RankedDocumentaries

The Best Documentaries of the 21st Century, Ranked

Ranked on what each film shows that nothing else could, how honest it is about its own methods, and whether it still hits years later. Feature-length theatrical documentaries released since 2000 only, no docuseries. Oscar results are noted but did not set the order: two of the top three never won one. For viewers who want the films other documentarians talk about.

A community-ranked list on FindBest — currently in the creator's order; no member votes yet. Votes change the order: when members vote, the list is ordered by their votes. How ranking works.

MMarie-Claude Tremblay

13 entriesAdded Oct 17, 2026

The podium

— the creator's order — no votes yet

13 entries

Sort

The Act of Killing

Joshua Oppenheimer invited men who led death squads in Indonesia's 1965-66 killings to re-enact their crimes in the film genres they love, from gangster movies to musicals. The 2012 result is grotesque, surreal and morally unlike any documentary before it. Nominated for the Oscar; the companion film The Look of Silence (2014) is told from a victim's family.

4 pros · 2 cons

Stories We Tell

Sarah Polley investigates her own family: her late mother, the man who raised her, and a rumour about who her real father is. The 2012 NFB co-production keeps changing what you think you are watching, and its handling of memory and footage is the reason it is taught in film schools. Not nominated for the Oscar, which says more about the Oscars.

4 pros · 2 cons

Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog built this 2005 film from Timothy Treadwell's own footage of thirteen summers living among Alaskan grizzly bears, until a bear killed him and his girlfriend in 2003. Herzog openly argues with his subject in voice-over. A portrait of obsession, and of nature that does not care about us, that has never been bettered.

4 pros · 2 cons

20 Days in Mariupol

Mstyslav Chernov and an AP team were the last international journalists in Mariupol as Russian forces besieged it in 2022. Their 2023 film includes the maternity-hospital bombing footage the world saw on the news, and the days around it. It won the Oscar for best documentary feature, and the AP's coverage won a Pulitzer.

4 pros · 2 cons

Man on Wire

In 1974 Philippe Petit walked a wire between the Twin Towers for 45 minutes. James Marsh's 2008 film tells the planning and execution like a heist movie, with re-enactments, the original crew and still photos of the walk itself. It won the Oscar for best documentary feature. Joyful, tense and, without ever saying so, a love letter to the towers.

4 pros · 2 cons

Amy

Asif Kapadia builds Amy Winehouse's story almost entirely from home video, phone footage and audio interviews, with her lyrics on screen as she sings them. The 2015 film is unsparing about the people and media around her. It won the Oscar for best documentary feature; her father publicly criticised how he was portrayed.

4 pros · 2 cons

Navalny

Toronto-born director Daniel Roher was filming Alexei Navalny in Germany as he recovered from his 2020 poisoning, and captured the call in which Navalny tricks one of his would-be assassins into describing the operation. The 2022 film won the Oscar for best documentary feature. Navalny died in a Russian prison in February 2024.

4 pros · 2 cons

Flee

Jonas Poher Rasmussen's 2021 film tells a friend's escape from Afghanistan as a child, years as an undocumented teen and life in Denmark as a gay man, mostly in animation to protect his identity. It was the first film nominated for the Oscars for documentary, international feature and animated feature in the same year.

4 pros · 2 cons

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

In 1969 the Harlem Cultural Festival drew huge crowds to Mount Morris Park for Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone and more. The footage sat in a basement for about fifty years. Questlove's 2021 directorial debut restores it and sets it in the politics of Harlem that summer. Oscar for best documentary feature.

4 pros · 2 cons

Searching for Sugar Man

Two South African fans set out to learn what happened to Rodriguez, a Detroit singer-songwriter who flopped in America but became bigger than the Rolling Stones in apartheid-era South Africa. Malik Bendjelloul's 2012 film won the Oscar. It also leaves out that Rodriguez had a following in Australia, which reshapes the "nobody knew" premise.

4 pros · 2 cons

Free Solo

Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi follow Alex Honnold as he prepares to climb El Capitan's 900-metre Freerider route with no rope, which he did in 2017. The 2018 film is just as interested in the crew's fear of filming a friend's death as in the climb. Oscar for best documentary feature. See it on the biggest screen you can.

4 pros · 2 cons

The Fog of War

Errol Morris interviews Robert McNamara, U.S. defense secretary through much of the Vietnam War, organised around eleven "lessons" from his life, from the firebombing of Tokyo to the Cuban missile crisis. Morris's Interrotron lets McNamara look straight at you. The 2003 film won the Oscar and is still the model for the long-form power interview.

4 pros · 2 cons

Fire of Love

Katia and Maurice Krafft, French volcanologists, filmed eruptions for two decades until both died at Japan's Mount Unzen in 1991. Sara Dosa's 2022 film assembles their footage into a love story narrated by Miranda July. Oscar-nominated. The images of lava and ash are as beautiful as anything in fiction film.

4 pros · 2 cons

Missing something?

Suggest an entry. The FindBest editors check every suggestion against a source before it goes on the list, and you will see what happened to it here.

Discussions

No discussions on this list yet.

Related lists· more in Documentaries

See all in Documentaries