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30 Best Documentaries On Amazon Prime [April 2022]

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Whether they're in-depth portraits of underrepresented areas of lodge or detailed accounts of bizarre crimes, documentaries are an indispensable form of entertainment and instruction. We honey them because they can keep usa on the edges of our seats like thrillers, warm our hearts like family dramas, and make the states laugh similar comedies — all while helping u.s. larn something.

While it'due south peradventure not as well-known every bit a sure other streaming giant for its library of original documentaries, Amazon Prime Video has a lot to offer in the genre. With these pieces, you can look inside the lives of anybody from famous actors to largely anonymous booksellers and, believe it or not, murder victims. No matter what you're into, Amazon's streaming service has a documentary for you.

Updated on April ane, 2022: There are dozens of compelling documentary films and series available on Prime Video, and that library is constantly existence updated. This list reflects the all-time documentaries you lot can currently catch on Prime, and so be sure to check dorsum each calendar month for new additions to the streaming service!

Val

If yous oasis't seen Val Kilmer around lately, you lot might be wondering what he's been up to. The reply may surprise you: Since 2017, he'due south been public about his diagnosis of throat cancer, a sickness he beat but that has resulted in diminished use of his vox as well equally difficulty eating.

That doesn't mean that Kilmer has really lost his phonation, though. In a searingly authentic look at his life in his own words — narrated poignantly by his son — nosotros see him at his virtually vulnerable, and we honey him fifty-fifty more. Maybe it's because we're finally seeing him through his own photographic camera lens (which he'southward been using to document his life since childhood) instead of someone else's.

• Director: Leo Scott, Ting Poo

• Yr: 2021

• Runtime: 108 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Long Foreign Trip

The title of the documentary "Long Strange Trip" refers to a quintessential Grateful Dead lyric from their 1970 song "Truckin'," but it could also be understood as a nod to the film's four-hour runtime. The line "what a long, strange trip it'due south been" has taken a journey of its own on the style to cultural immortality: Like many other lyrics and the Dead themselves, it's been referenced, parodied, imitated, and honored more times than we can count.

The 2017 documentary is yet some other homage, this fourth dimension featuring fresh interviews with living ring members, relevant colleagues, and friends. Oh, and information technology'southward executive-produced past Martin Scorsese: If anyone knows when a long motion picture is worth watching, information technology's the director of "The Irishman."

• Director: Amir Bar-Lev

• Yr: 2017

• Runtime: 238 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son Well-nigh His Male parent

Oscilloscope Laboratories

When y'all die, what do you lot want to leave behind for your children? Both decease and legacy are often out of our command. But in the case of Andrew Bagby, who was establish murdered after he broke upwardly with a woman named Shirley, he had some friends and family unit who cared deeply enough most him to create a cinematic scrapbook of his life. This way, his son Zachary — whom Shirley announced she was pregnant with after she became a murder doubtable — could one solar day come up to know him.

But "Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son Nearly His Father" doesn't but relate the past; it traces the evolution of Zachary's story equally it unfolds, and makes a tragic only important point about how we care for vulnerable children.

• Manager: Kurt Kuenne

• Twelvemonth: 2008

• Runtime: 93 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Sunshine Hotel

Amazon Prime Video

"Sunshine Hotel," the first documentary by filmmaker and photojournalist Michael Dominic, is less about the building located at 245 Bowery in Manhattan, and more nigh the lives of the people who inhabited it.

The titular institution was a "flophouse," a unmarried room occupancy residence designed for low-cost lodging. Every bit the Sunshine Hotel'south formerly notorious neighborhood became increasingly gentrified, Michael Dominic created ane of the final links to its colorful history and the unforgettable people who called it home.

• Director: Michael Dominic

• Year: 2001

• Runtime: 98 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93% (Audition Score)

Lorena

Amazon Prime Video

Warning: Graphic content in this slide. Which you might take guessed if you associated the proper noun of the documentary "Lorena" with Lorena Bobbitt. Unsurprisingly, the story of a married woman who cut off her married man's penis while he was sleeping has sort of been lost in the hurricane of tabloid awareness and off-color humor that immediately sprang up effectually the scandal when information technology happened.

"Lorena" offers united states a truer, more intimate look at the humans behind the fable — yep, both of them. Lorena claimed she was retaliating against domestic violence and sexual set on. John also details his memory of the events leading upwardly to the incident. Executive produced past Jordan Peele, "Lorena" is both a moral inquiry and a wild ride.

• Director: Joshua Rofé

• Year: 2019

• Runtime: 4 hours 14 minutes (4 episodes)

• Rating: Boob tube-MA

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%

The New Yorker Presents

Amazon Prime number Video

Did y'all ever buy one of those super-discounted New Yorker subscriptions (maybe one of the ones with the free tote bag) and so watch the subscriptions pile upwards each month without reading a single article? Well, now you can get some of that New Yorker content you lot've been feeling guilty about missing, and you don't have to turn a single page. Instead, attempt "The New Yorker Presents": a multi-modal exploration of fine art that blends documentary with poesy and animation.

• Director: Multiple directors over various episodes

• Year: 2015

• Runtime: Multiple episodes, 30 minutes each

• Rating: 1000

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

Chivas: El Rebaño Sagrado

Amazon Prime number Video

C.D. Guadalajara, the popular Mexican professional football club, is more oftentimes known by their nickname, Chivas. This is the Castilian word for "caprine animal," and it actually sprang out of an insult from fans of Gild Atlas (one of the Chivas' chief rivals). Just they reclaimed the nickname with amore over fourth dimension, and rightfully so: The team has all the force, stubbornness, and adaptability of their namesakes.

"Chivas: El Rebaño Sagrado" follows the team subsequently the death of their legendary possessor Jorge Vergara in November 2019. His son Amaury inherits the responsibility, but he also inherits scandals and feuds — just in time for the pandemic to begin. A story of struggle, triumph, and heart, "Chivas" is an unforgettable sports documentary.

• Director: Northward/A

• Twelvemonth: 2021

• Runtime: varying lengths (4 episodes)

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: North/A

The Booksellers

Greenwich Entertainment

There are a lot of movies based on books, but how many movies do you know of that are actually about books? On the surface, it may not sound like the near exciting premise, but "The Booksellers" offers what amounts to a magical window into the globe of rare volume dealing in New York City, featuring prominent authors and personalities along the fashion.

• Manager: D.West. Immature

• Twelvemonth: 2019

• Runtime: 99 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90%

Nas: Fourth dimension is Illmatic

Tribeca Moving picture

In Apr of 1994, Nas released his debut album, "Illmatic." 20 years later almost to the day, "Nas: Time Is Illmatic" premiered at the Tribeca Picture Festival and offered a detailed business relationship of the events that led up to the album's release. From his parents' influence to his memories of youth, Nas takes the states through the experiences and emotions that went into his landmark achievement.

• Manager: One9

• Yr: 2014

• Runtime: 74 minutes

• Rating: Goggle box-xiv

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

Sensitive: The Untold Story

Amazon Prime number Video

If you're reading this with the brightness on your screen turned down ... If you cry easily and tin see yourself shedding a tear over some of the items on this list ... If you will let your heart guide you when you cull which one to watch ... Yous might be a highly sensitive person!

These aren't all of the tendencies that draw a temperament trait that's found in twenty% of the population. "Sensitive: The Untold Story" offers both cocky-acceptance and cocky-exploration — and does and then scientifically — for anyone who might accept felt or been told they're "too sensitive," or have someone in their life who fits the clarification.

• Director: Volition Harper

• Year: 2015

• Runtime: 63 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: N/A

Fed Up

RADIUS-TWC

On the back of pretty much every parcel of food in America, there's a fiddling box total of data. At the top of that box, its bold and unequivocal championship promises "Diet Facts." But in terms of diet in America, there are a lot of facts missing — and even willfully hidden — from the public heart.

A label might tell y'all what's in a product, just you lot don't know exactly how those elements will touch on you lot. "Fed Upwardly" details how, through lobbying and misinformation, the health of the "Large Sugar" industry won out over the health and informedness of the American people.

• Director: Stephanie Soechtig

• Yr: 2014

• Runtime: 92 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: fourscore%

#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump

Amazon Prime Video

Earlier, during, and later his tenure as Commander-in-Primary, members of the public have speculated equally to the mental state of Donald Trump. While mental affliction itself certainly doesn't preclude a person from the ability to agree public office, the item behavior exhibited past the former President prompted a lot of conjecture among laypeople.

At present, in "#Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump," nosotros get licensed psychologists' take on the questions many members of the public take been asking themselves for years about the seeming narcissism, paranoia, and sadism of the (formerly) most powerful man on the planet.

• Director: Dan Partland

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 83 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

The Sunshine Makers

FilmRise

The 1960s are basically synonymous with counterculture, and at the center of that counterculture was one "listen-expanding" substance: LSD. During that far-out decade, underground chemists Nicholas Sand and Tim Scully produced millions of hits of acid and awakened a psychedelic revolution in America, all while dodging the police force like a existent-life Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. "The Sunshine Makers" illuminates an amazing era of history and two of the people who helped ascertain it.

• Director: Cosmo Feilding-Mellen

• Year: 2015

• Runtime: 101 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Citizenfour

RADIUS-TWC

Ane of the closest things to a thriller on this list, "Citizenfour" is riveting cinema whether you're looking to learn or sweat. It is unique considering the documentarian behind the narrative actually takes role in information technology at the same time. The picture that Laura Poitras paints is one of the well-nigh intimate looks we get at Edward Snowden in the wake of the NSA spying scandal, and we find ourselves looking on anxiously equally the lives of both Poitras and Snowden — and the trust of Americans in their institutions — are turned upside down.

• Director: Laura Poitras

• Year: 2014

• Runtime: 113 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

The Imposter

Picturehouse Entertainment

"The Imposter" is the perfect mix of documentary elements: archival TV footage, a peppering of reenactments, and most importantly, interviews with both sides of an elaborate true-law-breaking-style scam. It's quite dramatic for a documentary, told with true narrative cohesion and profound sensitivity to its subject matter.

And that subject matter seems almost too insane to be truthful: Frédéric Bourdin, while impersonating a missing child (whom he looked nix like), somehow managed to play a trick on not just several government agencies in the U.s. and Spain, just members of the child's ain family. Getting to know this odd grapheme is one of the most compelling parts of the picture show, as his artless charisma clashes with his lack of remorse for taking advantage of a grieving family.

• Managing director: Bart Layton

• Year: 2012

• Runtime: 99 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

No No: A Dockumentary

Amazon Prime number Video

On the face of it, "No No: A Dockumentary" looks similar a sports treatment — and sports fans will certainly enjoy it for those elements. Merely its depiction of addiction and fame, buoyed by colorful images and a '70s soundtrack, will delight viewers of whatever groundwork. Dock Ellis' life and baseball game career, including the no-hitter he pitched while on LSD, are only plain interesting, whether you lot're an avid sports fan or not.

• Director: Jeff Radice

• Yr: 2014

• Runtime: 100 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Bones Brigade: An Autobiography

The Film Sales Visitor

For many years, skateboarding held the reputation of a pastime at best and a public nuisance at worst, and there were definitely people out there who would scoff to consider it a sport. Just over time, the passionate practitioners of the craft have earned a place for skateboarding as both an manufacture and an athletic subject. The sport fifty-fifty made its debut as an Olympic outcome at the 2021 Tokyo Games.

In "Bones Brigade: An Autobiography" we get a expect into the lives of the skateboarders and entrepreneurs — including Tony Hawk — whose passion and determination helped build the sport into the awareness it is today.

• Director: Stacy Peralta

• Yr: 2012

• Runtime: 90 minutes

• Rating: PG

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 77%

Lucy & Desi: A Home Movie

NBC

Who could tell the story of Lucille Brawl, Desi Arnaz, and their family unit amend than the couple's own daughter, Lucie Arnaz? "Lucy & Desi: A Home Film" is merely like any other home movie, except that the firsthand family footage depicts two of the most famous people in the country at the time.

Along with video from Ball and Arnaz's home life, their daughter has compiled interviews with friends (you know, chums like Bob Promise), family, and colleagues to really flesh out the image of a TV couple who seemed larger than life to their "I Love Lucy" audiences but, to the managing director of the film, were simply Mom and Dad.

• Director: Lucie Arnaz

• Yr: 1992

• Runtime: 108 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86% (Audience Score)

Fourth dimension

Amazon Studios

In a moment of desperation, a husband and wife committed an armed banking company robbery. Merely the American justice organisation left no room for their side of the story when information technology sentenced Rob G. Rich to spend a large chunk of his life in prison. Since then, his wife Fox Rich, who served three and a one-half years, has been campaigning for his release. She helps tell their story — that of their family unit and their struggle for justice — in the poignant documentary "Time."

• Director: Garrett Bradley

• Year: 2020

• Runtime: 81 minutes

• Rating: PG-thirteen

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

Dior and I

Dissidenz Films

Even if you struggle to put together a matching outfit every morning, y'all'll still get something out of the documentary "Dior and I." (Though if you are into fashion, y'all'll absolutely love it.) The piece is beautifully put together and features cameos by numerous Hollywood stars, but what really makes it engaging is its indulgent expect into a niche world that many people never get access to. And there are even some stakes involved equally Raf Simons works to pull together his first collection at the Dior mode house.

• Director: Frédéric Tcheng

• Twelvemonth: 2014

• Runtime: 90 minutes

• Rating: R

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%

Chicken People

Samuel Goldwyn Films

Yous've heard of show dogs. If you're a fan of "Charlotte's Web," mayhap you've even heard of show pigs. Only would y'all believe that there'south as well such a thing equally show chickens? Yep, it'south an unabridged competitive world in which people breed and raise poultry specifically for presentation and competition. The documentary has the zany pitch of a comedy, merely that merely makes it all the more astonishing to realize that the bizarre globe it depicts is really existent.

• Director: Nicole Lucas Haimes

• Twelvemonth: 2016

• Runtime: 83 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Sour Grapes

Dogwoof

Technically, "Sour Grapes" is a crime documentary, but that designation really doesn't exercise justice to how outlandish its story actually is. The tale revolves around Rudy Kurniawan, a collector and enthusiast of wine who apparently knew it improve than just about anyone — because he sold inexpensive wines as super-expensive varieties instead and got away with it simply by forging the labels. He defrauded his customers out of millions of dollars ... simply honestly, if you're insisting on the finest wines, shouldn't yous brand sure you're able to taste the deviation?

• Director: Jerry Rothwell, Reuben Atlas

• Yr: 2016

• Runtime: 85 minutes

• Rating: TV-xiv

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%

LuLaRich

Amazon Prime number Video

From the people who brought you "Fyre Fraud" (need we say more?) comes an equally disastrous four-part saga, this time centering around the nearly unlikely of villains: leggings. More specifically, "LuLaRich," ane of the newest original documentaries from Amazon, surveys the whirlwind rise and ruinous fall of the LuLaRoe multi-level marketing empire.

The documentary features stories from those who were lured into the fiasco by empowering language and promises of cocky-made riches. Now, these people are struggling to rebuild their lives and lost savings. Dozens are also pursuing lawsuits afterward "careers" selling leggings on Facebook to other women in the same boat failed to produce the promised rewards.

Is it a comedy of errors or a tragedy by blueprint? You be the approximate.

• Directors: Jenner Furst, Julia Willoughby Nason

• Twelvemonth: 2021

• Runtime: varies by episode

• Rating: Television set-14

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

My Name Is Pauli Murray

According to the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes, the subject of "My Name Is Pauli Murray" is an "unsung — still hugely important — private." Both of these things are truthful, merely the documentary attempts to remedy the "unsung" office by painting a picture show of the gender-nonconforming Black lawyer and activist who championed women's rights under the 14th Amendment. And because it's told for the most part from Murray'south own perspective, the documentary treats the activist's nuanced view of (and journeying with) gender identity equally integral to that activism itself.

• Directors: Betsy West, Julie Cohen

• Yr: 2021

• Runtime: 91 minutes

• Rating: PG-13

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Burning

Amazon Studios

The year 2020 apace became infamous for all mode of cataclysmic reasons, from the coronavirus pandemic (and the empty grocery shelves, lockdowns, and stock market woes that came with it) to the U.S. government releasing videos of UFOs.

Amidst all the chaos, it's of import not to forget that ane of the yr's biggest disasters came right up front. 2020 opened with big swathes of an entire continent (millionsof acres, all told) on burn down. "Burning" tells the story of this rampant devastation, occurring as a result of climate modify, that Australians dubbed the "Blackness Summer."

• Managing director: Eva Orner

• Year: 2021

• Runtime: 86 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World

Kino Lorber/YouTube

Indigenous musicians have had an undeniable affect on the evolution of music in America, only they're not a group we often hear virtually in that context. "Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World" highlights some of these unsung heroes. Information technology begins this necessary endeavour past arguing, equally Al Hoff of the Pittsburgh Metropolis Paper puts information technology, that "Western forms of music incorporated the rhythm and song stylings of traditional Native American music." If this explicit connectedness and degree of influence surprises viewers, that's all the more show for how necessary a documentary "Rumble" is.

• Directors: Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana

• Year: 2017

• Runtime: 103 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

A Human Named Scott

Prime Video/YouTube

Before he was famous, American rapper Kid Cudi was, every bit this documentary calls him, a man named Scott. That man would become one of the biggest influences on hip hop of the 2010s. Fans of the genre accept much to thank him for, especially having the courage to overcome personal and professional struggles and his willingness to address difficult topics like mental affliction in his music. This engrossing film chronicles his journey with enthusiasm and skill.

• Director: Robert Alexander

• Year: 2021

• Runtime: 95 minutes

• Rating: Not Rated

• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71%

Stories We Tell

Mongrel Media

Sarah Polley was an actor as a child and young developed, starring in pop, Canadian-produced Tv shows similar "Ramona" and "Road to Avonlea" and in films like "Go" and "My Life Without Me." In the 2000s, she shifted to filmmaking, and her first documentary is the autobiographical investigation "Stories We Tell," a film compiled via interviews, narration, and achingly nostalgic re-creations shot to await like old home movies.

Polley's mother died the calendar week the actor turned 11, and she is the one person she tin't ask about her main discovery — that Michael Polley is not her biological begetter. Instead, it's a Montreal-based producer named Harry Gulkin. "Stories We Tell" is Polley's reckoning with this very personal information, as well as how it affects her identity and her definition of family.

• Director: Sarah Polley
• Twelvemonth: 2012
• Runtime: 108 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

A LEGO Brickumentary

It's a documentary nigh the big impact of something small — LEGO bricks. Heartwarming and even profound, "A LEGO Brickumentary" is not the story of LEGO itself and so much equally information technology is the story of the tremendous, overwhelming positive event LEGO has had on the world. Tens of millions of kids take grown up playing with the Danish-made toy for generations, edifice whatever they want, brick by brick, or just following the pictogram instructions. This documentary shows just how universal of an experience it is for kids and adults to play with LEGO and make creations, art, and fifty-fifty solutions to problems that are wholly their own. Filmmakers pepper the movie with interviews with real people about their honey of LEGO and why it'due south much an important and personal discipline.

• Managing director: Daniel Junge and Kief Davidson
• Twelvemonth: 2014
• Runtime: 92 minutes
• Rating: G
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 54%

Dear Mr. Watterson

Comic strips nonetheless run in hundreds of daily and Sunday newspapers around the world. Nevertheless, over the concluding 100 years, but a handful take fabricated a deep and profound impact on readers and popular civilisation alike, demonstrating that three or then hand-drawn panels of sequential art can exist just as powerful and moving as a piece of literature every bit a novel or verse form. "Calvin and Hobbes," which ran from 1985 to 1995, is one of those comics — the wordy, cerebral adventures of precocious, troublemaking half-dozen-yr-one-time Calvin and his best friend, a blimp tiger that comes to life (probably only in his imagination), with whom he has deep conversations about the universe and man nature. Creator Neb Watterson is an extremely individual person, and "Beloved Mr. Watterson" finds fan Joel Allen Schroeder attempting to become inside of the head and inspirations of the writer, all while talking to other artists and creative types who wax poetic about the comic strip's condition and importance.

• Director: Joel Allen Schroeder
• Year: 2013
• Runtime: 89 minutes
• Rating: TV-PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 62%

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