Top 50 Documentaries of the Past 5 Years

Selection and display method

A reproducible five-year snapshot

Metacritic’s all-time documentary list was read in published order, then filtered to releases from January 1, 2022 through August 14, 2026. The first 50 eligible films form this collection. They are displayed by release year newest first; within each year, Metacritic’s filtered published order breaks ties. Metacritic excludes titles with fewer than seven critic reviews. Future releases after the cutoff are excluded.

This is discovery research only. Expanding the collection does not mark any title watched, add it to your watchlist, or create a personal rating.

Research cutoff: August 14, 2026. Because 2026 is still in progress, this collection is a dated snapshot and can change as new films receive enough reviews.

Release year descending

50 documentaries, newest first

Metascores are dated critic-score snapshots; card numbers show this page’s newest-first display order.

#1 · Documentary · 2026

Remake

Research onlyMetascore 93Metacritic selection #219 critic reviews114 minutes

Filmmaker Ross McElwee has spent forty years recording himself and his family, creating documentaries that chronicle the shifting contours of American society through the lens of personal history. His son Adrian grew up inside those films, and eventually began experimenting with the camera himself. When a Hollywood producer acquires the rights to adapt McElwee’s 1986 breakthrough Sherman's March into a work of fiction, twenty-year-old Adrian sees a chance for his father to finally reach a wider audience. As the adaptation stalls, Adrian gets swept into a deepening drug addiction and dies from a fentanyl overdose, leaving behind hours of personal video footage. Retracing Adrian’s final years, McElwee reckons with what his camera captured and what remained hauntingly out of frame. As he reflects on a lifetime behind the camera, Ross’s own effort to remix and remake the movie that Adrian never got to finish takes on new significance. An ever-expanding hall of mirrors built from decades of home movies, Remake is both McElwee’s attempt to hold onto his son, and to let him go.

#2 · Documentary · 2026

Seeds

Research onlyMetascore 90Metacritic selection #1314 critic reviews123 minutes

An exploration of Black generational farmers in the American South reveals the fragility of legacy and the significance of owning land.

#3 · Documentary · 2026

American Doctor

Research onlyMetascore 87Metacritic selection #2011 critic reviews91 minutes

When three American doctors — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — enter Gaza to save lives, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.

#4 · Documentary · 2026

Pompei: Below the Clouds

Research onlyMetascore 87Metacritic selection #2415 critic reviews115 minutes

Naples is a city forever marked by the looming presence of Mount Vesuvius. Beneath the quiet threat of eruption, people go about their days: archaeologists unearth the past, children learn as the earth hums, firefighters wait for the next call.

#5 · Documentary · 2026

Our Land (Nuestra Tierra)

Research onlyMetascore 86Metacritic selection #2615 critic reviews119 minutes

In 2009, a man and two accomplices try to evict members of the Indigenous community of Chuschagasta in northern Argentina. Claiming ownership of the land and armed with guns, they kill the community’s leader, Javier Chocobar. The murder is caught on video. It takes nine years of protests before court proceedings are finally opened in 2018. During all this time, the killers remain free. The film combines the voices and photographs of the community with courtroom footage to explore the long history of colonialism and land dispossession that led to this crime.

#6 · Documentary · 2026

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert

Research onlyMetascore 86Metacritic selection #2727 critic reviews100 minutes

Baz Luhrmann’s account of Elvis Presley’s 1970s residency in Las Vegas features never-before-seen footage and recordings.

#7 · Documentary · 2026

Fiume o morte!

Research onlyMetascore 85Metacritic selection #319 critic reviews112 minutes

In September 1919, Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio led a force of irregulars in an invasion of the town of Fiume, in what is today Croatia. Was he an egotist with dreams of heading his own state? A utopian with a strong nationalist bent? Or a fascist who cared little for the locals and helped pave the way for Mussolini’s rule?

#8 · Documentary · 2025

My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow

Research onlyMetascore 94Metacritic selection #115 critic reviews324 minutes

Julia Loktev documents independent journalists in Moscow facing government crackdown as Russia invades Ukraine, capturing their fight for speech amid risks of being branded "foreign agents" and the country's drift towards authoritarianism.

#9 · Documentary · 2025

BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions

Research onlyMetascore 92Metacritic selection #59 critic reviews113 minutes

Preeminent West African curator and scholar Funmilayo Akechukwu’s magnum opus, The Resonance Field, leads her to the heart of the Atlantic Ocean, drawing a journalist into a journey that shatters her understanding of consciousness and time.

#10 · Documentary · 2025

The Alabama Solution

Research onlyMetascore 90Metacritic selection #119 critic reviews117 minutes

Incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up in one of America’s deadliest prison systems.

#11 · Documentary · 2025

2000 Meters to Andriivka

Research onlyMetascore 88Metacritic selection #1816 critic reviews106 minutes

Amid a failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.

#12 · Documentary · 2025

Cover-Up

Research onlyMetascore 86Metacritic selection #2819 critic reviews117 minutes

Cover-Up is a political thriller that traces the explosive career of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. Urgent and deeply reported, Cover-Up is both a portrait of a relentless journalist and an indictment of institutional violence — revealing a cycle of impunity in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Drawing on exclusive access to Hersh’s notes, and interweaving primary documents and archival footage, Cover-Up captures the power and process of investigative journalism.

#13 · Documentary · 2025

Afternoons of Solitude

Research onlyMetascore 85Metacritic selection #3213 critic reviews125 minutes

Afternoons of Solitude is a spellbinding documentary that turns its gaze on the ceremonial splendor and devastating brutality of bullfighting in Spain. With quiet intensity, Serra follows famed matador Andrés Roca Rey, from the solitude of his hotel room and the meticulousness of his preparations to the charged spectacle of the arena. Through his immersive and unhurried lens, Serra reveals Rey’s profound physical, spiritual, and aesthetic commitment to a centuries-old ritual—one that demands he take part in a timeless duel between man and beast.

#14 · Documentary · 2025

The Tale of Silyan

Research onlyMetascore 84Metacritic selection #3811 critic reviews80 minutes

A Macedonian folktale comes to life when a wounded white stork is rescued from a landfill by a down-on-his luck farmer, transforming both of their lives for the better.

#15 · Documentary · 2025

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4013 critic reviews113 minutes

Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk offers an intimate, first-hand perspective on life under siege in Gaza, captured through video calls between director Sepideh Farsi and 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist and poet Fatma Hassona. Combining raw immediacy with deep humanity, the film captures daily life during the conflict through the eyes and unwaveringly optimistic presence of Fatma, a talented photographer whose generation is trapped in an endless cycle of war, famine, and resistance. Her conversations with Farsi bring us into the heart of the conflict, even while their physical distance underscores the dire situation inside Gaza.

#16 · Documentary · 2025

The Librarians

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #419 critic reviews87 minutes

In Texas, the Krause List targets 850 books focused on race and LGBTQIA+ stories – triggering sweeping book bans across the U.S. at an unprecedented rate. As tensions escalate, librarians connect the dots from heated school and library board meetings nationwide to lay bare the underpinnings of extremism fueling the censorship efforts. Despite facing harassment, threats, and laws aimed at criminalizing their work – the librarians’ rallying cry for freedom to read is a chilling cautionary tale.

#17 · Documentary · 2025

The Perfect Neighbor

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4221 critic reviews96 minutes

One woman. Dozens of 911 calls. And a close-knit neighborhood caught in a nightmare. What begins as one woman’s relentless harassment of children spirals into a shocking act of violence. Captured through gripping police bodycam footage, The Perfect Neighbor - Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Directing Award - delivers a hauntingly powerful experience that keeps you on edge from start to finish.

#18 · Documentary · 2025

Predators

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4519 critic reviews96 minutes

To Catch a Predator was a popular television show designed to hunt down child predators and lure them to a film set, where they would be interviewed and eventually arrested. An exploration of the scintillating rise and staggering fall of the show and the world it helped create.

#19 · Documentary · 2024

No Other Land

Research onlyMetascore 93Metacritic selection #324 critic reviews92 minutes

Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta on the West Bank, has been fighting the mass expulsion of his community by Israel's occupation since childhood. He documents the slow-motion eradication of the villages in his home region where soldiers deployed by the Israeli government are gradually demolishing houses and driving out their residents. At some point, he meets Yuval, an Israeli journalist, who supports him in his efforts. An unlikely alliance develops. But the relationship between the two is strained by the enormous inequality between them: Basel lives under military occupation while Yuval lives freely and without restrictions. This film by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists has been made as an act of creative resistance on the path to greater justice. [Berlin]

#20 · Documentary · 2024

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus

Research onlyMetascore 91Metacritic selection #711 critic reviews103 minutes

Ryuichi Sakamoto's last performance, a concert film featuring just him and his piano playing for the last time before passing away.

#21 · Documentary · 2024

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Research onlyMetascore 91Metacritic selection #819 critic reviews150 minutes

In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America’s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from its first African post-colonial coup.

#22 · Documentary · 2024

Sugarcane

Research onlyMetascore 90Metacritic selection #1417 critic reviews111 minutes

An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.

#23 · Documentary · 2024

Pictures of Ghosts

Research onlyMetascore 88Metacritic selection #178 critic reviews93 minutes

Pictures of Ghosts is a multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking, set in the urban landscape of Recife, Brazilian coastal capital of Pernambuco: a historical and human territory, examined through the great movie theaters that served as spaces of conviviality during the 20th century. Having hosted dreams and progress, these places have also embodied a major transformation on social practices. Combining archive documentary, mystery, film clips and personal memories, Pictures of Ghosts is a map of a city through the lens of cinema.

#24 · Documentary · 2024

Dahomey

Research onlyMetascore 85Metacritic selection #3023 critic reviews68 minutes

The journey of 26 plundered royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey exhibited in Paris, now being returned to Benin. Diop artistically voices a new generation's demands.

#25 · Documentary · 2024

Daughters

Research onlyMetascore 85Metacritic selection #3322 critic reviews102 minutes

Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C., jail.

#26 · Documentary · 2024

Youth (Hard Times)

Research onlyMetascore 84Metacritic selection #378 critic reviews227 minutes

Individual and collective stories unfold in Zhili's textile workshops, becoming more dramatic as the seasons go by. From atop a passageway, workers watch their boss beat up a supplier. In another workshop, the boss has taken off with all the money. The workers are alone, robbed of the fruits of their labor. After bitter negotiations, the workers return home to celebrate the New Year. [Locarno]

#27 · Documentary · 2024

Luther: Never Too Much

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4710 critic reviews101 minutes

Luther Vandross started his career supporting David Bowie, Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, and more. His undeniable talent earned platinum records and accolades, but he struggled to break out beyond the R&B charts. Intensely driven, he overcame personal and professional challenges to secure his place amongst the greatest vocalists in history.

#28 · Documentary · 2024

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4822 critic reviews131 minutes

Features rare archival material from the personal collections of Powell, Pressburger and Scorsese.

#29 · Documentary · 2023

Our Body

Research onlyMetascore 93Metacritic selection #411 critic reviews168 minutes

Veteran documentarian Claire Simon observes the everyday operations of the gynecological ward in a public hospital in Paris. In the process, she questions what it means to live in a woman’s body, filming the diversity, singularity and beauty of patients in all stages of life. We see cancer screenings and fertility appointments, a teenager dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, a trans woman considering the beginnings of menopause. Through these encounters and many more, the specific fears, desires and struggles of these individuals become the health challenges we all face, even the filmmaker herself.

#30 · Documentary · 2023

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Research onlyMetascore 92Metacritic selection #612 critic reviews118 minutes

Five centuries ago, anatomist André Vésale opened up the human body to science for the first time in history. Today, De Humani Corporis Fabrica opens the human body to the cinema. It reveals that human flesh is an extraordinary landscape that exists only through the gaze and attention of others. As places of care, suffering and hope, hospitals are laboratories that connect every body in the world.

#31 · Documentary · 2023

Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros

Research onlyMetascore 91Metacritic selection #1020 critic reviews240 minutes

Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros is a film about the Troisgros family and their three restaurants, Troisgros, Le Central and Colline, located in three neighboring locations in central France. Troisgros, a restaurant founded 93 years ago, has had three Michelin stars for 55 years and in 2020 was awarded a Michelin green star for exemplary sustainable practices. Much of the film takes place at Troisgros. The present chef, Cesar Troisgros, is the fourth generation of the family to be in charge at Troisgros. The film shows the day-to-day operations involving the purchase, preparation and service at this restaurant .

#32 · Documentary · 2023

32 Sounds

Research onlyMetascore 90Metacritic selection #129 critic reviews97 minutes

32 Sounds is an immersive feature documentary and profound sensory experience from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green (The Weather Underground) featuring original music by JD Samson (Le Tigre, MEN). The film explores the elemental phenomenon of sound by weaving together 32 specific sound explorations into a cinematic meditation on the power of sound to bend time, cross borders, and profoundly shape our perception of the world around us. Join Oscar-nominated filmmaker Green as he takes the audience on a journey through time and space — exploring everything from forgotten childhood memories, to the soundtrack of resistance, to subaquatic symphonies — and experience in new ways the astonishing sounds of our everyday lives. 32 Sounds investigates the mysterious nature of perception and the subtle yet radical politics that arise from sensation and being present in one’s body. [Abramorama]

#33 · Documentary · 2023

Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé

Research onlyMetascore 86Metacritic selection #2526 critic reviews169 minutes

Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé accentuates the journey of Renaissance World Tour, from its inception, to the opening in Stockholm, Sweden, to the finale in Kansas City, Missouri. It is about Beyoncé’s intention, hard work, involvement in every aspect of the production, her creative mind and purpose to create her legacy, and master her craft. Received with extraordinary acclaim, Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour created a sanctuary for freedom, and shared joy, for more than 2.7 million fans.

#34 · Documentary · 2023

Beyond Utopia

Research onlyMetascore 85Metacritic selection #3416 critic reviews115 minutes

A suspenseful, riveting portrait of the lengths people will go to gain freedom, Beyond Utopia follows various families as they attempt to flee North Korea, one of the most oppressive places on Earth, a land they grew up believing was a paradise. At the film’s core is a courageous pastor, a man of God on a mission to help a mother reunite with the child she was forced to leave behind, and a family of five — including small children and an elderly grandmother — embarking on a treacherous journey into the hostile mountains of China. Leaving their homeland is fraught with unimaginable danger — yet these individuals are driven to take the risk.

#35 · Documentary · 2023

The Eternal Memory

Research onlyMetascore 85Metacritic selection #3519 critic reviews85 minutes

Augusto and Paulina have been together for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Both fear the day he no longer recognizes her.

#36 · Documentary · 2023

The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #3917 critic reviews116 minutes

Shere Hite’s 1976 bestselling book, The Hite Report, liberated the female orgasm by revealing the most private experiences of thousands of anonymous survey respondents. Her findings rocked the American establishment and presaged current conversations about gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy. So how did Shere Hite disappear?

#37 · Documentary · 2023

20 Days in Mariupol

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4319 critic reviews95 minutes

As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war’s atrocities.

#38 · Documentary · 2022

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Research onlyMetascore 91Metacritic selection #934 critic reviews113 minutes

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is an epic, emotional and interconnected story about internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis. [Neon]

#39 · Documentary · 2022

Mr. Bachmann and His Class

Research onlyMetascore 89Metacritic selection #1510 critic reviews217 minutes

In a German city with a complex history of both excluding and integrating foreigners, a charismatic elementary school teacher provides his pupils, who all come from different countries originally, with the key to feeling at home in Germany and becoming citizens of the world. [MUBI]

#40 · Documentary · 2022

Three Minutes: A Lengthening

Research onlyMetascore 88Metacritic selection #1618 critic reviews69 minutes

So long as we are watching history, history is not over. Three minutes of footage, shot by David Kurtz in 1938, are the only moving images remaining of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk, Poland before the Holocaust. Three Minutes: A Lengthening explores the human stories hidden within the celluloid. [Super LTD]

#41 · Documentary · 2022

Aftershock

Research onlyMetascore 87Metacritic selection #197 critic reviews86 minutes

Following the deaths of two young women due to childbirth complications, two bereaved families galvanize activists, birth-workers and physicians to reckon with one of the most pressing American crises today: the US maternal health crisis.

#42 · Documentary · 2022

A Night of Knowing Nothing

Research onlyMetascore 87Metacritic selection #219 critic reviews97 minutes

Through fictional love letters found in a cupboard at the Film and Television Institute of India, we meet L, a film student writing to her estranged lover while he is away. Gradually we’re immersed in the drastic changes taking place at the school and in the lives of young people across the country as they take to the streets to protest widespread discrimination.

#43 · Documentary · 2022

All That Breathes

Research onlyMetascore 87Metacritic selection #2219 critic reviews97 minutes

In one of the world’s most populated cities, two brothers — Nadeem and Saud — devote their lives to the quixotic effort of protecting the black kite, a majestic bird of prey essential to the ecosystem of New Delhi that has been falling from the sky at alarming rates. Amid environmental toxicity and social unrest, the ‘kite brothers’ spend day and night caring for the creatures in their makeshift avian basement hospital.

#44 · Documentary · 2022

Descendant

Research onlyMetascore 87Metacritic selection #2313 critic reviews109 minutes

Descendant tells the story of the Clotilda - the last known ship to smuggle stolen Africans to America - the unthinkable cover-up, and the impact of that crime on generations of descendants living in Africatown. Once the past is revealed, can the future be reclaimed?

#45 · Documentary · 2022

My Imaginary Country

Research onlyMetascore 86Metacritic selection #298 critic reviews83 minutes

One day, without warning, a revolution exploded. It was the event that master documentarian Patricio Guzmán had been waiting for all his life: a million and a half people in the streets of Santiago, Chile, demanding justice, education, health care, and a new constitution to replace the strident rules imposed on the country during the Pinochet military dictatorship. Urgent and inspired, My Imaginary Country features harrowing front-line protest footage and interviews with dynamic activist leaders and powerfully connects Chile's complex, bloody history to contemporary revolutionary social movements and the election of a new president. [Icarus Films]

#46 · Documentary · 2022

Fire of Love

Research onlyMetascore 84Metacritic selection #3639 critic reviews97 minutes

Katia and Maurice Krafft loved two things — each other and volcanoes. For two decades, the daring French volcanologist couple roamed the planet, chasing eruptions and documenting their discoveries. Ultimately, they lost their lives in a 1991 volcanic explosion, leaving a legacy that forever enriched our knowledge of the natural world. [Neon]

#47 · Documentary · 2022

The Territory

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4419 critic reviews83 minutes

The Territory provides an immersive on-the-ground look at the tireless fight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people against the encroaching deforestation brought by farmers and illegal settlers in the Brazilian Amazon. With awe-inspiring cinematography showcasing the titular landscape and richly textured sound design, the film takes audiences deep into the Uru-eu-wau-wau community and provides unprecedented access to the farmers and settlers illegally burning and clearing the protected Indigenous land. Partially shot by the Uru-eu-wau-wau people, the film relies on vérité footage captured over three years as the community risks their lives to set up their own news media team in the hopes of exposing the truth.

#48 · Documentary · 2022

Moonage Daydream

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4634 critic reviews135 minutes

A cinematic odyssey exploring David Bowie’s creative and musical journey.

#49 · Documentary · 2022

Is That Black Enough for You?!?

Research onlyMetascore 83Metacritic selection #4916 critic reviews135 minutes

Film critic Elvis Mitchell tracks the history of Black cinema, focused mainly on the '70s, with archival and new interviews with many of the key players from the era.

#50 · Documentary · 2022

Bad Axe

Research onlyMetascore 82Metacritic selection #5011 critic reviews100 minutes

A real-time portrait of 2020 unfolds as an Asian-American family in Trump’s rural America fights to keep their restaurant and American dream alive in the face of a pandemic, Neo-Nazis, and generational scars from the Cambodian Killing Fields.