How to Stream the 100 Best Documentaries Ever Made

The remarkable history and legacy of one of the most important works of art to come out of the age of AIDS — Bill T. Jones’ tour-de-force ballet “D-Man in the Waters.”

Experience the iconic rock band’s legacy in the first major documentary to tell their story. Directed with the era’s avant-garde spirit by Todd Haynes, this kaleidoscopic oral history combines exclusive interviews with dazzling archival footage.

The documentary’s title translates as “to be and to have”, the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

Filmed over five years, this documentary charts the progress of several veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder at a California clinic.

An alarmingly disproportionate number of Black women are failed every year by the U.S. maternal health system. Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac were vibrant, excited mothers-to-be whose deaths due to childbirth complications were preventable. Now, their partners and families are determined to sound a rallying cry around this chilling yet largely ignored crisis.

A look at how the community of Newtown, Connecticut came together in the aftermath of the largest mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history.

A candid portrait of writer/director Nora Ephron, directed by her son, journalist Jacob Bernstein.

History exists beyond what is written. The Africatown residents in Mobile, Alabama, have shared stories about their origins for generations. Their community was founded by enslaved ancestors who were transported in 1860 aboard the last known and illegal slave ship, Clotilda. Though the ship was intentionally destroyed upon arrival, its memory and legacy weren’t. Now, the long-awaited discovery of the Clotilda’s remains offers this community a tangible link to their ancestors and validation of a history so many tried to bury.

45365 explores the congruities of daily life in an American town. From the patrol car to the courtroom, the playground to the nursing home, the parade to the prayer service, it explores relationships and interactions - with people and their environment. The stories of a father and son, a young relationship, cops and criminals, officials and their electorate coalesce into a mosaic of faces, places, and events. 45365 is a portrait of a city and its people.

A film that exposes the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, Inside Job traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.

“Inside Job” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2010.

Yael Hersonski’s powerful documentary achieves a remarkable feat through its penetrating look at another film-the now-infamous Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. Discovered after the war, the unfinished work, with no soundtrack, quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record, despite its elaborate propagandistic construction. The later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings, showing the manipulations of camera crews in these “everyday” scenes. Well-heeled Jews attending elegant dinners and theatricals (while callously stepping over the dead bodies of compatriots) now appeared as unwilling, but complicit, actors, alternately fearful and in denial of their looming fate.

The Empire Builder is America’s busiest long-distance train route, running from Chicago to Seattle. Throughout these corridors sit runaways, adventurers, and loners – a myriad of passengers waiting to see what their journey holds. A touching and honest observation, co-directed by the iconic Albert Maysles, In Transit breathes life into the long commute, and contemplates the unknowns that lie at our final destination.

Over four years of unprecedented access, the story of a brave group of black and Latino whistleblower cops and one unrelenting private investigator who, amidst a landmark lawsuit, risk everything to expose illegal quota practices and their impact on young minorities.

An intriguing look at an authoritarian state on the verge of democratization: how Zimbabwe got a new constitution. Two political enemies are forced on a joint mission to write Zimbabwe’s new constitution. The ultimate test that will either take the country a decisive step closer to democracy and away from President Mugabe’s dictatorship, or toward renewed repression. In a country with little respect for human rights, impeded by economic sanctions and hyperinflation running rampant, failure is not an option.

The lives of the late Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar and Lorraine, one of her daughters, and the community of Bradford, in the 30 years since the 18-year-old Andrea penned a play about growing up in the community titled “The Arbor”.

With this inventive portrait, director Kirsten Johnson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.

The story of the American music dynasty, the Carters and Cashes, and their decades-long influence on popular music.

For generations, all that distinguished Eagle Pass, TX, from Piedras Negras, MX, was the Rio Grande. But when darkness descends upon these harmonious border towns, a cowboy and lawman face a new reality that threatens their way of life.

Chronological look at the fiasco in Iraq, especially decisions made in the spring of 2003 - and the backgrounds of those making decisions - immediately following the overthrow of Saddam: no occupation plan, an inadequate team to run the country, insufficient troops to keep order, and three edicts from the White House announced by Bremmer when he took over.

Spike Lee’s award-winning documentary follows the events that preceded and followed Hurricane Katrina’s catastrophic passage through New Orleans in 2005.

Fogel’s follow-up provides a hair-raising mixture of Kafkaesque nightmare and Le Carré-type suspense as, over the course of three years, Rodchenkov is a nomad refugee, continuously moving residences, protected by his heardbut-never-seen security detail. Why? Vladimir Putin has publicly stated his determination to kill Rodchenkov. Fogel’s astonishing story includes Rodchenkov’s daring attempts to counter Putin’s charges, and his painful efforts to obtain U.S. citizenship.

On August 7th 1974, French tightrope walker Philippe Petit stepped out on a high wire, illegally rigged between New York’s World Trade Center twin towers, then the world’s tallest buildings. After nearly an hour of performing on the wire, 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan, he was arrested. This fun and spellbinding documentary chronicles Philippe Petit’s “highest” achievement.

One of the rooms inside the legendary Barba Azul Cabaret has become a shelter for the girls working there: the women’s bathroom. Every night La Mami, who’s in charge of the bathrooms, offers them the warmth and the advice they need to take on the challenge they face in the dance hall.

Three young men bond together to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown. As they face adult responsibilities, unexpected revelations threaten their decade-long friendship.

Desperate, broken men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor’s decision to help them has extraordinary and unexpected consequences.

Ulrike Ottinger weaves her personal memories of Parisian bohemianism and the serious social, political and cultural upheavals of the time into a cinematic “figure poem.”

For her latest industrial exposé, Rachel Boynton (Our Brand Is Crisis) gained unprecedented access to Africa’s oil companies. The result is a gripping account of the costly personal tolls levied when American corporate interests pursue oil in places like Ghana and the Niger River Delta. Executive produced by Steven Shainberg and Brad Pitt, Big Men investigates the caustic blend of ambition, corruption and greed that threatens to exacerbate Africa’s resource curse.

Tells the story of five people from the last generation of Soviet children who were brought up behind the Iron Curtain. Just coming of age when the USSR collapsed, they witnessed the world of their childhood crumble and change beyond recognition. Through the lives of these former schoolmates, this intimate film reveals how they have adjusted to their post-Soviet reality in today’s Moscow.

World-renowned director Martin Scorsese narrates this journey through his favorites in Italian cinema.

Part jazz history, part true-crime tale, Kasper Collin’s new documentary employs extensive archival footage and new interviews to tell the tragic story of the magnificently talented trumpeter Lee Morgan and his common-law wife Helen, who murdered him in a New York bar in 1972.

THE GIRLS IN THE BAND tells the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, groundbreaking journeys from the late 1930s to the present day.

In Chile’s Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet’s regime.

Margarita Mamun, an elite Russian rhythmic gymnast, is struggling to become an Olympic champion. It is the most important year of her career and her last chance to achieve the ultimate goal, the gold Olympic medal. The film creates a captivating portrait of a young woman who is desperately trying to handle her own ambitions and meet the expectations of the official Russian training system.

Filmmakers expose the horrifying mass executions of accused communists in Indonesia and those who are celebrated in their country for perpetrating the crime.

After The Missing Picture (Un Certain Regard winner 2013 and Oscar nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film in 2013) and Exile, Rithy Panh continues his personal and spiritual exploration. S21 the Khmer Rouge Killing Machine and Duch, Master of the Forges of Hell analyzed the mechanisms of the crime. Graves Without a Name searches for a path to peace. When a thirteen-year-old child, who lost the greater part of his family under the Khmer rouge, embarks on a search for their graves, whether clay or on spiritual ground, what does he find there? And above all, what is he looking for? Spectral trees? Villages defaced beyond recognition? Witnesses who are reluctant to speak? The ethereal touch of a brother or sister’s body as the night approaches? A cinematic movie that reaches well beyond the story of a country for that which is universal.

Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years.

Combining archival footage with rotoscopic animation, Tower reveals the action-packed untold stories of the witnesses, heroes and survivors of America’s first mass school shooting, when the worst in one man brought out the best in so many others.

A Man Vanishes examines the concept of Johatsu, tackling the phenomenon of people missing in Japan over the years. It picks one such person from the list, someone who had seemed to disappear from the face of the earth due to embezzlement from his company, and the filmmakers begin an investigative documentary into the reasons behind and attempt at tracking him down.

On September 11, 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald became famous for the worst of all possible reasons. 658 of their employees were missing, presumed dead, in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Though Cantor suffered almost twice the casualties of the FDNY, their story was soon pushed aside as the media ambushed Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick, who went from face-of-the-tragedy to pariah within weeks. A true stranger-than-fiction account, unfolding over months and years, the film captures being caught in the crosshairs of history.

This movie chronicles the life and times of R. Crumb. Robert Crumb is the cartoonist/artist who drew Keep On Truckin’, Fritz the Cat, and played a major pioneering role in the genesis of underground comix. Through interviews with his mother, two brothers, wife, and ex-girlfriends, as well as selections from his vast quantity of graphic art, we are treated to a darkly comic ride through one man’s subconscious mind.

The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.

In 2013, the world’s media reported on a shocking mountain-high brawl as European climbers fled a mob of angry Sherpas. Director Jennifer Peedom and her team set out to uncover the cause of this altercation, intending to film the 2014 climbing season from the Sherpa’s point-of-view. Instead, they captured Everest’s greatest tragedy, when a huge block of ice crashed down onto the climbing route…

A filmed version of David Byrne’s Broadway show, a unifying musical celebration that inspires audiences to connect to each other and to the global community.

Director Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.

A behind-the-scenes documentary about the recording of Aretha Franklin’s best-selling album finally sees the light of day more than four decades after the original footage was shot.

An intimate look at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival held in Bethel, NY in 1969, from preparation through cleanup, with historic access to insiders, blistering concert footage, and portraits of the concertgoers; negative and positive aspects are shown, from drug use by performers to naked fans sliding in the mud, from the collapse of the fences by the unexpected hordes to the surreal arrival of National Guard helicopters with food and medical assistance for the impromptu city of 500,000.

Virunga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is Africa’s oldest national park, a UNESCO world heritage site, and a contested ground among insurgencies seeking to topple the government that see untold profits in the land. Among this ongoing power struggle, Virunga also happens to be the last natural habitat for the critically endangered mountain gorilla. The only thing standing in the way of the forces closing in around the gorillas: a handful of passionate park rangers and journalists fighting to secure the park’s borders and expose the corruption of its enemies. Filled with shocking footage, and anchored by the surprisingly deep and gentle characters of the gorillas themselves, Virunga is a galvanizing call to action around an ongoing political and environmental crisis in the Congo.

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High School in Westchester, Illinois, a predominately white suburban school well-known for the excellence of its basketball program. Gates and Agee dream of NBA stardom, and with the support of their close-knit families, they battle the social and physical obstacles that stand in their way. This acclaimed documentary was shot over the course of five years.

A Newark, New Jersey high school teacher struggles to prepare her students with autism to survive in the brutal world that awaits them once they graduate.