Top 12 Documentaries

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What documentaries have you watched that you consider the best?

In no particular order:

Grizzly Man
Man On Wire
Super Size Me
The Yes Men
Waltz With Bashir
Bowling For Columbine
The Up Series
Taxi To The Dark Side
The Fog Of War
An Inconvenient Truth
March Of The Penguins
The Cove

There are so many, I will just put a couple out there.

Big River Man
American Experience: LBJ
American Experience: A Brilliant Madness

Pretty much anything by Adam Curtis, in no particular order:

The Mayfair Set
Pandora’s Box
Century of the Self
The Trap: Whatever Happened to Our Dream of Freedom?
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
The Power of Nightmares
Bitter Lake
Hypernormality

A Kalahari Family -- long, probably too long. But to me, it shows the all-time example of bureaucrats and academics removed from actual facts. A man needs rocks and cements to protect his water well and irrigation pipes from elephants. The elephants lean on and destroy water structures in order to get to the water. In several months, the nonprofit dedicated to helping Kalahari persons finally get them cable and railroad ties ( ! ! ) which don't work really as well.

The nonprofit also has this 'beautiful' idea that the Kalahari can be ecotour guides. However, most of the Kalahari families themselves want to be farmers. The nonprofit thinks they're still discussing the situation. But no, the Kalahari think they have communicated pretty clearly. They might have to communicate a second or even third time. They may even have to get an advocate and intermediary to talk with the nonprofit which is supposed to be their main advocate and intermediary!

Turtle: The Incredible Journey


The documentaries following the same Yellowstone wolf packs from different perspectives:
The valley of the wolves
Rise of Black Wolf
Yellowstone Wolf Dynasty
Wild Yellowstone: She-wolf

They are really unusual documentaries and almost come off more as stories with plots and you really get to follow these wolves as individuals.

I really wish these were available for region 2 or region free!


Wolf Return of a legend
as well as the other documentaries made by Jim and Jamie Dutcher about the Sawtooth Pack, the wolves they raised and lived with for 6 years.


How wolves change rivers
a short documentary about how vital wolves are in their eco systems. Tells a lot in just a few minutes


The Blue Planet
BBC series about the oceans with David Attenborough


the Utila Sea Turtle Conservation Project
about sea turtles raised for a year before released in order to give them a head start in life


25 years ago I thought the docu-drama The War Game was excellent, but I haven't seen it since, so no idea what I'd think of it now.


The secret life of dogs


Dogs an amazing animal family

I highly recommend the Cosmos series.

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980)
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)
Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020)

Possible Worlds premiered on National Geographic in March, but will air again on Fox in Fall 2020.

The act of killing

Leviathan (the American documentary, not the Russian fiction film. Or the British book on political philosophy)

The emperor's naked army marches on

Documentaries I have seen

Three Identical Strangers
Ken Burns - The Vietnam War
Ken Burns - Baseball
Woodstock
The Beatles - The First U.S. Visit
New Wave - Dare to Be Different
The Decline of Western Civilization
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II
American Experience - The Hurricane of ‘38
American Experience - The Great War