The 20 best documentary features of 2025

Movies about Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Pee-Wee Herman, a crime story in Florida and Thomas Kinkade

I saw, as you may have gathered, a lot of documentaries this year. I reviewed ten a month in the 10-pack, plus individual reviews, film festival roundups, and quite a few others.

Documentary filmmaking is tough these days. Filmmakers struggle to find funding, distribution, and support. And the number of times people show up in documentaries who had passed away many years earlier is an indication of just how long it takes to finish these things. If you want to get a documentary filmmaker angry, try bringing up the phrases “Melania Trump,” “Amazon,” “$40 million,” and “Brett Ratner.”

Of all those docs I saw this year — I think the final number is more than 200 — I’ve narrowed it down to my favorites. It’s worth noting that the Oscars shortlist for feature documentaries came out on Tuesday, and the 15 films on it include five of my top 20, and two more of my honorable mentions. Also, for Living Life Fearless this week, I ranked the year’s best music documentaries.

One more thing- this is confined to documentary features only, and omitting shorts and docuseries, along with the rule, which I share with CCA, that two parts or fewer is a “film” and two parts or more is a “series.” I will, however, make an exception for Mr. Scorsese, just because I watched it all in one sitting in a movie theater.

Here we go:

20. One to One: John & Yoko

You would think there wouldn’t be many angles left to tell about John Lennon and Yoko Ono, but this one, from directors Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards, is a fine archival doc that spends a couple of years with them as they prepared the 1972 “one to one” concert.

19. Are We Good?

I was looking forward to this documentary portrait of comedian Marc Maron for a long time, and I wasn’t disappointed. It focuses on the rise of his podcast as well as his grief after the passing of his partner, the filmmaker Lynn Shelton. This is very far from a soft-focus showbiz portrait, and features an up-close look at the grief process that’s rarely seen in a documentary.

18. Been Here Stay Here

This film, directed by David Usui, is a beautifully shot documentary about Tangier Island, a tiny island and community in Chesapeake Bay, one that’s slowly being taken in by the sea. A cinema veritae examination of the community there, this film opened only briefly in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, but will get a wider release in 2026.

17. Israel Palestine on Swedish TV, 1958-1989

A fine documentary, directed by Göran Hugo Olsson and lasting nearly four hours, and consisting entirely of archival news footage from a Swedish news outlet, about Israel and Palestine. I’d love to see more of this maximalist approach to history.

16. Videoheaven

A comparatively brief three hours, Alex Ross Perry’s very entertaining essay film looks at the 35-year epoch of the American store, as told through movies and TV shows. There are sections on every aspect you can think of, from obnoxious clerks to the embarrassment of renting porn to the differences between Blockbuster and its mom-and-pop competitors.

15. Billy Joel: And So It Goes

Also, nearly four hours, this HBO examination of the life of Billy Joel follows the Piano Man’s long life and career, using the story of his father and their relationship as the skeleton key of it all. Director Susan Lacy also managed to get all four Mrs. Joels to participate.

14. Cover-Up

Laura Poitras’ latest documentary looks at a significant man of the left, examines journalist Seymour Hersh, and the decades of big stories that he got right and wrong. I love that Hersh gets cranky with his interviewer, and it stayed in the film.

13. Colleyville

This doc, from director Dani Menkin, tells the story of the Colleyville, Tex., synagogue hostage situation in 2022, in which Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and three congregants were held hostage for 11 hours as the world watched. This film, which I caught at a one-off screening, makes fascinating use of security footage.

12. Ladies and Gentlemen… 50 Years of SNL Music

The best of the many documentaries about the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, Questlove and Osmany Rodriguez’s examination of the topic begins with a wondrous, seven-and-a-half-minute mashup of musical performances.

11. It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley

A sad, mournful remembrance of the 1990s singer, who passed away in 1997 at the age of 30. Amy Berg’s HBO film conjures up the ‘90s while featuring all of the great music. I still can’t read the title without wanting to break into a chorus of “Lover, You Should Have Come Over.”

10. Zodiac Killer Project

Charlie Shackleton was all set to make a conventional documentary about a man who had a theory about the identity of the Zodiac killer. When that fell apart, he instead decided to tell the story of the movie he would have made, embedded in a cinematic essay about conventions of true crime documentaries. It’s way, way better than the original movie would have been.

9. Come See Me in the Good Light

Oscar winner Ryan White’s latest film is the story of poet Andrea Gibson fighting end-stage cancer, attempting one last performance, and living with her wife, Megan Falley. Tearjerking as can be, but also a rare look at a couple in that situation.

8. Holding Liat

The best of this year’s many documentaries about the aftermath of October 7, Brandon Kramer’s film follows the family of one of the hostages taken that day, and the many fissures within the family when it comes to Israel today.

7. Riefenstahl

Andres Veiel’s film follows the long life of Leni Riefenstahl, the pioneering filmmaker who documented Hitler and ended up living into the 21st century, always denying knowledge of the Nazis’ crimes. The film argues, convincingly, that she knew more than she let on.

6. Mr. Scorsese

Rebecca’s five-hour documentary about Martin Scorsese was everything I hoped it would be. Sure, I knew a lot of the stories already, but the “portrait” puts together a perfect combination of film clips and interviews, with the subject and many others.

5. 2000 Meters to Andriivka

The Russia/Ukraine war was another subject of many docs this year, but this one was easily the best of them. Coming from director Mstyslav Chernov and the team that made the Oscar-winning 20 Days in Mariupol, this is another harrowing film shot inside a war zone, this time an attempt to liberate a village.

4. Pavements

Alex Ross Perry’s other film on this list comes at the ‘90s band Pavement three different ways: Through a conventional documentary, a workshopped musical about the group, and a completely fictitious biopic. It’s wildly conventional, and a joy, and I say that as someone who was never all that into the band.

3. The Perfect Neighbor

Geeta Gandbhir‘s film tells the story of a tragic confrontation in a Florida town, almost entirely using police body cam footage. It’s a super-inventive way to present a documentary, and different as can be from most of what true crime is these days. Also, it’s about a very specific American scourge: Really mean old people, who hate kids.

2. Pee-wee as Himself

Matt Wolf’s look at Paul Reubens, the man who played Pee-wee Herman, does a lot of things that most docs about famous people don’t do: It reveals previously unknown things, recontextualizes things we thought we knew, and adds on a layer of melancholy, as Reubens passed away before the film could be completed. We also see plenty of the subject and filmmaker joisting.

1. Art For Everybody

My favorite documentary of the year is another look at a famous deceased artist, this time, Thomas Kinkade. “The Painter of Light,” massively popular but shunned by those in the mainstream art world, filled a cultural niche, but long craved mainstream respectability. It’s a contradiction we see all the time today, and it’s one that was followed by a dramatic downfall. Miranda Yousef’s film finds empathy when some might have pointed and laughed, even discovering hidden art made available by Kinkade’s family.

Honorable mention: Seeds, John Candy: I Like Me, WTO/99 , Shari & Lamb Chop, The Alabama Solution, Jimmy in Saigon, BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions, Love + War, Afternoons of Solitude, and Men of War.