Best war & documentary shows streaming, ranked.
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Prime VideoMan on Wire
2008 · Movie · 1h 34mDocumentary · Biography · Crime
1 OscarA look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, "the artistic crime of the century".
Prime Video - #1095#1095
Prime VideoDeliver Us from Evil
2006 · Movie · 1h 41mDocumentary · Crime
Documentary about Father Oliver O'Grady, a Catholic priest who was relocated to various parishes around the United States during the 1970s in an attempt by the Catholic Church to cover up his rape of dozens of children.
Prime Video - #1595#1595
NetflixDavid Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
2020 · Movie · 1h 23mDocumentary · Biography
3 EmmysThe story of life on our planet by the man who has seen more of the natural world than any other. In more than 90 years, Attenborough has visited every continent on the globe, exploring the wild places of our planet and documenting the living world in all its variety and wonder. Addressing the biggest challenges facing life on our planet, the film offers a powerful message of hope for future generations.
Netflix - #2393#2393
Prime VideoGleason
2016 · Movie · 1h 50mDocumentary · Biography
At the age of 34, former New Orleans Saints defensive back Steve Gleason was diagnosed with ALS and given a life expectancy of two to five years. Weeks later, Gleason found out his wife, Michel, was expecting their first child. A video journal that began as a gift for his unborn son expands to chronicle Steve’s determination to get his relationships in order, build a foundation to provide other ALS patients with purpose, and adapt to his declining physical condition—utilizing medical technologies that offer the means to live as fully as possible.
Prime Video - #2493#2493
Prime VideoThe Endless Summer
1966 · Movie · 1h 35mDocumentary · Sport
The crown jewel to ten years of Bruce Brown surfing documentaries. Brown follows two young surfers around the world in search of the perfect wave, and ends up finding quite a few in addition to some colorful local characters.
Prime Video - #2593#2593
NetflixThe Elephant Whisperers
2022 · Movie · Tamil · 41mDocumentary
1 OscarBomman and Bellie, a couple in South India, devote their lives to caring for an orphaned baby elephant named Raghu, forging a family like no other that tests the barrier between the human and the animal world.
Netflix - #3192#3192
Prime Video20 Feet from Stardom
2013 · Movie · 1h 31mDocumentary · Biography · History
1 OscarBackup singers live in a world that lies just beyond the spotlight. Their voices bring harmony to the biggest bands in popular music, but we've had no idea who these singers are or what lives they lead, until now.
Prime Video - #3292#3292
Prime VideoZ Channel: A Magnificent Obsession
2004 · Movie · 2h 2mDocumentary · Biography · History
The story of Z Channel, one of the first U.S. pay cable stations and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974 in LA, their eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.
Prime Video - #3592#3592
Prime VideoLittle Dieter Needs to Fly
1997 · Movie · 1h 20mDocumentary · Biography · Drama
German-American Dieter Dengler discusses his service as a U.S. naval pilot in the Vietnam War. Dengler also revisits the sites of his capture and eventual escape from the hands of the Viet Cong, recreating many events for the camera.
Prime Video - #3892#3892
Prime VideoLost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau
2014 · Movie · 1h 37mDocumentary · Action
A behind the scenes chronicle of how clash of vision, bad creative decisions, lack of interest and really bad weather plagued the disastrous production of the infamous The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996).
Prime Video - #4291#4291
NetflixJim Gaffigan: Obsessed
2014 · Movie · 1hDocumentary · Comedy
Jim Gaffigan bursts back on the scene with this eagerly anticipated fourth comedy special. Dubbed the "King of Clean Comedy" by The Wall Street Journal, Jim's obsession with all things food comes to fruition on "Obsessed" as he ta...
Netflix - #4391#4391
Prime VideoThe Russian Five
2018 · Movie · 1h 42mDocumentary · Sport
In the late 1980s, the Detroit Red Wings worked to finally break their decades long Stanley Cup drought by extracting players from the Soviet Union, and in the process, changed the way North American hockey is played.
Prime Video - #5191#5191
Prime VideoThe Babushkas of Chernobyl
2015 · Movie · 1h 10mDocumentary
An affectionate portrait of a group of women who, after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and evacuation, returned to the exclusion zone surrounding the nuclear power plant and have resided there - semi-officially, for years.
Prime Video - #6490#6490
Prime VideoStreet Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street
2021 · Movie · 1h 47mDocumentary · Family · History
Take a stroll down Sesame Street and witness the birth of the most impactful children's series in TV history. From the iconic furry characters to the songs you know by heart, learn how a gang of visionary creators changed our world.
Prime Video - #6690#6690
Prime VideoHot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles
2023 · Movie · 1h 44mDocumentary
The incredible true story of early childhood teachers and friends, The Wiggles, who rock 'n' rolled their way into the hearts of millions around the globe in one of the greatest entertainment stories of all time.
Prime Video - #7090#7090
Prime VideoTo Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story
2017 · Movie · 1h 48mDocumentary · Biography
To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story is the harrowing story of a stuntman overcoming a dehumanizing childhood filled with torment and bullying in Sparks, Nevada. After surviving a near-death burn accident, he worked his way up through Hollywood, leading to his ultimate rise as Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th series and making countless moviegoers forever terrified of hockey masks and summer camp. Featuring interviews with cinema legends, including Bruce Campbell (Ash vs. Evil Dead), Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger), and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira: Mistress of the Dark), To Hell and Back peels off the mask of Kane Hodder, cinema's most prolific killer, in a gut-wrenching, but inspiring, documentary. After decades of watching Kane Hodder on screen, get ready to meet the man behind the mask in To Hell and Back - an uniquely human story about one of cinema's most vicious monsters.
Prime Video - #7590#7590
Prime VideoWhat Lies Upstream
2017 · Movie · 1h 25mDocumentary · Mystery
In this scandalous political thriller, an investigation into a chemical spill spirals into an indictment of the entire system meant to protect drinking water, revealing cover-ups at the highest levels of government.
Prime Video - #7890#7890
NetflixChef's Table
2015–2024 · Series · 7 seasonsDocumentary · Biography
Chef's Table goes inside the lives and kitchens of six of the world's most renowned international chefs. Each episode focuses on a single chef and their unique look at their lives, talents and passion from their piece of culinary ...
Netflix - #7990#7990
NetflixCity of Joy
2016 · Movie · 1h 14mDocumentary · Crime · Drama
This film follows the first class of students at a remarkable leadership center in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a region often referred to as "the worst place in the world to be a woman." These women have been through...
Netflix - #8190#8190
HuluPeacockPrime VideoEddie Izzard: Dress to Kill
1999 · Movie · 1h 55mDocumentary · Comedy
2 EmmysExecutive transvestite Eddie Izzard takes his show to San Francisco to give a brief history of pagan and Christian religions, the building of Stonehenge, the birth of the Church of England ...
HuluPeacockPrime Video - #8489#8489
Prime VideoCalifornia Typewriter
2017 · Movie · 1h 43mDocumentary
California Typewriter is a story about people whose lives are connected by typewriters. The film is a meditation on creativity and technology featuring Tom Hanks, John Mayer, Sam Shepard, David McCullough and others.
Prime Video - #8789#8789
Prime VideoDirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey
2017 · Movie · 1h 36mDocumentary · Action · Biography
Fred Beckey is the legendary American "Dirtbag" mountaineer whose name is spoken in hushed tones around campfires. This rebel climber's pioneering ascents and lifestyle form an iconic legacy that continues to inspire generations.
Prime Video - #9589#9589
Netflix1917
2019 · Movie · 1h 59mWar · Action · Drama
3 OscarsApril 6th, 1917. As an infantry battalion assembles to wage war deep in enemy territory, two soldiers are assigned to race against time and deliver a message that will stop 1,600 men from walking straight into a deadly trap.
Netflix - #9689#9689
Prime VideoTickled
2016 · Movie · 1h 32mDocumentary · Crime · Mystery
Journalist David Farrier stumbles upon a mysterious tickling competition online. As he delves deeper he comes up against fierce resistance, but that doesn't stop him getting to the bottom of a story stranger than fiction.
Prime Video - #10089#10089
Prime VideoAll In: The Fight for Democracy
2020 · Movie · 1h 42mDocumentary
The documentary takes a look at the history, and current activism against voter suppression; barriers to voting that most people don't even know is a threat to their basic rights as citizens of the United States.
Prime Video - #10588#10588
Prime VideoThe Fabulous Allan Carr
2017 · Movie · 1h 30mDocumentary · Biography
Allan Carr built his bombastic reputation producing the hit movie GREASE and Broadway sensation LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, but it all came crashing down after he conceived the notorious 1989 Academy Awards.
Prime Video - #10688#10688
Prime VideoLucy and Desi
2022 · Movie · 1h 43mDocumentary · Biography · Comedy
2 EmmysThis film explores the rise of comedy icon Lucille Ball, her relationship with Desi Arnaz, and how their groundbreaking sitcom "I Love Lucy" forever changed Hollywood, cementing her legacy long after her death in 1989.
Prime Video - #10888#10888
NetflixWinter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom
2015 · Movie · 1h 42mDocumentary · History
A documentary on the unrest in Ukraine during 2013 and 2014, as student demonstrations supporting European integration grew into a violent revolution calling for the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich.
Netflix - #10988#10988
Prime VideoFiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
2019 · Movie · 1h 37mDocumentary
The origin story behind one of Broadway's most beloved musicals, Fiddler on The Roof, and its creative roots in early 1960s New York, when "tradition" was on the wane as gender roles, sexuality, race relations and religion were ev...
Prime Video - #11188#11188
Prime VideoThe Apology
2016 · Movie · 1h 44mDocumentary
The Apology explores the lives of former "comfort women", the more than 200,000 girls forced into sexual slavery during World War II. Today, they fight for reconciliation and justice as they struggle to make peace with the past.
Prime Video - #11988#11988
Prime VideoOn Her Shoulders
2018 · Movie · 1h 35mDocumentary · Biography
Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old Yazidi, survived genocide and sexual slavery committed by ISIS. Repeating her story to the world, this ordinary girl finds herself thrust onto the international stage as the voice of her people.
Prime Video - #12288#12288
Prime VideoSilicon Cowboys
2016 · Movie · 1h 17mDocumentary · History
Three friends dream up the Compaq portable computer at a Texas diner in 1981, and soon find themselves battling mighty IBM for PC supremacy. Their improbable journey altered the future of computing and shaped the world we now know.
Prime Video - #13187#13187
Prime VideoGeorge Carlin: It's Bad for Ya!
2008 · Movie · 1h 10mDocumentary · Comedy
It's Bad For Ya, Carlin's Emmy-nominated 14th and final HBO special from March of 2008 features Carlin's noted irreverent and unapologetic observations on topics ranging from death, religion, bureaucracy, patriotism, overprotected...
Prime Video - #13487#13487
Prime VideoSwamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
2025 · Movie · 1h 35mDocumentary · Comedy
Cult musician Swamp Dogg and housemates Moogstar and Guitar Shorty have turned their suburban LA home into an artistic haven. They journey through the turbulent music business, forming a special friendship transcending eras.
Prime Video - #13587#13587
Prime VideoFragments of Paradise
2022 · Movie · 1h 38mDocumentary
Jonas Mekas chronicled life via diary films over 70+ years, from his 1949 NYC arrival until 2019. The Lithuanian exile shaped avant-garde cinema while building indie film institutions. "Fragments of Paradise" delves into his archives
Prime Video - #14187#14187
Prime VideoJoe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
2007 · Movie · 2h 4mDocumentary · Biography
As the front man of the Clash from 1977, Joe Strummer changed people's lives forever. Four years after his death, his influence reaches out around the world, more strongly now than ever before.
Prime Video - #14287#14287
NetflixCamp Confidential: America's Secret Nazis
2021 · Movie · 36mDocumentary · Animation
At the height of WWII, a group of young Jewish refugees are sent to a secret POW camp near Washington, D.C. The recent refugees soon discover that the prisoners are no other than Hitler's top scientists.
Netflix - #14387#14387
Prime VideoThis Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth
2019 · Movie · 1h 46mDocumentary · Action · Biography
The groundbreaking and often game-changing reporting of legendary foreign correspondent and author Robert Fisk is profiled in the latest from acclaimed documentarian Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze).
Prime Video - #14887#14887
Prime VideoAmerican: An Odyssey to 1947
2022 · Movie · 1h 42mDocumentary
In the early 1930s, Orson Welles ascends to unprecedented stardom while President Franklin Delano Roosevelt navigates a nation in crisis. As WWII begins, an American boy visits abroad, and an American soldier enlists in the army.
Prime Video - #14987#14987
Prime VideoIt's Quieter in the Twilight
2022 · Movie · 1h 23mDocumentary
In an unremarkable office space, a select group of aging engineers find themselves at the leading edge of discovery. Fighting outdated technology and time, Voyager's flight-team pursues humankind's greatest exploration.
Prime Video - #15387#15387
Prime VideoRelative
2022 · Movie · 1h 12mDocumentary
A filmmaker unearths a pervasive history of multigenerational trauma in her Italian-American family. As decades of secrets, home movies, and long-avoided conversations surface, a family once bound by tradition forges a new path forward.
Prime Video - #15487#15487
NetflixStay on Board: The Leo Baker Story
2022 · Movie · 1h 12mDocumentary
Follows celebrated competitive skating icon Leo Baker as they try to make space for themselves in the gendered world of pro sports and build a more inclusive skate culture, which leads them to doing the punkest thing imaginable.
Netflix - #15987#15987
NetflixTurning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War
2024– · Series · 1 seasonDocumentary
The series chronicles the creation of the atomic bomb and the spread of nuclear arms over the following decades. It continues past the dissolution of the Soviet Union to Vladimir Putin's ascent and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Netflix - #16087#16087
Prime VideoSlay the Dragon
2019 · Movie · 1h 41mDocumentary
It influences elections and sways outcomes-gerrymandering has become a hot-button political topic and symbol for everything broken about the American electoral process. But there are those on the front lines fighting to change the...
Prime Video - #16187#16187
Prime VideoAt the Fork
2016 · Movie · 1h 29mDocumentary
Filmmaker and omnivore John Papola, together with his vegetarian wife Lisa, offer up a timely and refreshingly unbiased look at how farm animals are raised for our consumption. With unprecedented access to large-scale conventional farms, Papola asks the tough questions behind every hamburger, glass of milk and baby-back rib. What he discovers are not heartless industrialists, but America's farmers - real people who, along with him, are grappling with the moral dimensions of farming animals for food.
Prime Video - #16587#16587
Prime VideoCitizen K
2019 · Movie · Russian · 2h 6mDocumentary
The strange case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, who rocketed to prosperity and prominence in the 1990s, served a decade in prison, and became an unlikely martyr for the anti-Putin movement.
Prime Video - #16887#16887
Prime VideoExposing Muybridge
2021 · Movie · 1h 28mDocumentary · Biography · History
The story of trailblazing 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who changed the world with his camera. Artful, resilient, selfish, naive, eccentric, deceitful--Muybridge is a complicated, imperfect man and his story drips with ambition and success, loss and betrayal, near death experiences and even murder. "The machine cannot lie," Stanford declared of Muybridge's pioneering motion images. But what about the photographer?
Prime Video - #17387#17387
Prime VideoGabby Giffords Won't Back Down
2022 · Movie · 1h 38mDocumentary · Biography · Drama
Looking at the former congresswoman's courage and perseverance in the aftermath of the 2011 assassination attempt that left her partially paralyzed and with a language impairment, aphasia.
Prime Video - #17787#17787
Prime VideoGeorge Carlin: You Are All Diseased
1999 · Movie · 1h 5mDocumentary · Comedy
Legendary comic Carlin comes back to the Beacon theater to angrily rant about airport security, germs, cigars, angels, children and parents, men, names, religion, god, advertising, Bill Jeff and minorities.
Prime Video - #18486#18486
Prime VideoUnited We Fan
2018 · Movie · 1h 37mDocumentary
Fans, stars, creators, and more come together to explore the dynamic history and evolution of save-our-show television fan campaigns from the letter-writing and product mail-in campaigns of yesterday to the social media and crowdf...
Prime Video - #18786#18786
Prime VideoHondros
2018 · Movie · 1h 30mDocumentary · Biography · War
HONDROS follows the life and career of famous war photographer Chris Hondros by exploring the poignant and often surprising stories behind this award-winning photojournalist's best-known photos. Driven by a commitment to bear witn...
Prime Video - #19086#19086
NetflixLenox Hill
2020– · Series · 1 seasonDocumentary · Biography
An intimate look at the lives of four doctors - two brain surgeons, an emergency room physician, and a Chief Resident OBGYN - as they navigate the highs and lows of working at the renowned Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
Netflix - #19486#19486
NetflixLead Me Home
2021 · Movie · 39mDocumentary
More than 500,000 people are homeless in the US. A few of these real-life stories give the audience a rare, in-depth look at the scale, scope, and diversity of the problem while questioning uninformed attitudes and outmoded policies.
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