The June 2026 documentary review 10-pack: 'The A.I. Doc,' 'Everybody to Kenmure Street,' 'The Pink Pill,' 'Summer of '94,' 'Modern Whore' and more

Reviews of ten new documentary features.

Introducing the monthly roundup of short reviews of new and recent documentary releases:

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

Artificial intelligence is the hot topic of the day, and this documentary about it arrived in theaters in March, before landing on Peacock in May.

Directed by Daniel Roher, the Oscar-winning director of Navalny, along with co-director Charlie Tyrell, the documentary examines the pros and cons of the technology as it currently stands.

Yes, it could cure cancer. It could also make all of our jobs obsolete; it could take up all of our water and energy, or turn into Skynet and kill everyone on Earth.

So, really, who’s to say?

Roher, who also directed the newly released feature Tuner, tells the story through the birth of his child and his wonder about how AI will affect his newborn’s life.

It all gets a bit cutesy, while “APOCALOPTIMIST” is kind of a stupid term. And I don’t love documentaries that look at two diametrically opposed conclusions and then throw up their hands without a decision. And I really don’t like when documentaries feature a URL call to action at the end, especially when its conclusion is so muddled.

Still, I did love the metaphor, “the shit’s out of the horse, but the horse is going to keep shitting.” And the filmmakers actually got OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to sit for an interview, unlike a different documentary, Deepfaking Sam Altman, which merely interviewed an Altman deepfake.

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist is streaming on Peacock now.

Everybody to Kenmure Street

This is an outstanding documentary, one of the best of the year, about a 2021 episode in Glasgow, Scotland, in which British immigration officials came to arrest two men on the first day of Eid. This led to a daylong standoff in which essentially the entire neighborhood stepped in to prevent their neighbors from being taken away. One man, known as “Van Man,” even got under the van and grabbed the axle.

Directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra, the film uses social media videos and witness testimony, including a couple of people who were played by actors (Emma Thompson, an executive producer, portrays Van Man). It’s all very harrowing, and also inspiring.

I admit I didn’t know this story before hearing about the film, and I visited Scotland a year later and stayed about 3 miles from where it happened. It’s impossible to watch this and not think of the events in Minneapolis earlier this year, especially the way neighbors came together.

There is that moment where the film does what a lot of documentaries do, which is stop dead in its tracks for ten minutes to tell the complete history of slavery in Scotland. It’s worthwhile history, for sure, but I wanted it to get back to the main story.

I saw Everybody to Kenmure Street last week, when it was the first showing in CineSPEAK’s Under the Stars outdoor film series at Clark Park in West Philadelphia. I’m not sure about release plans, beyond that. Here’s a list of engagements here.

The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs & Who Has Control

This film is about the years-long efforts to create a Viagra for women, which, it turns out, is an idea that scares a lot of people.

Directed by Aisling Chin-Yee, this is a rare documentary in which the hero is a pharmaceutical company CEO, Cindy Eckert of Sprout Pharmaceuticals.

The documentary follows several years in which the company fought to get the pill approved, which ultimately happened, quite a few years after the first “male enhancement” drugs were approved.

The Pink Pill is streaming on Paramount+.

Summer of ’94

Ahead of this year’s World Cup, here’s a documentary about the last time the U.S. hosted the soccer competition. (That was also the first World Cup I ever watched, although I didn’t get seriously into soccer until about 15 years after that.)

It was a very different world of soccer, when soccer was not all that popular in the U.S. These days, every kid and even a lot of adults have a favorite English Premier League club (Come on You Spurs!) Also, while both the 1994 and 2026 World Cups are being played in NFL stadiums, not a single stadium from ’94 is being used this year.

The film uses a lot of ‘90s documentary aesthetics, and interviews most of the players from the 1994 USA team.

There’s some enjoyable stuff that I had forgotten about. Robin Williams hosted the World Cup draw! When the FIFA president announced the actual match pairings, I thought for a minute it was just Robin doing one of his funny ethnic voices. Chris Berman does nicknames for all of the soccer players, who it’s clear he probably hadn’t heard of until that moment.

Of course, the U.S. match against Colombia in that World Cup, which ended on an own-goal and led to the murder of the Colombian player responsible, was already the subject of the great 30 for 30 installment The Two Escobars. (And it was touched on in a different 30 for 30- the World Cup kicked off on June 17, 1994- famous as the day of the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase.) The players acknowledge that they couldn’t go to bed the night before their first match because they were fixated on the chase.

The late soccer journalist Grant Wahl is missed; I feel like if he were alive, he’d be a major talking head in this.

The documentary debuted at South by Southwest, and now it’s streaming on Tubi. There’s going to be a completely different ’94 World Cup doc on Netflix next month, about Brazil’s victory, and probably a lot more World Cup tie-in docs that we don’t even know about yet.

Modern Whore

This is a very stylish documentary about Andrea Werhun, who tells the story of her life in sex work, before she retired and became a writer and filmmaker.

The film was directed by Nicole Bazuin and produced by Hollywood’s #1 public booster of sex workers, Sean Baker; Werhun had served as a consultant on Baker’s Oscar-winning film Anora.

Adapted from Werhun’s memoir, the film shows how she got into sex work, the ups and down of that life, and why she ultimately got out of it. But throughout, the cinematic style is possibly the coolest of any recent documentary.

Modern Whore is available to rent on VOD channels.

W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause

An expansive, exquisite, very well-done documentary telling of the life of Du Bois, the African-American writer, thinker and civil rights activist, who had a long and complicated life.

Du Bois, as the promotions from PBS note, lived to be 95 years old, born shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation, and died shortly before the March on Washington.

Most of his contemporaries are long gone, so the film has to get creative, and does so through various means in its two hours. The film is narrated, in part, by Jeffrey Wright, the film, directed by Rita Coburn, utilizes expert testimony, as well as a lot of dramatic readings of his work.

W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With a Cause debuted on PBS’ American Masters in late May, and remains available on the PBS app.

Third Act

This touching film was directed by Tadashi Nakamara, and was made about his father. That’s Robert A. Nakamura, known as “the Godfather of Asian American media,” but a man not widely known outside of that community.

Robert Nakamura had once made a documentary about his father, while Tadashi has a young son of his own. A continuing theme is understanding between multiple generations of fathers and sons.

After a long run on the Asian Film Festival circuit last year – it was the opening night selection at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival in 2026 — the film debuted on PBS on May 25, and remains on the app.

Food Roots

Another PBS documentary in May was this one, in which Billy Dec, a Nashville-based restauranteur, who visits the Philippine island of his mother’s origin, to see some related elders.

Directed by Michele Josue, the documentary features some touching family stories, and also some really great-looking food.

The film is available on the PBS app.

Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure

PBS was also the home of this film, a documentary about a documentary, which in this case is David Attenborough’s Life on Earth.

Just before David Attenborough’s 100th birthday, on May 8, PBS debuted this documentary about his series, which debuted in 1979.

I’m nobody’s biggest fan of nature documentaries, but I was fascinated by this story, in which Attenborough essentially saved his career- which has since continued for another five decades.

It’s the third showbiz documentary in the last six months in which the occasion has been the subject’s approaching 100th birthday, joining those about Dick Van Dyke and Mel Brooks.

The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill

This is a documentary, part of Netflix’s Untold series, about a bitter dispute between two horse people, in which one of them shot the other.

As usual with Untold, it’s a mediocre rendering of what should be an interesting story, and both subjects are kind of awful people. Although the one who did the shooting was certainly worse.

But there are some memorable highlights, such as the male competitor using the phrase “they did a mini-9/11 to me,” his later showing up in court looking like the Unabomber, and later claiming a social media post was “threatening,” when it turned out she was merely quoting lyrics from “The Greatest Showman.”

The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill is streaming on Netflix.