As an alternative if you have suggestions for documentary sources please do share them.
Mine would be United States of Secrets by PBS Frontline.
LEMMiNO is also great! One of the best documentary makers ever!
deleted by creator
Wow, thank you for the list sir! this list… is totally hidden gem for me who’s know nothing about many documentary movies.
I”ve watched all Curtis’ stuff apart from TraumaZone and I couldn’t agree more. I watched the first episode of that one a couple of night ago, I’m still processing.
deleted by creator
I put it off because there’s no narration in TraumaZone, just captions but it works so well.
- Burden of Dreams
- Cats of Mirikitani
- Tickled +1
- The Hermit of Treig
- Free Solo
- Into Eternity: A Film for the Future
- Bureau 39: Kim’s Cash Machine
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi
- The Silence of Others
- Palio
- The Ambassador
- The Babushkas of Chernobyl
- The Act of Killing
- The Kingmaker
- Grande Hotel (2010)
- He Dreams of Giants
- HyperNormalisation +1
- The Extraordinary Voyage (2011)
- The Power of Nightmares
- Feng ai ('Til Madness Do Us Part)
- The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (maybe my all-time favorite)
- Dear Zachary (IT WILL RUIN YOUR DAY, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED)
- I Think We’re Alone Now
And reiterating all of the Adam Curtis recommendations. I especially like HyperNormalisation. I don’t know of anything else like his documentaries.
Searching for sugarman
- Dominion
- Cowspiracy
- What the Health
- The Game Changers
- Forks Over Knives
- That Sugar Film
Plenty of others, but there’s a theme here.
They Shall Not Grow Old, and the bonus “making of”, is an incredible WW1 documentary and one of my favorite documentaries I’ve ever seen.
deleted by creator
Mister Organ, by the same guy, was also a wild ride.
‘Kiss the Ground’
Koyaanisqatsi, while not a traditional documentary, is a truly fascinating time capsule featuring a great soundtrack from Phillip Glass. It’s all images/video with no dialog or voiceover. It’s a unique experience (especially in an altered state of mind)
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
https://archive.org/details/TheFogOfWarElevenLessonsFromTheLifeOfRobertS.Mcnamara
The Ken Burns documentary series on the Vietnam War is excellent. Probably the best documentary I’ve seen.
Sick Around the World, a PBS Frontline documentary, is a good one for Americans. Comparing healthcare systems in multiple countries.
Fed Up
Good way to know how truly messed the food industry is because of the lobbying from the sugar industry
I really loved The Stories We Tell, altho it’s not a traditional educational doc
I recently watched, “Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone” and greatly enjoyed it.
It’s about what it was like to live in the Soviet Union at the end of communism and then the end of democracy. The story is entirely told with footage from the time.
I’d like to also recommend my two favorite documentaries about labor unions, Harlan County, USA and American Dream.