Documentaries, Ranked

Roger Ebert named it the best film of the 1990s, and its shocking Oscar snub for Best Documentary directly forced the Academy to overhaul its nomination rules.

Joshua Oppenheimer got Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their 1965 killings as movie scenes; it earned an Oscar nomination with Werner Herzog and Errol Morris as executive producers.

The 2006 BBC series narrated by David Attenborough was the first nature documentary series filmed in high definition and won multiple Emmy Awards for its groundbreaking cinematography.

James Marsh's account of Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Chronicling Alex Honnold's ropeless climb of Yosemite's 3,000-foot El Capitan, it won the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Morgan Neville's portrait of Mister Rogers became the highest-grossing biographical documentary in the U.S. at the time of its 2018 release.

Ava DuVernay's essay on mass incarceration and the 13th Amendment earned an Oscar nomination and won an Emmy for Outstanding Documentary.

The ESPN/Netflix series on Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls drew record ratings and won the Emmy for Outstanding Documentary Series.

Werner Herzog's film assembles the footage of Timothy Treadwell, who lived among Alaskan grizzlies until he and his girlfriend were killed and eaten by one in 2003.

Moore's examination of American gun culture won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, though critics have flagged its selective editing.

Malik Bendjelloul's film about forgotten musician Rodriguez, a star in South Africa without his knowledge, won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Asif Kapadia built the film almost entirely from archival footage of Amy Winehouse and won the 2016 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Its focus on captive killer whale Tilikum triggered the 'Blackfish effect,' a documented drop in SeaWorld attendance that pushed the company to end its orca-breeding program.

Luc Jacquet's chronicle of emperor penguins' breeding trek won the 2006 Academy Award and became one of the highest-grossing documentaries ever.

Morgan Spurlock's month-long fast-food stunt earned an Oscar nomination, but its findings were later undercut when Spurlock admitted to long-hidden habits that skewed the results.

The film built around Al Gore's climate lecture won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and helped push global warming into mainstream debate.

Netflix's Joe Exotic saga became a pandemic-era phenomenon in 2020 but drew heavy criticism for prioritizing lurid personalities over its animal-welfare subject.

The Netflix series on Steven Avery was a sensation, but the prosecutor and jurors accused it of omitting key evidence to build a misleadingly sympathetic case.

The 2017 pro-vegan film was widely rebuked by nutrition experts and fact-checkers for misrepresenting studies and drawing alarmist conclusions unsupported by the research it cited.

Directed by discredited former physician Andrew Wakefield, it pushes the thoroughly debunked vaccine-autism link and was pulled from the Tribeca Film Festival amid an outcry.