Historical Documentary Movies

This documentary delves into the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance.

What happened after Einstein fled Nazi Germany? Using archival footage and his own words, this docudrama dives into the mind of a tortured genius.

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single...

Egyptian archeologists dig into history, discovering tombs and artifacts over 4,000 years old as they search for a buried pyramid in this documentary.

Working from the text of James Baldwin’s unfinished final novel, director Raoul Peck creates a meditation on what it means to be Black in the...

The story of one of the great environmental disasters to befall the United States, and the terrible movie that helped bring the catastrophe to light.

Leni Riefenstahl's flamboyant Nazi aesthetics shaped the public image of the 1936 Olympics. Never before had sports and politics been mixed. Through...

A documentary examining what the Tyrannosaurus Rex was really like - both appearance and behaviour - using the recent palaeontological and zoological...

Archival footage, animation and music are used to look back at the eight anti-war protesters who were put on trial following the 1968 Democratic...

On June 6, 1944, the Allied Forces executed Operation Overlord, the largest seaborne invasion in history, storming the beaches of Normandy. This...

When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their...

The director’s mother, Mirka Mora, avoided Auschwitz by one day. On his father’s side many perished in the Holocaust. These facts...

An urgent, timely and compelling portrait of Hollywood icon Greta Garbo, whose fame, isolation and loneliness still captures us.

Through interviews with key AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) stakeholders from over the years coupled with archival video footage culled from AHF's...

Five times, Earth has faced apocalyptic events that swept nearly all life from the face of the planet. What did these prehistoric creatures look...

Thanks to new excavations in Mauritius and Madagascar, as well as archival and museum research in France, Spain, England and Canada, a group of...

A biographical film about cinematic illusionist Georges Méliès featuring Méliès’s widow, Jeanne d’Alcy, as...

This is the story of an incredible rise to power, the most comprehensive documentary on Hermann Goering ever made. He was a man of many faces: vain,...