style yearning for a time and place that never existed. Spare us the teary-eyed patriotism and the clips of Nixon, a disgraceful criminal, and vile racist, yammering on about the world becoming one. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic example of why most biopics should just be documentaries and why the fanatical fear of spoilers is a tad silly. Spoiler alert: they land on the moon.

Genre: Documentary, Drama, History

Actor: Andy Aldrin, Bill Anders, Bruce McCandless II, Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Duke, Deke Slayton, Gene Kranz, Janet Armstrong, Jim Lovell, John F. Kennedy, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong, Patricia Mary Finnegan, Todd Douglas Miller, Walter Cronkite

Director: Todd Douglas Miller

Rating: G

Will and Harper’s premise is simple: two friends journey from one end of the States to another and, amid pit stops and bar hops, sunsets and beers, they talk about life, from its biggest concepts down to its tiniest details. The only difference in this case is that Will and Harper are navigating their friendship as well as the roads; since Harper has only recently transitioned (formerly, she was the comedy screenwriter Andrew Steele), she and Will feel the need to settle more than a few questions. When did this all start? What kept Harper from coming out? Will the friendship still be the same? Does Harper still like bad beer? Will, for his part, is earnest and curious, and though he fumbles along the way—at one point, he inadvertently exposes Harper to a transphobic crowd—he’s quick to recognize his mistakes, learn from them, and recenter our attention to Harper, who is the real star of this film. We learn about her childhood and how she grappled with identity throughout her life. We even visit her home in Iowa and get to know her family. The film keeps it light by smartly relying on their naturally funny tandem and the beautiful American country backdrop. It’s been said that to know the real American pulse, you’d have to go to the Midwest, and that’s exactly what they do. It’s not always pretty, but there are bubbles of joy there that present hope not just to Harper but to the many transpeople out there waiting to know if it’s finally time to head out (it is).

Genre: Comedy, Documentary

Actor: Colin Jost, Harper Steele, Kristen Wiig, Lorne Michaels, Molly Shannon, Paula Pell, Seth Meyers, Tim Meadows, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Will Forte

Director: Josh Greenbaum

Rating: R

In his last film, American Serb film historian Peter Bogdanovich celebrates silver screen legend Buster Keaton. The subject alone is compelling to watch. It would be easy to pull clips from Keaton’s works, dig through the headlines, pull in some celebrity interviews, and call it a day. However, in Bogdanovich’s hands, this documentary handles Keaton with respect. Instead of focusing on the scandals, Bogdanovich focuses on Keaton’s brilliant work. Instead of reciting facts, Bogdanovich highlights how his bits influenced film today. Excellent editing - cuts, structure, and scoring - helps us glide through Keaton’s work. The film truly understands Keaton’s life and exactly why he’s brilliant. Comprehensive yet very focused, this documentary honestly feels better than film school.

Genre: Comedy, Documentary, Drama

Actor: Ben Mankiewicz, Bill Hader, Bill Irwin, Buster Keaton, Carl Reiner, Cybill Shepherd, Dick Van Dyke, Eleanor Keaton, French Stewart, James Karen, Johnny Knoxville, Jon Watts, Leonard Maltin, Mel Brooks, Nick Kroll, Norman Lloyd, Orson Welles, Paul Dooley, Peter Bogdanovich, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Lewis, Tom Holland, Werner Herzog

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Rating: Not Rated

Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse (The Gleaners and I) is one of the late Agnès Varda’s great documentaries. The film follows “gleaners”—scavengers and collectors of discarded garbage or abandoned items—from the French countryside into the city. The first of Varda’s subjects recalls, “Gleaning, that’s the old way,” marking a clear distinction: old versus new, rural versus urban, wasted versus repurposed. Fans of Varda will recognize the signature tenderness with which she approaches both her subjects and their objects. Those new to her work will be sure to find something familiar in this documentary: a film largely about loss, but which approaches its ideas of modernization and time with humor and lightness. Among the rubble, there is joy yet to be found—and in this documentary, there is a great comfort, too, to be gleaned.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Agnès Varda, Agnès Varda, Bodan Litnanski, François Wertheimer, François Wertheimer

Director: Agnès Varda, Agnès Varda

Rating: Not Rated

Documentaries about people suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's, or other neurodegenerative diseases will always occupy a bit of an uneasy space—how much consent can they really provide in their condition? At what point does presenting their struggles become exploitative? Maite Alberdi's The Eternal Memory doesn't entirely assuage these concerns, but it certainly knows better than to define its characters by the things that they lack. In fact, much of this film's romance comes from the image of Pauli and Augusto (who sadly passed away earlier this year) simply sharing space together, present in one another's routines even as the gap between their shared understanding grows. Their life is one populated by art and literature, which seems to act as both a cage and a liberating escape throughout their relationship.

In the times when Augusto's struggle with basic cognition is too severe, Alberdi doesn't look away, and the resulting footage is truly painful to watch. But it should be emphasized that Alberdi displays the same attentiveness to the couple's ordinary moments of quiet contemplation or married-life silliness without allowing them to be reduced into tragedy in retrospect. The film never tries to define their bond as either purely doomed or hopeful. For them, the mere possibility of love continuing to persist even in brief flashes is enough.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Augusto Góngora, Gustavo Cerati, Javier Bardem, Paulina Urrutia, Pedro Lemebel, Raúl Ruiz

Director: Maite Alberdi

The Central Park Five is a harrowing documentation of the unseen narrative surrounding the 1989 Central Park Jogger case. Five men – four black and one of Hispanic descent – have been wrongly accused, tried, and convicted for the assault, rape, and sodomy of female jogger Trisha Meili the night of April 19. No (DNA) evidence was found implicating the involvement of any of the kids to the crime and no one could identify them, but because the crime was sensationalized by the masses and the authorities were put under pressure by the media to pin a name on the case, they settled with coercing a confession out of the juveniles. This is a telling of their tale years on.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Al Sharpton, Angela Black, Antron McCray, David Dinkins, Donald Trump, Ed Koch, John Gotti, Kevin Richardson, Kharey Wise, Linda Fairstein, Matias Reyes, Raymond Santana, Rudolph Giuliani, Yusef Salaam

Director: David McMahon, Ken Burns, Sarah Burns

Rating: Not Rated

Artist and filmmaker Clio Barnard put herself on the map of new British talents with her 2010 debut The Arbor, a daring, genre-bending biopic about Bradford-born playwright Andrea Dunbar and her tragic personal and impressive artistic life. Coming from a poor working class family with seven siblings, Dunbar wrote her first play age 15. She died in 1990, aged 29, and left a legacy of three plays in total. Knowing how under-appreciated her work has been, Barnard decided to revive the life that imbued Dunbar's creations. Rather than staging a conventional documentary, the director features interviews with family and friends, performed and lip-synced by actors in front of the camera. She also adds re-enactments of the plays that feature the estate where Dunbar grew up, as well as archival footage of her TV appearances. The Arbor is an experimental documentary, but that doesn't prevent it from being touching, humane, and a special tribute to art flourishing in adverse circumstances.

Genre: Documentary, Drama

Actor: Christine Bottomley, Danny Webb, Gary Whitaker, George Costigan, Jimi Mistry, Jonathan Jaynes, Josh Brown, Kate Rutter, Kathryn Pogson, Kulvinder Ghir, Lizzie Roper, Manjinder Virk, Matthew McNulty, Moey Hassan, Monica Dolan, Natalie Gavin, Neil Dudgeon, Robert Emms, Robert Haythorne

Director: Clio Barnard

The sooner you adjust your expectations for Nomad—and realize that this isn't a travel documentary but Werner Herzog's own wonderfully offbeat way of remembering his dear friend—the better. Any uneven moments in this film's construction are smoothed over by the sheer authenticity of what Herzog puts on screen, from his own distinctive narration, to gorgeous excerpts from Bruce Chatwin's writings, to the sounds and images that make up the strange worlds that both men were fascinated in. No mysteries are solved here, but just being closer to the strange and surreal becomes a way for Herzog to come to terms with the strangest and most surreal of life's realities: death.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Bruce Chatwin, Elizabeth Chatwin, Karin Eberhard, Marcus Wheeler, Michael Liddle Pula, Nicholas Shakespeare, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel, Stefan Glowacz, Werner Herzog

Director: Werner Herzog

Rating: PG