Documentaryfilms continued to triumph in 2024, making up some of the most entertaining, mind-opening, and emotional movies of the year, just as they did in 2024. The documentary medium featured a staggeringly diverse range of perspectives, subjects, and styles in 2024, taking us around the world on an empathy roller coaster. In fact, there were just too many good documentaries to mention, so we have a list of honorary titles at the bottom which are all worthy of watching, and some will actually be added to this list in an update. From startlingly topical films about Palestine and Ukraine to intimate studies of interesting people, these are the best documentaries of 2024.
15The Last Journey
The Last Journey (2024)
After 40 years as a beloved French teacher at Köping, Lars Hammar retires, but becomes passive and apathetic to the dismay of his family. Looking to rekindle the spark in his life, his son Filip and his best friend Fredrik load Lars into a car to head on a road trip to France.
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One of the more personal documentaries of the year,The Last Journeyfollows a son’s attempt to snap his father out of a deep depression. Swedish filmmaker Filip Hammar has seen his father become a recluse since his retirement, barely leaving the house in over a decade, and decides to take him on an adventure, recreating a road trip to France they took when Filip was a teenager. The film is a vibrant, very funny, and beautifully scenic look at family, melancholy, and aging.The Last Journeyis not currently available.
It’s the year 2073, and the worst fears of modern life have been realized. Surveillance drones fill the burnt orange skies and militarized police room the wrecked streets, while survivors hide away underground, struggling to remember a free and hopeful existence. In this ingenious mixture of visionary science fiction and speculative nonfiction, Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia (Amy) transports us to a future foreshadowed by the terrifying realities of our present moment. Two-time Academy Award® nominee Samantha Morton (In America,Sweet and Lowdown,Minority Report) plays a survivor besieged by nightmare visions of the past–a past that happens to be our present, visualized through contemporary footage interconnecting today’s global crises of authoritarianism, unchecked big tech, inequality, and global climate change.2073is an urgent, unshakeable vision of a dystopic future that could very well be our own.
A hybrid piece of docufiction, Asif Kapadia takes a sharp turn away from his Oscar-winning biopics (Amy, Senna) and heads into political filmmaking with a sci-fi twist. The hook is brilliant, with the film ostensibly set in 2073 and following a lone woman (Samantha Morton) on a mission in a devastated, post-apocalyptic earth.
2073intertwines interviews and documentary footage into that fictional narrative, using a factual analysis of today’s world to predict our awful future. The film is a damning critique of authoritarian governments, studying everything from China and the Philippines to the far-right rise in America and Europe to extrapolate a disturbing prophecy of the future. The movie feels like a pure combination ofAsif Kapadia’s skillsand his righteous anger.2073was released in theaters on Aug 16, 2025.
13My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
Re-examine the vast filmography and legacy of one of the 20th century’s greatest filmmakers, Alfred Hitchcock, through a new lens: through the auteur’s own voice.
Mark Cousins has been a dedicated curator and chronicler of cinema for much of his life, helping us see film in new ways; he’s kind of like the John Berger of movies. Instead of one of his usualgigantic series likeThe Story of Film, Cousins here turns to just one filmmaker in the documentaryMy Name Is Alfred Hitchcock. Cousins incorporates his usual mastery of montage, unexpected but revealing analysis, and probing intellect to portray the life and career of a master auteur like we’ve never seen before.You can rent or buyMy Name Is Alfred Hitchcockon digital platforms through Dogwoof.
The 23 Best Documentary Films of 2023, Ranked
Documentaries were the only genre and medium that flourished fully in 2023. These are the best documentary movies of the year.
12Separated
Based on NBC Political and National Correspondent Jacob Soboroff’s book, Morris merges explosive interviews with whistleblowing officials and artful narrative vignettes tracing one migrant family’s plight. Together, they reveal that the cruelty at the heart of this policy was its very purpose.
Errol Morris returns to political filmmaking with an adaptation of investigative journalist Jacob Soboroff’s book about the 2016 Trump administration’s child separation policy. The film, of course, portrays the cruelty, bigotry, and political apathy of the policy in deeply emotional ways, but is also an informative breakdown of what was happening behind the scenes. Meticulously detailed and heartbreaking,Separatedis an important documentary to watch ahead of the next Trump presidency.you may rent or buySeparatedon digital platforms.
11The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who died at 25 from a degenerative muscular disease, was believed by his parents to have led a lonely life. However, after his passing, they discovered the strong connections he had formed with online friends worldwide, who reached out with messages of support and remembrance.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelindemands you bring your own tissues; this beautiful, small movie will move you deeply. It uses interviews and archival footage to explore the life of Mats Steen, a 25-year-old young man who passed away in 2014 following complications from Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). But his most passionate and perhaps ‘realest’ life was lived inside the virtual reality of the video gameWorld of Warcraft, where his physical disability didn’t matter. The film explores this hidden life by entering the world of the game in an emotionally and aesthetically immersive look at disability, technology, and one charming, wonderful young man.The Remarkable Life of Ibelinis streaming onNetflix.
10Tell Them You Love Me
Tell Them You Love Me
A documentary about an academic and professor who specializes in disability and facilitated communication who falls in love with a severely disabled man, and the legal trouble that follows.
Tell Them You Loveme is an outlier amid the usual forays into celebrity true crime, social media murders, and other flashy subjects of Netflix documentaries. That didn’t prevent it from becoming a major hit on the streaming platform, possibly because of its provocative, strange subject. A white progressive female academic attempts to help a disabled Black man with cerebral palsy communicate and gain control of his life, but she ends up having a sexual relationship with him. Can he consent? She thinks so. The family doesn’t.
The film brings up incredibly unsettling ethical issues that will leave you thinking long after viewing the film. It’s yet anothersuccess for producer Louis Theroux, and introduces director Nick August-Perna as an important documentarian to watch.You can streamTell Them You Love MeonNetflixor rent on digital platforms.
The 13 Best Documentaries for Free on YouTube
These great documentaries will shock, educate, and give you shivers, and you can watch them all for free on YouTube.
9The Bibi Files
The Bibi Files
The Bibi Files is an urgent journalistic exposé based on unseen leaked footage of police interrogations of the politician as well as his wife Sara and son Yair. The film explores the corruption cases that resulted in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictment on breach of trust, bribery, and fraud in 2019. Many Israelis believe that Netanyahu’s attempts to delay his trial are key to understanding his current policies regarding war and the return of Israeli hostages.
One of several fantastic documentaries in 2024 to probe the Israeli government (and its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank),The Bibi Filesexposes the corruption of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his family, and his administration, but it has a trick up its sleeve. Alexis Bloom’s film reveals leaked police footage of extremely tense and personal interrogations with Netanyahu, his wife, their son, and various co-conspirators in their orbit as part of the cases of bribery and fraud that have been brought against him.
The footage is revelatory, showing petty, indignant criminals who believe they’re above the law, and is combined with excellent contemporary interviews that shed light on how the current administration is destroying Israel.StreamThe Bibi Fileson JOLT here until June 22, 2025.
Documentarian Chris Wilcha faces a mid-life crisis head-on by attempting to save a beloved New Jersey record store. “Flipside” chronicles his efforts to rejuvenate the store while reflecting on his career, which includes notable successes and numerous unfinished projects. As he navigates the ups and downs of this venture, Wilcha offers a humorous yet deeply moving exploration of lost opportunities and renewed ambitions.
Like the brilliant filmCameraperson,Flipsidecollects a variety of footage from a filmmaker that was never included in their previous work, a kind of ‘odds and ends’ piece that works because the artist ties everything together beautifully.Flipsideis many things — a brilliant meditation on the intersection of art, commerce, and work; a charming look at various eccentrics; a filmmaker’s autobiography; and a look at how we hold onto things.
Flipsidedirector Chris Wilcha combines a variety of stalled or failed projects in a look at how he went from being a rebel documentarian to directing commercials for banks and insurance companies. Along the way, we watch his kids grow older, the subjects of his documentaries die, and him returning again and again to his first place of employment, a record store.Flipside, in its messy, artistic glory, somehow becomes one of the best documentaries about art and capitalism.StreamFlipsideon Prime Video through Freevee or rent or buy on digital platforms.
After three of their four children are diagnosed with an incurable eye condition, a Montreal family embarks on an unforgettable journey across the globe. As the children face impending blindness, their parents show them the world’s most beautiful sights, creating lasting memories and embracing life’s fleeting moments.
Oh boy, was this a tear-jerker. There’s a purity, kindness, and wholesomeness toBlink(which is why it’s probably the only film in this list to be on Disney+) that will nourish your soul despite the aching sadness at its core. The film follows a large family as the parents reckon with the impending blindness of their children due to a rare genetic disorder. They take a bold move, deciding to travel the world and show their kids the diverse beauty of the planet before they go blind.
As such,Blinkis a gorgeous travelogue through Oman, Egypt, Nepal, Ecuador, Thailand, and many other locations which are masterfully filmed. At the heart ofBlink, though, is the joy of a family and the incredible love of two proud parents.StreamBlinkon Disney+ or Hulu.
Youth (Spring, Hard Times, Homecoming)
The film focuses on a group of young textile workers in Zhili, a town in the Wuxing District of Huzhou, located 150 kilometres outside of Shanghai. Every year, young people leave their rural villages and migrate to the manufacturing town. The workers are in their twenties, some in their thirties. They sleep upstairs, in dormitories, because they come from far away, sometimes over 2,000 kilometres. Their dialects come from different regions. They work tirelessly with the hope of one day having children, buying a house or starting their own business. Friendships and romances fold and unfold as the seasons pass. Geographical dispersion, financial instability, and economic and family pressures ravish their innocence and youth. Wang Bing will spend a year with them in Zhili: at work, at home, on the Internet, every day of their professional, romantic relationships and friendships.
Youthis a monumental achievement from filmmaker Wang Bing, who lived in the Chinese town of Zhili with low-wage textile workers to document their lives and experiences. Initially, his budget was set to cover six months; he stretched it to six years, using six cinematographers (filming in shifts, three at a time) to follow dozens of people as they do seasonal work. It’s actually a trilogy of films (Spring, Hard Times,andHomecoming), running nearly 10 hours in total, and rewards a great amount of patience. The way thatYouthuses time itself as a cinematic tool is mesmerizing, providing a total immersion into the grim lives of young workers in the midst of post-industrial globalization.You can rent or buyYouth (Spring)on digital platforms.
