This Week In Documentary: The 2025 Oscar-Nominated Shorts, 'We Beat The Dream Team,' & 'Lockerbie'
Theatrical & Streaming Releases - New & Recommended - February 14-20, 2025
Happy Valentine’s Day to all who celebrate. Even if you don’t, it’s a good reminder that there are some great documentaries about love to watch when you’re in a romantic mood. This week also brings President’s Day for our American readers, and since it’s also the week of Robert Drew’s birthday, I recommend watching his John F. Kennedy films, including Adventures on the New Frontier and Faces of November, for the occasion. They’re all streaming on The Criterion Channel, with Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment also being available on Max.
Now, without further ado, below you’ll find this week’s highlights, listings, and coming attractions, including our Pick of the Week. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to receive more in-depth highlights and reviews in the future.
Nonfics Picks Of The Week: 2025 Oscar Shorts
With only a couple of weeks left before the 97th Academy Awards, the 15 films nominated in the three shorts categories are just now being released in theaters. This is an annual tradition thanks to the cable channel ShortsTV. Part of this tradition continues to be that the documentary nominees are not as widely distributed to cinemas as the live-action and animated shorts. For instance, if I want to find the docs on the big screen this week, I need to travel to another state, even though I’m in one of the major metropolitan areas of the country.
Still, if you have the chance, I recommend going to see this group of contenders, as they make up a pretty good program with a few similar issues being addressed and a variety of emotions being targeted. If you can’t find them at a theater in your neck of the woods, at least four of them are available to stream online either with a streaming service or for free on YouTube. I reviewed and ranked all five Documentary Short Oscar nominees in a post for paid subscribers, but here are the titles in alphabetical order with brief critiques and where to watch each one:
Death by Numbers: The latest school-shooting-focused doc from Kim A. Snyder (Newtown) is a collaboration with Sam Fuentes, who was injured in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High massacre. It’s “a facilitated self-portrait of a survivor who is reclaiming power. And in its wordiness over natural displays of emotion, it’s only a mildly affecting one at that.” (In Theaters)
I Am Ready, Warden: A film about a murderer about to be executed, the son of his victim, and the prosecutor who no longer believes in the death penalty. It’s “a pro-humanity issue film, one that offers a heartbreaking look at the complexity of justice and forgiveness.” (In Theaters and Paramount+)
Incident: The latest documentary from Bill Morrison (Decasia, Dawson City: Frozen Time) looks at the shooting of an innocent Black man by a Chicago police officer, presented with split-screen editing of surveillance footage. I wrote, “This editing marvel manages to show various real, captured perspectives of the criminal travesty while also sharing different points of view — some of them clearly based on falsehood — about what went down.” (In Theaters and YouTube, via The New Yorker)
Instruments of a Beating Heart: From Ema Ryan Yamazaki (who also edited the Oscar-nominated documentary feature Black Box Diaries), this short follows a first grader in Japan as she’s selected to play the cymbal in a school performance of “Ode to Joy.” This film is “one of the purest and most perfect observational documentaries I’ve seen in a while.” (In Theaters and YouTube, via The New York Times’ Op-Docs)
The Only Girl in the Orchestra: A film about double bassist Orin O’Brien, the first woman to play in the New York Philharmonic, directed by her niece. Its subject “certainly deserves this greater recognition of her status and talent now, but it could be even shorter.” (In Theaters and Netflix)
Other Documentary Highlights
Crazy Love (2007)
With the holiday being this week, I have to highlight the film that I called “the best Valentine’s Day movie ever.” Here’s an excerpt from my 2013 feature looking back at Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens’s classic documentary Crazy Love:
“What makes Crazy Love stand out, besides a perfectly picked and woven soundtrack, is that it first and foremost tells a love story from the beginning to… not the end, because a perfect love story has no ending. Maybe it’s not a story many can relate to. Maybe it is a story that some can identify with negatively, having been an abused partner who still can’t let go of the abuser. But no matter the ups and downs, the common obstacles of other suitors and deceit and unfaithfulness, and the uncommon hurdle of one partner permanently blinding the other and ending up in prison for many years as a result, the love story told in this film is undeniably romantic in a really messed up sort of way.”
Crazy Love is currently streaming for free on Tubi, PlutoTV, and Kanopy.
DGA & PGA Winners
Last weekend, the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America held their awards ceremonies, which honored fiction and nonfiction films and television series. The 77th Annual DGA Awards honored Porcelain War helmers Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev in the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary category. They also recognized a Season 4 episode of the National Geographic docuseries Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted (streaming on Hulu and Disney+) as the winner of the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Reality Programs.
There were more nonfiction winners at the 36th Annual PGA Awards, including Lizzie Gillett, Robert Ford, and Ian Bonhôte, who were all recognized in the Outstanding Producer of Documentary Motion Pictures category for Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (now streaming on Max) — which also won Best Documentary at the AARP’s Movies for Grownups Awards last weekend. Lionel Richie, George Hencken, and Julia Nottingham won the award for Outstanding Producer of Televised or Streamed Motion Pictures for Netflix’s The Greatest Night in Pop.
On the television side, Morgan Neville, Meghan Walsh, Charlise Holmes, and Caitrin Rogers won Outstanding Producer of Non-Fiction Television for the Apple TV+ documentary STEVE! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces. Also, the producing team for Netflix’s four-part docuseries Simon Biles Rising won the award for Outstanding Sports Program, and the producing team for the eight-part FX docuseries The Making of Shōgun (available on YouTube) won the award for Outstanding Short-Form Program.
Frederick Wiseman Documentaries
We’re now in the third week of Lincoln Center’s retrospective of Frederick Wiseman documentaries. Here are the films programmed across the next seven days: High School II and Central Park on Friday; Model, Aspen, and Deaf on Saturday; Near Death and Blind on Sunday; Welfare (one of my all-time favorite docs), Missile, and Manoeuvre on Monday; State Legislature and Canal Zone on Tuesday; Multi-handicapped, Law and Order, and Domestic Violence on Wednesday; and Juvenile Court, Domestic Violence II, and High School on Thursday. You can stream them all on Kanopy if you’re not in New York City for the 4K restorations on the big screen.
Lockerbie: The Bombing of Pan Am 103 (2025)
It might seem weird to be getting all these “Lockerbie” programs lately (a dramatic miniseries starring Colin Firth debuted on Peacock last month), and it was tough watching this four-part documentary so soon after the recent Potomac River mid-air collision. They appear to be timed to the upcoming trial of accused terrorist Abu Agila Masud, who allegedly built the suitcase bomb that killed 270 people in 1988, including almost a dozen casualties on the ground.
I have no idea if Lockerbie: The Bombing of Pan Am 103 includes much new information. Nonetheless, as a true-crime docuseries about this mass-murder disaster, it offers a riveting ongoing story involving the victims’ grieving family members, a clash between the FBI and the CIA amidst the greater international intrigue, and a possible conspiracy regarding the placement of blame.
The first two episodes of Lockerbie: The Bombing of Pan Am 103 premiere on CNN on Sunday, February 16.
Spectacled Bears: Shadows Of The Forest (2008)
If you’re looking forward to this week’s release of the third live-action Paddington Bear movie, Paddington in Peru, here’s a Doc Option pick to go with it. Spectacled Bears: Shadows of the Forest is an episode of the long-running BBC docuseries Natural World that focuses on the titular endangered South American species of bear. Paddington is a spectacled bear, and this documentary narrated by actor Stephen Fry even covers that fact while showcasing the real thing and sharing information about their lives.
Spectacled Bears: Shadows of the Forest is streaming for free on the Internet Archive.
We Beat The Dream Team (2025)
Everyone’s heard about the tortoise who beat the hare, but few people know that the next day the hare ran faster than ever and beat every other animal in the land. Was the tortoise just a humbling motivator? Was he set up to win by someone who needed the hare to know he’s the best but not invincible? Such questions come up in the story of the 1992 United States men's Olympic basketball team (the “Dream Team”) and the “Select” team they scrimmaged and lost to at the start of their training together.
That story is the subject of We Beat the Dream Team, a documentary told from the first-person perspective of one of those Select players, Grant Hill.
(Continue reading our review of We Beat the Dream Team.)
We Beat the Dream Team begins streaming on Max on Monday, February 17.
Documentary Release Calendar 2/14/25 - 2/20/25
Friday, February 14, 2025
Bonnie Blue: James Cotton's Life in the Blues (2025) - A feature documentary about blues icon James Cotton. (DVD and VOD)
Calgary Stampede (1948) - An Oscar-nominated short documentary celebrating Calgary’s Stampede Week and rodeo. (TCM)
Chris & Don: A Love Story (2007) - A documentary about the relationship between author Chris Isherwood and painter Don Bachardy. (Ovid)
Cirilo: A Legacy Untold (2025) - A short documentary about civil rights leader Cirilo McSween. (In Theaters)
Rez Comedy (2024) - A stand-up comedy concert film showcasing nine Indigenous comedians. Watch the trailer for the film below. (VOD/Digital)
Service with the Colors (1940) - An Oscar-nominated short documentary about army recruits pre-World War II. (TCM)
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Incredible Northern Vets Episodes 3 & 4: “Cats, Cows and Cryptorchids” & “It's a Dog's Life” - The latest installments of a docuseries following the work of three Indigenous veterinarians. (National Geographic)
New York Homicide Season 3, Episode 3: “Killer Club Kids” - The latest episode of this true-crime docuseries about recent murder cases in New York City is about a missing club kid. (Oxygen)
Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler Season 2, Episode 4: “Senior Citizen Killer” - The latest episode of this true-crime docuseries involves a serial killer who targets elderly women. (Oxygen)
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Fatal Family Feuds Season 2, Episode 1: “A Long Island Love Triangle” - The second season premiere of this true-crime series about murders committed due to family feuds involves a murdered mother and a secret affair. (Oxygen)
Lockerbie: The Bombing of Pan Am 103 Episodes 1 & 2: “The Tragedy” & “The Investigation” - A four-part documentary series about the 1988 airline tragedy. See our review in the highlights above. (CNN)
Sword Fishing (1939) - An Oscar-nominated short documentary narrated by Ronald Reagan about an archer who catches fish with a bow and arrow. (TCM)
Trial & Error: Why Did O.J. Win? (2025) - A seven-part docuseries about the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. (Court TV)
WWE Rivals Season 5, Episode 1: “Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Undertaker” - The fifth season premiere of this docuseries about pro wrestling rivalries. (A&E)
WWE's Greatest Moments (2025) - A docuseries about iconic moments in WWE history. (A&E)
Monday, February 17, 2025
American Murder: Gabby Petito (2025) - A three-part true-crime docuseries about the death of Gabby Petito. (Netflix)
The Aunties (2023) - A short documentary about two Black gay women farming Harriet Tubman’s ancestral lands. (Black Public Media YouTube Channel)
Skin of Glass (2023) - A feature documentary about the titular building in São Paulo, Brazil, and its architect, Roger Zmekhol. Presented as an episode of Independent Lens. (PBS)
Thomas Jefferson Episode 1: “A Revolutionary is Born (1743-1773)” - The premiere of this biographical docuseries about the titular Founding Father. (History)
We Beat the Dream Team (2025) - A feature documentary about the college basketball players who beat the 1992 Olympics “Dream Team.” (Max)
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Bon Jovi: In Performance (2006) - A medium-length documentary about the titular rock band. (DVD)
Court of Gold (2025) - A six-part docuseries about men’s basketball players in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. (Netflix)
Great Migrations: A People on the Move Episode 4: “Coming to America” - A new docuseries produced and hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. about the movement of African Americans through the 20th and 21st centuries. This episode looks at African and Caribbean immigrants. (PBS)
Trinity (2024) - A documentary about the nuclear age. (DVD and VOD)
The World According to Allee Willis (2024) - A feature documentary about the titular artist/songwriter. (VOD)
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
Always Giving Service Never Taking Credit: The John Wooten Story (2025) - A feature documentary about former NFL guard John Wooten, who helped create the Rooney Rule for DEI hiring of coaches in professional football. (In Theaters)
Homicide Squad New Orleans Season 1, Episode 9: “No Good Deed” - The latest episode of this new docuseries involves the murder of a good Samaritan. (A&E)
Yoshiki: Under the Sky (2023) - A feature documentary about the titular Japanese composer and musician, who also co-directed the film. (Prime Video)
Thursday, February 20, 2025
How I Escaped My Cult Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2: “Tony Alamo Christian Academy” & “Word of Life” - The first two episodes of this docuseries about former members of modern cults look at two controversial churches. (Freeform)
Sneak Peak At What’s Coming Soon
2/23 - The Americas - A 10-part nature docuseries narrated by Tom Hanks showcasing North America and South America. (NBC)
2/27 - The Case of Iwona Wieczorek - A true-crime docuseries about the disappearance of a 19-year-old girl. (Viaplay)
3/7 - The Falling Sky - A feature documentary about the relationship between Indigenous people and nature. Watch the new trailer for the film below. (In Theaters)
3/9 - United States of Scandal Season 2 - The return of this docuseries starring Jake Tapper about major modern controversies. (CNN)
3/11 - Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna - A feature documentary about cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was accidentally killed by a gun fired by Alec Baldwin on the set of the movie Rust. (Hulu)
3/14 - An Unfinished Film - A docufiction hybrid about the making of a movie during the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. (In Theaters)
3/28 - Janis Ian: Breaking Silence - A feature documentary about the titular singer-songwriter. Watch the new trailer for the film below. (In Theaters)