All the Documentaries You Need to See in February 2022

Welcome to Documental, a monthly column keeping fans of nonfiction films and docuseries up to date on all the documentary content coming to theaters and your favorite streaming services. Here’s a guide to all the essential documentary titles to watch in February 2022.

Another February is here, and you know what that means: a brief period of the calendar reserved for romance and Black history. Well, the latter is certainly a focus for streaming services this month, as we’ll highlight down below. Elsewhere, though, documentaries are back on the big screen in a big way over the next few weeks, including what’s sure to be the highest-grossing nonfiction feature of the year.

Here’s your guide to all the documentary films and series new to theaters and streaming in February 2022:

Black History Documentaries

Yes, February is Black History Month, but that’s just a 28-day reminder. Black History is worth recognizing and celebrating all year long, as are films representing Black History, whether they’re documenting the history as it’s happening, chronicling what happened in the past, or being a part of history themselves. Streaming services spotlighting Black History films include PBS (and the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel), MagellanTV, and The Criterion Channel.

Criterion’s service is primarily focused on the works of Black filmmaker Stanley Nelson, including The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, A Place of Our Own, Freedom Summer, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, and Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The last two are also part of PBS’s Black History Month presentation.

Other Black History documentaries are premiering or appearing on streaming services without such clear curation, too. The 1948 classic Strange Victory is flying onto OVID, as is Shirley Clarke’s Ornette: Made in America, and films about activist Fannie Lou Hamer, opera singer Marian Anderson, and NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace will be on the WORLD Channel, PBS, and Netflix, respectively, while a new Black Patriots sequel is debuting on History. Also: there’s the Showtimes docuseries Everything Gonna Be All White and the new three-part Kanye West documentary on Netflix.

Sundance Selections

Speaking of jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, that documentary is also one of a few recent Sundance premieres. While its release is not entirely clear, Netflix appears to be releasing each of the three installments separately, on a weekly basis. However, I’ve only seen the first part (a.k.a. Act 1) scheduled for theatrical release, so I’m not sure if all of the trilogy will be on the big screen weekly as well.

Another Sundance 2022 premiere that we’re still anticipating from hearing about it over a year ago is the latest from Rory Kennedy (Last Days in Vietnam). It’s called Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, and it’s about the aftermath of the two Boeing 737 MAX plane crashes, in late 2018 and early 2019, that grounded the specific type of aircraft worldwide. That’s also being released as a Netflix Original mid-month.

We Need to Talk About Cosby premiered on Showtime at the end of January, as we highlighted in last month’s Documental, soon after its appearance at Sundance. The four-part docuseries continues to release weekly throughout February.

The Return of Jackass

It’s been more than a decade since the last Jackass theatrical feature became one of the highest-grossing nonfiction films of all time. Now, after delays, Jackass Forever is likely to get documentaries off to a good start at the box office for 2022. Maybe the sequel will even top Jackass 3D given that it’s been a long time coming, fans are hungry for more hilarious pranks and stunts, and reviews are actually pretty positive.

And if you need to catch up with the franchise or you’re not ready to head to cinemas yet, or you just want to make a month of the Jackass movies and TV series, Paramount+ has you covered. Starting on the first of February, Jackass: The Movie, Jackass Number Two, and Jackass 3 (a.k.a. Jackass 3D), as well as the deleted-scene compilation Jackass 2.5 and the uncut third movie, packaged as Jackass 3.5, are streaming on the ViacomCBS service. Seasons 1, 2, and 4 of the original Jackass reality TV series will also be showing up on Paramount+ on February 9th.

Classics on OVID

If modern documentaries based on reality TV prank shows aren’t your thing, or you need something to balance the low-brow of the Jackass movies, there are a handful of old classic docs hitting OVID this month. In addition to the earliest title found on the February 2022 edition of the Documental calendar below, which is the aforementioned Strange Victory, there are two films from 1956, Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery (one of the best NYC documentaries of all time) and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Mystery of Picasso (one of the best documentaries about artists of all time). And one from 1961: Kent Mackenzie’s docudrama The Exiles.

Now here is your calendar for all the documentaries and reality series releasing in February 2022:

Documentary Release Calendar for February 2022