
Rather than update our original list of the 100 Best Documentaries on Netflix whenever a film expires or is added, we’d like to post a new version each month to keep things tidy and less confusing. And to make it even nicer for all of you, we’re going to note everything that has joined or left the guide.
Yes, we’ve increased the number of recommendations this month. It’s been a year since we began posting our monthly list of the 100 essential documentaries streaming on Netflix, and in that time either Netflix has amassed a lot more necessary nonfiction or we’ve seen more of them, or both. We’ve had to remove a lot of favorites to over time to make room for new additions. By increasing the number of titles on the list, we can celebrate more films. And yet we still had to leave out some docs we love!
We won’t highlight all that were added, because it’s a lot, but many of them are films that have been on the list in the past and are returning thanks to the open spaces. There are now more dance docs, more music docs, more docs about movies and more Nick Broomfield. There are also more docs that we don’t necessarily love but that we believe are important for any enthusiast of nonfiction cinema, such as The Family Album and Room 237. Maybe next year the list will end up increased to 200. We just want you to have plenty of good viewing options.
Now a reminder of how the titles are numerically arranged:
They are mostly ranked in order of my favor with some objective authority, but there are some clumps throughout the list that obviously fit together. Some are by director, some are by genre or subject matter and some are by series — the Up installments are of varied quality, for instance, but they should be seen in order. In fact, I see this whole list as being best watched in order of the rankings. There are a few double features in the bunch (Expedition to the End of the World and Encounters at the End of the World and The Act of Killing and Camp 14, for two example sets) and some grouping where I truly think the higher ranking title is best watched before a certain title or titles below it.
- Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
- The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)
- Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)
- Life Itself (Steve James, 2014)
- Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986)
- Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee, 2003)
- Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
- The Family Album (Alan Berliner, 1988)
- Intimate Stranger (Alan Berliner, 1991)
- Brother’s Keeper (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, 1992)
- Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)
- The Yes Men (Dan Ollman, Sarah Price and Chris Smith, 2003)
- The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978)
- Expedition to the End of the World (Daniel Dencik, 2013)
- Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, 2007)
- Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
- Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010)
- The End of Time (Peter Mettler, 2012)
- Pina (Wim Wenders, 2011)
- Paris is Burning (Jennie Livington, 1990)
- The Order of Myths (Margaret Brown, 2008)
- The Great Invisible (Margaret Brown, 2014)
- Man on Wire (James Marsh, 2008)
- Leviathan (Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2012)
- Manakamana (Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, 2013)
- Approaching the Elephant (Amanda Wilder, 2014)
- Actress (Robert Greene, 2014)
- Seven Up (Paul Almond, 1964)
- 7 Plus Seven (Michael Apted, 1970)
- 21 Up (Michael Apted, 1977)
- 28 Up (Michael Apted, 1985)
- 35 Up (Michael Apted, 1991)
- 42 Up (Michael Apted, 1998)
- 49 Up (Michael Apted, 2005)
- 56 Up (Michael Apted, 2012)
- American Promise (Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson, 2013)
- The Civil War (Ken Burns, 1990)
- The Dust Bowl (Ken Burns, 2012)
- Prohibition (Ken Burns, 2012)
- Baseball (Ken Burns, 1994)
- Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003)
- The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (Sophie Fiennes, 2012)
- Room 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2013)
- Side By Side (Chris Kenneally, 2012)
- Milius (Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson, 2013)
- Lost in La Mancha (Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, 2002)
- Aileen Wuornos: Selling of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 1993)
- Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill, 2003)
- Virunga (Orlando von Einsiedel, 2014)
- War Don Don (Rebecca Richman Cohen, 2010)
- The Unknown Known (Errol Morris, 2013)
- The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica, 2010)
- The Last of the Unjust (Claude Lanzmann, 2013)
- The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2013)
- The Act of Killing: Director’s Cut (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
- Camp 14: Total Control Zone (Marc Wiese, 2012)
- The Red Chapel (Mads Brugger, 2009)
- The Imposter (Bart Layton, 2012)
- Samsara (Ron Fricke, 2011)
- Life in a Day (Kevin MacDonald and Natalia Andreadis, 2011)
- Touching the Void (Kevin MacDonald, 2003)
- Let the Fire Burn (Jason Osder, 2013)
- The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 (Goran Olsson, 2011)
- Concerning Violence (Goran Olsson, 2014)
- How to Die in Oregon (Peter Richardson, 2011)
- How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012)
- We Were Here (David Weissman and Bill Weber, 2011)
- What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto, 2013)
- Call Me Kuchu (Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall, 2012)
- God Loves Uganda (Roger Ross Williams, 2013)
- Cutie and the Boxer (Zachary Heinzerling, 2013)
- Crazy Love (Dan Klores, 2007)
- Monica and David (Alexandra Codina, 2009)
- Maidentrip (Jillian Schlesinger, 2013)
- Undefeated (Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, 2011)
- Medora (Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart, 2013)
- Rich Hill (Andrew Droz Palermo and Tracy Droz Tragos, 2014)
- The Overnighters (Jesse Moss, 2014)
- Jesus Camp (Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, 2006)
- Detropia (Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, 2012)
- We Always Lie to Strangers (AJ Schnack and David Wilson, 2013)
- Caucus (AJ Schnack, 2013)
- Mitt (Greg Whiteley, 2014)
- Control Room (Jehane Noujaim, 2004)
- The Square (Jehane Noujaim, 2013)
- 5 Broken Cameras (Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, 2012)
- Return to Homs (Talal Derki, 2014)
- Maidan (Sergei Loznitsa, 2014)
- Point and Shoot (Marshall Curry, 2014)
- Informant (Jamie Meltzer, 2012)
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Alex Gibney, 2005)
- Client 9: Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Alex Gibney, 2010)
- The Central Park 5 (Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon, 2012)
- Kids for Cash (Robert May, 2013)
- The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki, 2012)
- Into the Abyss (Werner Herzog, 2011)
- Gideon’s Army (Dawn Porter, 2013)
- Evolution of a Criminal (Darius Clark Monroe, 2014)
- Which Way Home (Rebecca Cammisa, 2009)
- These Birds Walk (Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq, 2013)
- Girl Model (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, 2011)
- Mad Hot Ballroom (Marilyn Agrelo, 2005)
- First Position (Bess Kargman, 2011)
- Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (Brannon Braga, Ann Druyan and Steven Soter, 2014)
- Particle Fever (Mark Levinson, 2013)
- Radio Bikini (Robert Stone, 1988)
- Pandora’s Promise (Robert Stone, 2013)
- Countdown to Zero (Lucy Walker, 2009)
- Waste Land (Lucy Walker, 2010)
- Gasland (Josh Fox, 2010)
- FrackNation (Phelim McAleer, Ann McElhinney and Magdalena Segieda, 2013)
- Cool It (Ondi Timoner, 2010)
- Last Call at the Oasis (Jessica Yu, 2011)
- Berkeley in the Sixties (Mark Kitchell, 1990)
- A Fierce Green Fire (Mark Kitchell, 2012)
- Dirty Wars (Rick Rowley, 2013)
- Armadillo (Janus Metz Pedersen, 2010)
- Restrepo (Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, 2010)
- Korengal (Sebastian Junger, 2014)
- Hell and Back Again (Danfung Dennis, 2011)
- Out of the Clear Blue Sky (Danielle Gardner, 2012)
- After Tiller (Martha Shane and Lana Wilson, 2013)
- Vessel (Diana Whitten, 2014)
- Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story (Mark Herzog and Sandrine Orabona, 2014)
- The Invisible War (Kirby Dick, 2012)
- 20 Feet From Stardom (Morgan Neville, 2013)
- Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (Jon M. Chu, 2011)
- Kurt & Courtney (Nick Broomfield, 1998)
- Biggie and Tupac (Nick Broomfield, 2002)
- Last Days Here (Don Argott and Demian Fenton, 2011)
- Beware of Mr. Baker (Jay Bulger, 2012)
- Paul Williams Still Alive (Stephen Kessler, 2011)
- Jazz (Ken Burns, 2001)
- Pumping Iron (George Butler and Robert Fiore, 1977)
- Bigger, Stronger, Faster (Chris Bell, 2008)
- This Ain’t California (Marten Persiel, 2012)
- Far Out Isn’t Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story (Brad Bernstein, 2012)
- The Art of the Steal (Don Argott, 2009)
- Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010)
- Print the Legend (Luis Lopez and J. Clay Tweel, 2014)
- Objectified (Gary Hustwit, 2009)
- Urbanized (Gary Hustwit, 2011)
- Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, 2012)
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb, 2011)
- Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite, 2013)
- The Whale (Suzanne Chisholm and Michael Parfit, 2011)
- Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (Kurt Kuenne, 2008)
- The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield, 2012)
- Tabloid (Errol Morris, 2010)
- Vernon, Florida (Errol Morris, 1981)