The 15 Best Documentaries on Netflix Right Now

I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

Raoul Peck’s portrait of author and intellectual James Baldwin is essential viewing. On its surface, it’s a film about the complex life of one of our greatest thinkers, Black or otherwise. On another, its footage from the 1960s and ’70s feels just as timely in 2021. So much has changed; so little has changed. Narrated by an understated Samuel L. Jackson, the film serves up clips of the debonair Baldwin delivering withering critiques and witty bon mots. In one of the most poignant passages, the author writes: “The story of the Negro in America is the story of America. ... It is not a pretty story.” It’s a pithy line, poetic even. But it also stings and leaves a welt.

Watch it: I Am Not Your Negro

Inventing David Geffen (2012)

In the 1970s, David Geffen became the ultimate showbiz power broker built on equal parts charisma, smarts and threat-barking bluster. The son of Brooklyn Jewish immigrants who quickly rose up the entertainment ladder, Geffen’s story parallels the rise of the counterculture: first as a hip, young super agent (he helped to shape the careers of Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, and Crosby, Stills and Nash); then a manager and record label owner; and finally a movie studio head with DreamWorks. If you were his friend, no one was more in your camp; if you were his enemy, god help you. This bio-doc covers the entire sweep of Geffen’s career, warts and all, leaving the impression that when it comes to Hollywood rainmakers, for better or worse they just don’t make them like this anymore.

Watch it: Inventing David Geffen

The Last Dance (2020)

Even if you don’t agree that Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player of all time (and if so, are you nuts?), this 10-part insider docuseries on His Airness’s final season with the Chicago Bulls is a sports junkie’s dream. During their ’90s run when they won six NBA titles, the Bulls cut their way through the rest of the league like a hot knife through butter. Jordan is on hand, as are his teammates, to look back on the trials they faced during their valedictory lap and provide a unique glimpse at what drove the legend on and off the court. I know that 10 episodes sounds like a substantial time commitment, but this one breezes by as quickly as the final seconds of overtime.

Watch it: The Last Dance

Life in Color (2021)

Netflix has several great nature documentaries on its menu, but the best are the ones narrated by the dulcet British tones of David Attenborough. Life in Color is his most recent survey of the natural world, and it’s a three-part series that hopscotches across the planet investigating how animals blend in with their surroundings for survival. As with most Attenborough shows, a big part of the experience is just being transported by his gentle voice and informative sense of wonder. But here we also get to see the world the way that the animals themselves see it, which, in turn, makes us really see them as if for the first time.

Watch it: Life in Color

Misha and the Wolves (2021)

When she was 7 years old, a Holocaust survivor named Misha Defonseca walked thousands of miles through Nazi-occupied countries desperately looking for her parents. During her arduous journey, she befriended a pack of wolves. It made for an amazing tale of resilience and determination. Disney and Oprah both courted her. But then Misha’s story slowly began to unravel as it became clear that the whole thing was a fabrication. Was she a victim or a villain? Or both? Misha and the Wolves weaves a doozy of a tale told by the ultimate unreliable narrator, making us all question our own thirst for uplifting stories.   

Watch it: Misha and the Wolves

My Octopus Teacher (2020)

Even if you’re not necessarily a sucker for nature shows, My Octopus Teacher may change your mind. This popular winner of the 2020 Best Documentary Oscar follows a snorkeler named Craig Foster on his oddball journey to develop a connection — more than that ... a relationship! — with an octopus in the kelp beds off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. Utterly unique and more than a little strange, this philosophical film attempts to show how much like humans these underwater alien-looking creatures are. The underwater photography is gorgeous and — if you allow yourself to give in to Foster’s slightly daffy charm — you’ll be won over.

Watch it: My Octopus Teacher

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)

There are actually two great Bob Dylan documentaries currently on Netflix. Both are directed by Martin Scorsese, so you know they’re good. The first is the Rolling Thunder Revue about the musician’s barnstorming, special guest-laden tour in the mid-’70s. The second is this expansive, three-and-a-half hour overview of Dylan’s remarkable career from the folkie coffeehouses of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s to his electric rock ’n’ roll conversion and beyond. The archival clips are great, but the fresh interviews with Dylan are unusually insightful for a reluctant artist who, at times, tends to speak in riddles. You can’t go wrong with either film. In fact, why not go for a double feature?

Watch it: No Direction Home: Bob Dylan

Studio 54: The Documentary (2018)

Considering the brief lifespan of this infamous New York nightclub mecca, it’s remarkable how much of an impact it had on the popular imagination. With the rise of disco in the hedonistic, coke-fueled Me Decade of the ’70s and the simultaneous celebrification of mass culture, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager’s anything-goes Caligulan party palace was the place to be if you were Liza, Andy, Bianca, Mick, Truman, Farrah, Halston or any of the one-name fabulous people who could whisk right past the velvet rope. Studio 54 captures the sequined swirl of the era with well-curated footage, and Schrager finally opens up about how the whole thing came tumbling down. It’s a giddy time capsule of a time when the party seemed like it would never stop.

Watch it: Studio 54: The Documentary

Tell Me Who I Am (2019)

Here is one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories that documentary filmmaking shines at telling. Tell Me Who I Am unspools the heartbreaking story of Alex Lewis, who at age 18 had an accident that put him in a coma and wiped his memory as clean as a slate. When he woke up, the only thing he knew was his twin brother Marcus — who was sitting at his bedside. Alex didn’t even know his own name. Marcus filled his brother in on his past, but he omitted the more tragic chapters and created a sunnier, alternate biography. Years later, Marcus reveals the parts he left out. The two men attempt to grapple with whether ignorance is bliss or a cop-out.

Watch it: Tell Me Who I Am

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (2018)

In November 2018, Netflix served up a pair of early Christmas presents to Orson Welles buffs. The main event was the release of the Citizen Kane director’s final, decades-in-the-works film, The Other Side of the Wind. Receiving less attention was this insightful documentary piecing together the stop-start-stop-start production of his cinematic swan song. Interviews with the director’s friends and enemies — often one in the same — provide insight into Welles’s one-of-a-kind career, the ins and outs of how the film became a drawn-out punchline, and ultimately how sometimes an artist’s art can still remain a living thing even after his death.

Watch it: They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead

Chris Nashawaty, former film critic for Entertainment Weekly, is the author of Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story and a contributor to Esquire, Vanity Fair, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.