Here at Empire HQ, we love ourselves a good documentary. They say the truth is often far stranger than fiction, and seeing it brought into sharper focus through a cinematic lens has given us some of our most unforgettable viewing experiences over the years. From limited series that stoke raging online discourses to rug-pull moments that set your heart and mind racing, and from deep-dives that change the way you look at the world to meticulously crafted non-fiction features that you just can't stop thinking about, we simply can't get enough of 'em. And so, whether you’re after a juicy true-crime fix, the skinny on breathtaking feats of human derring-do, or the inside track on your favourite 80s action hero (we've got a couple of those!), we’ve drawn up an all-killer, no-filler list (in no particular order) of 25 of the best documentaries that the streamer has to offer.
And if you need an escape from reality after mainlining these, then why not take a look at our list of the best movies on Netflix UK? Or, for something in a box-set shaped package, perhaps give our list of the streamer’s best TV shows a go?
Skywalkers: A Love Story
Contrary to what its title may suggest, Skywalkers: A Love Story mercifully is not in fact an iffy Wattpad Luke and Leia fan-fiction. Rather, it's a simultaneously nauseating and awe-inspiring doc about Russian "rooftoppers" Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, whose mutual penchant for scaling superstructures, skyscrapers, and other perilously tall buildings to take artistic snaps for the 'Gram has resulted in a colossal social media following — and a fascinating, quite literally high stakes love story to boot. Nikolau and Beerkus' insane vertiginous acrobatic feats — which all build towards the duo's breathtaking attempt to perform the Dirty Dancing lift atop Kuala Lumpur's Merdeka 118, the second-tallest building in the world — will doubtless leave you sweaty-palmed and awe-inspired. But it's directors Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina's decision to place equal focus on their subjects' relationship, both in terms of the moments of adrenalised ecstasy and sky-high squabbling they experience, that makes this impossible to look away from.
Read the Empire review here.
The Deepest Breath
To Kill A Tiger
There’s no getting around the fact that director Nisha Puhaja’s To Kill A Tiger is an incredibly difficult watch. Its subject — the gang rape of a 13-year-old girl in a small Indian village in Jharkhand’s Bero district — is challenging enough in and of itself, before you even discover the way the town’s villagers try not only to dismiss the assault, but actively encourage the victim to marry one of her tormentors. But Puhaja’s film, in focusing on the girl’s father’s fight for justice, manages to serve a didactic purpose. On the one hand, it is a brutal account of the perpetuation of rape culture and victim-blaming in a society where violence against women is endemic. On the other, it is a fierce testament to the unshakable bond between a father and his daughter, and a rousing call for change in a society rooted in archaic patriarchal norms. On both fronts, it makes for incredibly effective — and affecting — viewing.
American Symphony
Tracking a year in the life of husband and wife Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad, documentarian Matthew Heineman's (Cartel Land, City Of Ghosts) latest is a soulful exploration of love, art, and the beautiful things found and forged within moments of profound pain. Over the course of the film, we follow as Batiste and Jaouad navigate the former's artistic and critical ascendancy — namely a historic five Grammy sweep — whilst simultaneously processing the trauma of the latter's leukaemia returning. Both the couple's emotional and artistic responses to their situation are captured with studious care by Heineman, whose close-up camerawork illuminates his subjects beautifully. The whole thing builds to the premiere of Batiste's titular symphony at Carnegie Hall. Vulnerable, vibrant, chaotic yet ultimately calm, it's a performance that perfectly embodies both the film and its subjects.
Read the Empire review here.
Sly
Never one to be outdone by his old rival Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone doc Sly follows hot on the heels of Arnie as another warts-and-all portrait of an 80s action hero. Whilst this one’s a tight 90 (almost) movie as opposed to Arnie’s expansive limited series, prolific documentarian Thom Zimny takes cues from his work with the likes of Bruce Springsteen to find a propulsive storytelling rhythm as Sly guides us through his half-century spanning career. Beyond the film’s array of impressive talking heads - Quentin Tarantino, Wesley Morris, Schwarzenegger too - it’s Stallone himself who makes Sly essential viewing. Erudite, animated, and incredibly honest about his strengths and weaknesses as both a filmmaker and as a husband and father, the man behind Rocky and Rambo does a stellar job of showing viewers exactly where those cinematic titans’ fighting spirit comes from.
Read the Empire review here.
Trainwreck: Woodstock ‘99
Forget putting out fires with gasoline, at the ill-fated and now infamous Woodstock ‘99, ringmasters John Scher and Michael Lang were putting out fires with bigger fires - and also Fire, by Jimi Hendrix. Capitalist greed, unmanageable crowds, rage-fuelled music, rampant substance abuse, and a total abdication of accountability, responsibility, or indeed basic human decency all conspired to ensure that the road to hell - AKA Griffiss Air Force Base, New York circa July 1999 - wasn’t even paved with good intentions. In Jamie Clayton’s eye-widening Trainwreck: Woodstock ‘99, Lord Of The Flies rivalling archival footage is interspersed with wince-worthy eye-witness testimony to try and piece together how an anticipated millennium defining celebration of peace and love devolved into a cesspit of anger, abuse, and arson. It makes the Fyre festival look like a trip to Center Parcs.
Three Identical Strangers
New York, 1980. Three young men - David Kellman, Eddy Galland and Bobby Shafran - become unlikely celebrities when an unwritable twist of fate leads them to discover that they are in fact triplets, inexplicably separated at birth and hitherto entirely unaware of one another’s existence. That, in and of itself, is a heck of a hook for a documentary. But British filmmaker Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers dives deeper yet to question our very understanding of reality and identity as we learn why the brothers were kept apart at all. Occasionally sensational but ceaselessly captivating, Wardle’s film - which dexterously handles its French pastry’s worth of twists - simply has to be seen to be believed.
Tell Me Who I Am
Ed Perkins’ Tell Me Who I Am is not a documentary for the faint of heart. Honestly, even for those who generally can handle their weighty true life stories, we’d still advise treading carefully with this one. Centring on twin brothers Alex and Marcus Lewis, the former of whom lost his memory following a motorcycle accident at the age of 18, Perkins’ film revolves around two similar but vitally different questions. Firstly, if you had the chance to erase the worst thing that ever happened to someone you love from their mind, would you? And secondly, arguably more importantly, should you? This is the decision we find the two brothers dealing with the repercussions of as we learn about their deeply troubled childhood. Dark as this one gets - and it does get incredibly dark - the love between these siblings after all they’ve endured is an incredible thing to behold.
Arnold
Athlete. Actor. American. These are the titles given to the three chapters of Lesley Chilcott’s limited docu-series Arnold, an exhaustive deep-dive into the life and career of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chilcott’s tripartite approach neatly splits the doc’s attention between the Terminator star’s formative years as a bodybuilder growing up in Austria, his rise to movie stardom in films such as Predator and Total Recall, and his successful political career as California’s most recent Republican Governor. However, what really makes this such a compelling watch, besides the extensive archival footage and impressive array of interviewees, is Arnie himself and his commitment to addressing his failures as readily as his victories, both personally and professionally. There’s no hero worship here, just a fascinating account of the life of a fascinating man who knows how to kick some ice!
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story
Part electrifying concert film, part rollicking documentary ride, and part sleight of hand from one of cinema’s great conjurors, Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story is almost beyond classification. Ostensibly an account of the 1975-‘76 leg of Dylan’s eponymous travelling show, Scorsese’s companion piece to 2005 doc No Direction Home sees the Goodfellas filmmaker donning his Dylanologist cap once more to create a portrait of the enigmatic artist that’s every bit as tricksy, unyielding, and meddlesome as its subject. Juggling live performances, tour footage, archival fabrications (*cough* Sharon Stone *cough*), a rare new interview with the man himself, and interstitial elements that capture the musical and cultural zeitgeist of the 70s, this is a film quite unlike any other. It’s genius documenting genius, and the end result is *checks thesaurus* virtuosic.
Read the Empire review here.
Blackfish
A damning exposé of SeaWorld and those who sail within her, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s seminal documentary Blackfish focuses on killer whale, Tilikum. Dragging trainer Dawn Brancheau into a pool and killing her (after two previous, similar incidents), the ‘nature or nurture’ question is given some serious heft - was the floppy-finned, 12,000 pound Tilikum born a killer, or is his cramped captivity to blame? It’s not hard to see why thousands felt the need to boycott SeaWorld upon the film’s release.
Read Empire’s review here
A Love Song For Latasha
The injustice surrounding the shooting death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins at a South Central Los Angeles store became a flashpoint for the city’s 1992 civil uprising. As the Black community expressed its profound pain in the streets, Latasha’s friends and family privately mourned the loss of a vibrant child whose full story was never in the headlines. Nearly three decades later, director Sophia Nahli Allison’s breathtaking A Love Song For Latasha removes Latasha from the context of her death and rebuilds an archive of a promising life lost.
My Octopus Teacher
After years spent filming some of the planet’s most dangerous animals, Craig Foster was burned out and depressed, his family relationships in turmoil. He decided to put a halt to his career to reconnect with his own roots - the magical underwater world of the kelp forest off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, the place he calls home. For nearly a decade, Craig went diving daily in the icy cold waters, ditching wetsuit and scuba rig in one of the most predator dense places on earth. The common octopus he met and tracked became first his subject, then his teacher, showing him things no human had ever witnessed. Shot over eight years, with 3000 hours of footage, My Octopus Teacher documents a unique friendship, interaction and animal intelligence never seen before.
Becoming
Nadia Hallgren’s Becoming follows Michelle Obama as she embarks on a book tour across America after the end of her husband’s Presidency – reflecting on her own younger life, and the historic nature of her time as First Lady in the White House. Whilst polished with a veneer of stately authorisation - there’s no bombshells or scathing Trump takedowns here to really speak of - this nevertheless offers an eye-opening account of a woman whose journey from media pariah to global icon in her own right is nothing short of inspirational.
The Last Dance
Even if you barely know a thing about basketball, chances are you'll find something fascinating about The Last Dance. In the fall of 1997, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls began their quest to win a sixth NBA title in eight years. But despite all Jordan had achieved since his sensational debut 13 years earlier, “The Last Dance,” as coach Phil Jackson called it, would be shadowed by tension with the club’s front office and the overwhelming sense that this was the last time the world would ever see the greatest player of all time, and his extraordinary teammates, in full flight. Featuring interviews with many who were there at the time, it picks apart the personalities and peeks behind the curtain of the sport.
Challenger: The Final Flight
Executive produced by J.J. Abrams and Glen Zipper, Challenger: The Final Flight is a four-part docuseries that examines the 1986 Challenger space shuttle, which tragically broke apart 73 seconds after launch as millions of Americans—many of them schoolchildren— watched live on television. The series offers an in-depth look at one of the most diverse crews NASA assembled, including high school teacher Christa McAuliffe, who was selected to be the first private citizen in space.
Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened
Created by Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, Fyre was promoted as a luxury music festival on a private island in the Bahamas featuring bikini-clad supermodels, A-List musical performances and posh amenities. Guests arrived to discover the reality was far from the promises. Slapped-together sandwich meals, dodgy tent accommodations, lost luggage, a quite frankly insane offer that certainly could be refused… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Documentarian Chris Smith - who also worked on Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond and American Movie - scored amazing access to many of the people involved and lets the disaster unfold in all its cringing (in)glory.
13th
13th, Ava DuVernay’s follow-up to Selma, is a sobering, articulate and timely documentary about the American justice system and prison-industrial complex, drawing clear connections between slavery and the overwhelming incarceration of black men in the present day. Compellingly argued, propulsively told, and hugely relevant, DuVernay's film only continues to feel increasingly timely as the world turns and racism continues to rear its ugly head.
Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond
Director Chris Smith’s Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond is a fascinating deep dive into the time actor Jim Carrey spent portraying famed and complicated comedian Andy Kaufman. Drawing on approximately 100 hours of footage shot on the set of Man On The Moon, Smith’s doc pivots on Carrey’s months-long transformation, body (and seemingly soul), into Kaufman. Jim Carrey earned critical acclaim and a Golden Globe for his performance as Kaufman, but many of the production’s most Kaufmanesque moments played out behind the scenes, captured on video by Andy’s former girlfriend Lynne Margulies and his former writing partner, Bob Zmuda. In Jim & Andy, Carrey looks back at the resulting footage 18 years later, reflecting on how he and Andy came up in oddly parallel universes, his experiences channeling Andy, and more broadly the tumultuous, illuminating spiritual journey of his career to date.
Making A Murderer
Making A Murderer follows the plight of Winconsin salvage yard-worker Steven Avery. Having served 18 of his 32-year sentence for the sexual assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen, new DNA evidence finds him - a man who continually pleaded his innocence - acquitted. But the welcome home banners don’t last far beyond the first episode. Just two years after his release, the then 43 year-old Avery is arrested on suspicion of murdering Teresa Halbach - an Auto Trader photographer he'd commissioned to help sell vehicles on numerous occasions. This isn’t something to visit in weekly instalments - to do so would undermine the near-flawless cliffhanger mould. The lack of a neat finale is exasperating, but this ultimately lies outside the filmmakers' control. A lot of things are left unclear in this harrowing and extremely frustrating crime saga, but the main takeaway is that it is possible to create event television without making a show's launch an event in itself. Just imagine the follow-up series never happened - that’s what we do!
Read Empire’s review here
When They See Us
Across a four-episode limited series, director Ava DuVernay tells the story of the ‘Central Park Five’ – a group of Black boys and boys of colour who were falsely accused of raping a white woman in New York’s Central Park in 1989. Charting the court case and charges that followed, detailing the institutional racism and corruption that informed a horrendous injustice in the process, DuVernay leaves no stone unturned as she paints a shocking portrait of systemic racism and how the American media cycle and justice system so readily makes monsters of Black men.
The Social Dilemma
Part docu-drama and part absolutely terrifying glimpse at just how much of a grip the likes of Facebook and Twitter have on our shared consciousness, The Social Dilemma recruits former Silicon Valley types to talk about how the technology strokes our ego and stabs at our pleasure/pain receptors to keep us glued to our screens. If you're not taping up your webcams and contemplating launching your devices into the sea by the end of this then you're made of sterner stuff than us - Big Brother (or, y'know, Big Tech) is watching us.
Miss Americana
While rising from a teen country prodigy to the affable, world-touring performer we see today, Taylor Swift has created a lucrative, international brand that intoxicates fans but polarises the general public. Collaborating with documentarian Lana Wilson, Swift addresses the agony and the ecstasy that comes with fame as the country girl turned pop behemoth tackles the release, backlash, and her own backlash to the backlash of her hotly debated sixth studio album, Reputation.
Read Empire’s review here
Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)
Plotting ways your father can die would, you might think, make for a documentary that sits right alongside true crime tales. But Kristen Johnson's brilliantly bizarre Dick Johnson Is Dead instead functions as a heartfelt, warm, and immensely funny love letter to the filmmaker’s father Dick, who has been diagnosed with dementia. He's all in on the scenarios as his death is staged in increasingly barmy ways, and the resultant work is a meditation on familial connection and mortality that - contrary to the film’s morbid subject - is brimming with life.
Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution
Summer camp tends to be a rite of passage for many kids, especially across the pond. But just over the road from Woodstock, New York State, a revolution blossomed in a ramshackle summer camp for teenagers with disabilities, transforming their lives and igniting a landmark movement. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution tells the uplifting, charming and honest untold story of a group of individuals who refuse to be defined by their disability, and whose righteous indignation at societal prejudices led variously to help affect seismic social change in America alongside civil rights and LGBTQ+ activists.
Watched all of these already? Why not have a look at our list of what to watch on Disney+, or if you prefer your streamers fruit-based, then our guide to the best of Apple TV is pretty juicy too (pun absolutely intended.)