Jaw-dropping documentary films and series

The emergence of streaming platforms has boosted the documentary genre. It has now become as important as any other type of film or series.

Image: 'Wild Wild Country,' Netflix

There is an almost inexhaustible catalog of documentaries - not only on Netflix but also on other platforms like Amazon Prime, BBC, and Disney Plus. Let's take a look at some of the great documentaries of yesterday and today.

Interestingly, despite being released in 2017, this documentary is not as popular as it should be, considering its story.

'Atomic Homefront' revolves around the Manhattan Project, through which the first nuclear weapons in history were created, and how the necessary uranium was processed in St. Louis. Then how the waste was hidden in Bridgerton, a suburb of the city.

Leonardo DiCaprio, a militant environmentalist and vegan, is the executive producer of a documentary that lifts many of the rugs under which the secrets of the livestock industry are hidden.

The aim was clear: to show the world how some of the sector's big businessmen worked and still work. And they succeeded. What nobody had counted on was that some environmental organisations would be portrayed in the documentary (and not all in a positive light).

The documentary that revived interest in true crime is one of those works in which the viewer ends up angry with the world and, above all, with justice.

The film tells the story of Steven Avery, accused of the death of a woman, in a case in which everything and everyone involved is highly suspect. The impact of the documentary was so groundbreaking that the case was reopened.

The O.J. Simpson trial, held in mid-1994, had an audience of 150 million viewers. This gives you an idea of the fame of this former NFL player.

The documentary tells the story of 'Juice' (the nickname by which OJ was known in his circle of friends) from his rise to prominence as a sportsman and his rise to fame as an actor to the murder of Nicole Brown (his ex-wife), for which he was tried. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2017.

According to some critics, 'Shoah' is the best documentary in history. It was released in 1985, but its creator, Claude Lanzmann, took 11 years to make it.

'Shoah' is a stark and raw reconstruction of the extermination of the Jews in the Second World War, with testimonies of both victims and executioners. Everything is brutally real, including the images of Treblinka or Auschwitz as they were in 1985, with hardly any trace of the horror left. Claude Lanzmann decided not to use archive material. Only words, memories, traces. And the result is as painful as it is masterful.

It was 1981 when Osho, the leader of an Indian sect, bought a huge farm in Oregon to settle down with his disciples and start a new life. He was far from his home country, where he was in trouble with the law.

The coexistence with the neighbors of Antelope, a nearby town, soon turns hostile and leads to a delirious madness that Netflix masterfully narrated in six unmissable episodes.

A hard-hitting documentary. It features Oliver O'Grady, perhaps the Church's most notorious abuser who, for more than two decades, used his evil ways in Northern California.

The documentary not only shows the Catholic hierarchy's discrediting of the whistleblowers, but also the changes of diocese of the accused. The most disturbing thing is to see, are the methods used by Oliver O'Grady and the fact that many of his superiors knew what he was doing.

Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard took their passion for grizzly bears to the extreme of pretending to be part of their wild community. But the experiment went wrong. In 2003 they were eaten in an Alaskan wilderness.

It was 1974, the Twin Towers still presided over New York, and Philippe Petit proposed the impossible: to cross from one to the other, balancing on a wire.

The feat lasted for an hour and the depiction of it in James Marsh's documentary combines the tension with the magnificence of the challenge.

More than half a century has passed since its release and this 30-minute documentary about the Holocaust is still absolutely devastating.

Holocaust survivor Jean Cayrol's narration is dramatic, and every scene of the documentary tears at the soul with the big question: how can such a level of cruelty be reached?

Contemporary music history, a masterpiece by Martin Scorsese. A key moment for country rock music and Bob Dylan's influence on it.

The documentary is based on Bob Dylan's last concert with The Band, given on Thanksgiving Day 1976, in which people like Ringo Starr, Neil Diamond and Eric Clapton took part.

Randall Adams had been sentenced to death in Dallas (USA) for a crime he did not commit and Errol Morris set out to tell his story.

The impact of the documentary was such that the case was reviewed and Randall Adams was released after being proven innocent.

Andrew Jarecki made a film about the life of the millionaire and accused murderer Robert Durst who, fascinated by the film, contacted the director to tell him his story first hand.

His story included three murders, his strange life and also prison that he dodged on several occasions. Filming the documentary was his undoing, hand in hand with an absolutely shocking ending. Let's just say that the documentary solved a crime, or perhaps several.

The backing singers are those great secondary singers, key in the careers of many artists but who, for one reason or another, remain 20 steps away from fame.

The documentary tells the story and careers of backing singers for artists such as Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder. Backing vocalists with star potential but who ended up overshadowed by other singers.

A legend of photography and fashion, Bill Cunningham made New York an essential part of his work and the main focus of his photographs, alongside models.

Richard Press reviews Bill Cunningham's career and his most acclaimed creation: street style. Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, once said: "We all dress for Bill."

Michael Moore won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2003 for his shocking, controversial, and viral project.

One of the most politically active filmmakers, he narrated with delightful agility and a sense of humor unusual for the genre, such a complicated issue with guns in the United States. Undoubtedly, the seed of contemporary documentaries.

A journey through the representation of transgender people throughout the history of film and television and how they have been stereotyped.

With firsthand accounts from Laverne Cox, Jamie Clayton, MJ Rodriguez, and Lilly Wachowsky, who tell what their Hollywood experience has been and continues to be like.

Roger Ebert is an eminent film critic and the first to win a Pulitzer Prize for his work as a film critic.

Can the life and work of a film critic be made into a fascinating documentary? Yes. This is the proof.

The friendship between a human being and an octopus living in a kelp forest in South Africa. This is an interesting starting point for a true story.

Not only does it entertain and seduce, but this film won the Oscar for Best Documentary of 2021.

Rodriguez was a music legend in South Africa and considered by many to be the greatest artist of all time. The problem is that he didn't know it.

Malik Bendjelloul follows two fans who are determined to find this Detroit musician who left his mark on an entire country. Twenty years later, they manage to track him down and what happens is magical. Oscar for Best Documentary 2013.

This documentary shook the fast food empire. A project that was as bizarre as it was applauded, forcing burger companies to change their food policy.

Morgan Spurlock wanted to go all in on the fast food diet and, for a month, he ate only McDonald's products. The result was devastating for him.

Jim Carrey travels back to 1999 to recall his most intense and cathartic filming. When he played Andy Kaufman, one of the vanguards of humor, he got so into the role that it almost consumed him.

Almost two decades later, and with his star status on the other side of the coin, Jim Carrey tells his version of what happened, making it clear that it wasn't easy to bring 'Man on the Moon' to fruition. Perhaps one of his best roles.

Meat, agriculture and consumption habits are the three axes on which this documentary is based. It analyses the current situation of an industry that is devastating the planet.

A documentary as hard-hitting as it is realistic, the success of which led to advertising and marketing campaigns by the aforementioned companies in the face of their falling image in the eyes of their customers.

Through the eyes of two college basketball players aspiring to make it to the NBA, 'Hoop Dreams' depicts the reality of 1990s America.

An image of a society who were facing the end of the century with hopes and dreams, without knowing what the 21st century would bring.

The story of one of the greatest feats in sport and the achievement of the sixth and final ring by Michael Jordan's legendary Chicago Bulls.

The documentary looks at the making of that triumph, going into the lives of its key players and analysing every detail that led the Bulls to become part of sporting legend.

'The Act of Killing' is a masterpiece of cinema and a film as rare as it is disturbing. In the picture, its director, British director Joshua Oppenheimer.

Joshua Oppenheimer narrates the genocide of the Indonesian death squads in a way that is so horrifying and shocking that it crosses the thin line between fiction and reality.

This documentary won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2010 and is a big ordeal for animal lovers.

Louie Psihoyos wanted to show the reality of mass dolphin hunting in Japan in the starkest possible way.

In 'The Square', the viewer not only witnesses a complicated situation of political revolt in Egypt, but seems to enter into it and experience it first hand.

Beyond the historical value of the documentary, the formal, visual and narrative elements boost this account to the status of a masterpiece.

For many, the greatest sporting event of the 20th century. The fight that pitted Muhammad Ali against George Foreman in a confrontation that went beyond sport.

Leon Gast was responsible for documenting everything that happened that evening and the days before and after, giving us pure cinema that makes it a must-see documentary.