Documentaries that change the way we see the world
There’s an art to communication, and documentaries help capture it. Insights gathers films that confront power, displacement, and environmental collapse through acts of witnessing, listening, and resistance.
From Kenya to Iran, Turtle Island to Gaza, these stories examine Indigenous sovereignty, ecological crises, archival memory, and radical pedagogy. Whether rebuilding libraries, protecting land, or challenging state violence, these documentaries move with clarity and conviction. They don’t just inform — they expose, ignite, and offer blueprints for survival and futures that are yet to be written.
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Marriage Cops
In a cramped police station in India, an all-woman unit attempts to mediate fractured marriages with warmth, pressure, and limited power. Marriage Cops reveals the fragile, improvised systems women build to survive where the law and tradition fall short.
Cutting Through Rocks
Winner of Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize, Cutting Through Rocks follows Sara Shahverdi — motorcyclist, midwife, and first-ever councilwoman elected in her Iranian village. A vérité triumph by Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni.
Free Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier spent nearly 50 years in prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit. This searing, award-winning documentary revisits his case and the fight for his freedom — exposing a justice system built to punish resistance and erase Indigenous voices.
Landmarks
Lucrecia Martel’s first documentary is a haunting portrait of land, violence, and resistance. With rare access to trial footage and the Chuschagasta community, Landmarks reframes a 2009 murder within centuries of Indigenous dispossession in Argentina.
Everest Dark
As the death toll on Everest rises, legendary mountaineer Mingma Tsiri Sherpa leads an elite team on a life-threatening mission to retrieve the fallen and restore peace to Chomolungma, the sacred “Mother Goddess of the World".
Life After
What happened to Elizabeth Bouvia? Reid Davenport investigates the disabled woman’s legacy and public disappearance, reframing the assisted-dying debate into a fight for the right to live. Winner of the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award at Sundance.
How to Build a Library
Can a library be decolonized? How to Build a Library follows two visionary women on a quest to restore Nairobi’s McMillan Memorial Library and exorcise its colonial ghosts. A powerful documentary on archives, access, and reclaiming civic space.
Shifting Baselines
Towering rockets rise as wetlands vanish in this sly black-and-white documentary about SpaceX’s conquest of Boca Chica, Texas. With sci-fi aesthetics and observational calm, the film exposes how cosmic dreams begin with the quiet erasure of Earth.
Remaining Native
Teenager Ku Stevens runs toward his dreams while retracing the path of his great-grandfather’s escape from an "Indian boarding school". An impressive, urgent debut from Paige Bethmann about memory, endurance, and what it truly means to remain Native.
Walls – Akinni Inuk
A Greenlandic woman held in indefinite detention forms a life-changing bond with the filmmaker documenting her case. Walls – Akinni Inuk is a gripping story of survival, systemic injustice, and the quiet freedom found in human connection.
With Hasan in Gaza
A time capsule of Gaza in 2001, With Hasan in Gaza presents rediscovered footage of everyday life before devastation. Assembled by Kamal Aljafari, one of Palestinian cinema’s most formally daring and poetic voices, the film resists erasure through memory.
The Shadow Scholars
Academic ghostwriting is a billion-dollar industry, just not for those doing the writing. Directed by Eloïse King and executive produced by Steve McQueen, this is a gripping documentary about brilliance, erasure, and global inequality.
Cover-Up
Oscar-winner Laura Poitras and Emmy-winner Mark Obenhaus turn their lens on legendary journalist Seymour Hersh in a riveting film that unpacks how one reporter exposed the truths behind My Lai and Abu Ghraib — and what it takes to hold power to account.
Image: © The New York Times