15 Documentaries That Will Keep You on the Edge of Your Seat

At a time when we’re being asked to stay indoors, for the good of ourselves and others, documentaries offer a welcome distraction. Here we’ve selected a list of our recent favourites – featuring hidden subcultures, satanic cults, trophy wives, teen rich-kids and stranger-than-fiction stories that are sure to have you gripped.

Docs to lift you out of this current reality...

1. Honeyland, 2019: In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze tends to her bedridden mother, her cats, dogs and countless swarms of wild bees, nestled precariously in handmade hives embedded deep in the mountainside. One of the region’s last wild beekeepers, Honeyland documents the change brought to Hatidze’s peaceful kingdom, as serenades and secret chants give way to roaring engines, seven shrieking children and 150 cows that risk destroying her way of life forever. It’s a vivid, visually stunning and emotionally rich story about one woman’s struggle for survival in a world which prioritises industry over ecological harmony.
2. Minding the Gap, 2018: Winning both the Doc/Fest Audience and Newcomer awards, this debut feature is a coming-of-age documentary from Bing Liu. Told through the eyes of the director and two of his close friends, the film looks at life in the skating community, beautifully capturing the street scenes, financial pressures, family problems and struggles its central protagonists face as they’re growing up.
3. Free Solo, 2018: This film is a stunning, intimate and unflinching portrait of the free soloist climber Alex Honnold, as he prepares to achieve his lifelong dream: climbing the face of the 3,000-foot El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without a rope. The film effortlessly straddles edge-of-your-seat thriller and inspiring portrait as it challenges our understanding of human physical and mental potential.

Docs that’ll broaden your knowledge of queer culture... 

1. Studio 54, 2018: The epicentre of 70s hedonism, Studio 54 became a monumental magnet for beautiful stars, casual sex, and mounds of cocaine. A den of excess that defined its own rules by welcoming the ostracised, the queer, and the fabulous, the nightclub enshrined itself as an enduring and contradictory symbol of openness and exclusivity. Chronicling the rise and fall of the most talked-about club in history, Matt Tyrnauer’s Studio 54 tells the story of two best friends from Brooklyn, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, who conquered New York City only to have it crumble before their eyes.
2. Seahorse, 2019: Made with unprecedented access and a uniquely collaborative sensibility, Seahorse is an audacious story about what it is that makes us who we are. When Freddy McConnell, aged 30, decides to conceive, carry and deliver his own child as a transgender gay man, he crashes head-to-head with a society that seems intent on defining ‘family’ through a cis-gender, heterosexual lens. Read Another Man’s interview with McConnell here.
3. Kiki, 2016: Nearly three decades since Paris Is Burning first debuted to widespread critical acclaim, Kiki explores New York’s modern-day ballroom scene – only this time, the story is told from the perspective of the community itself. Following members of the scene as they prepare for and perform at balls in and around West Village’s Christopher Street Pier, the documentary is as much a discussion of the ball’s social function as an alternative family structure, as it is a celebration of the creativity and energy of queer culture.

Docs that’ll leave your jaw on the floor...

1. Tickled, 2016: Truly one of the most bizarre and brilliant documentaries I’ve ever seen. Four years after first watching it, I’m still desperately recommending it to everyone who’s ever unsure of what to watch. What begins as a light-hearted investigation into “competitive endurance tickling” ends up getting lost down a dark and disturbing wormhole of a story. It’s truly astounding.
2. The Amazing Johnathan Documentary, 2019: Much like Tim Wardle’s mind-bending Three Identical Strangers, it’s hard to describe The Amazing Johnathan Documentary without accidentally revealing the hidden feints, twists and turns that shape this gloriously original documentary. Captivating, surreal and wickedly dry, what begins as fairly standard documentary fare spirals into a quick-witted and highly meta commentary on the process of documentary making itself. Read Another Man’s interview with director Ben Berman here.
3. Hail Satan?, 2019: At six years old, The Satanic Temple is possibly one of the most colourful and controversial religious movements in US history. Chronicling the extraordinary rise of a religious oddity that celebrates ‘the other’, Hail Satan? playfully probes the hypocrisy of America’s attitudes towards religious liberty.

Docs that’ll bring some big-picture perspective...

1. For Sama, 2019: Quite simply For Sama is one of the most powerful, moving and necessary pieces of filmmaking of the last decade. Directed by Emmy award-winning filmmakers Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts, the doc is equal parts intimate and epic in the way it captures one woman’s experience of war. A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, For Sama tells the story of Al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth, while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Read our interview with Al-Kateab here.
2. Generation Wealth, 2018: Sundance and Emmy award-winning filmmaker and photographer Lauren Greenfield has spent the last 25 years documenting the impact of consumerism on youth, gender, body image and our wider social mores. In Generation Wealth she examines extremes of affluence and addiction through a series of intimate portraits filmed around the world. From disgraced Wall Street financiers to Chinese etiquette coaches, Russian trophy wives to LA teenagers, the film is a by turns a rigorous historical essay, entertaining exposé and deeply personal journey which bears witness to the human cost of capitalism.
3. Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, 2018: A cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive re-engineering of the planet, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky spent more than four years making Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. Following an international body of scientists, the film visits China’s vast labyrinth of concrete seawalls, the psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s Ural Mountains and the surreal lithium evaporation ponds in the Atacama desert to catalogue the profound and lasting changes we’ve made to the Earth.

Docs that’ll have you glued to your seat...

1. Casting JonBenet, 2017: This intelligent and original true-crime documentary holds a mirror up to the genre, exposing viewers’ voyeurism by casting actors who are obsessed with the gory details of the crime they’re helping to re-enact on screen. Blending fictionalised retelling with real-world case details and archive footage, Casting JonBenet is a sly and stylised exploration of one of America’s most sensational child-murder cases, the unsolved death of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.
2. The Brink, 2019: Directed by Alison Klayman, the filmmaker behind the Emmy-nominated Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and Netflix’s remarkable Take Your Pills, The Brink pulls back the curtain on the far-right as it follows Steve Bannon on a tour of toxicity through Europe and the US. A deft and vigilant fly-on-the-wall record of Bannon’s populist playbook, The Brink is a must-watch triumph that’s as enlightening as it is enraging.
3. Call Her Ganda, 2018: When 26-year-old Filipina transgender woman and alleged sex worker, Jennifer Laude, is found dead with her head plunged into a motel room toilet, the perpetrator is quickly identified as 19-year-old US marine Joseph Scott Pemberton. A military recruit in an unfamiliar land, Pemberton was on “liberty leave” when he solicited Jennifer at a disco. On discovering that Jennifer was transgender, he brutally murdered her, leaving her to be found by her friend and the motel receptionist. A modern David and Goliath story, Call Her Ganda follows a cast of willful women as they take on some of the most powerful institutions in the world. It’s a visually daring and profoundly humanistic geopolitical investigative exposé.