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The Best Documentaries & Docuseries of 2025 (So Far)

The Best Documentaries & Docuseries of 2025 (So Far)

‘Sly & The Family Stone,’ considered right here in 1968 are the topic of a documentary directed via Questlove. Michael Ochs Archives/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

A brand new calendar yr approach a brand new set of documentaries to dive into. In 2025, topics getting the document remedy come with Tesla founder, X proprietor, and international’s richest guy Elon Musk, the unregulated business of circle of relatives vlogging, a big second in Deaf historical past, and incoming First Lady Melania Trump. Globally, 2025 marks a yr of exchange and upheaval—fertile flooring for filmmaking exploration and investigation.

Read on for the need-to-know documentaries and docu-series of 2025—to be watched at house, at movie fairs, and in theaters.

Call Her Alex

Alex Stone

“Call Her Daddy” host and author Alex Cooper made a reputation for herself via delving deep into her podcast visitors’ non-public lives, getting them to open up on intimate subjects together with her relatable, conversational interview taste. With Call Her Alex, the interviewer turns the point of interest on herself. The two-part documentary collection guarantees to percentage main points of Cooper’s lifestyles and occupation, which to this point has integrated signing one of the most largest podcast offers in historical past. “It’s a behind-the-scenes look at the moments that shaped me—the raw, the messy, the personal stuff I’ve never felt comfortable sharing until now,” Cooper stated in a free up.

Release date: Premieres on the Tribeca Film Festival on June 8; streaming on Hulu on June 10

My Mom Jayne

Mariska Hargitay together with her mom, Jayne Mansfield | Photograph via Photo 12/Alamy Stock Photo/Courtesy of HBO

Mariska Hargitay is also easiest identified for her 26 seasons taking part in Detective Olivia Benson on Law and Order: SVU, however enthusiasts won’t understand that she additionally descends from Hollywood royalty. The actor is making her function directorial debut with a documentary about her mom, Jayne Mansfield, the cinema legend and intercourse image who died tragically in a automobile twist of fate on the age of 34, when Hargitay was once 3 years outdated. The movie, which mixes interviews, intimate footage, and residential films to discover Mansfield’s private and non-private lives, is Hargitay’s “search for the mother I never knew, an integration of a part of myself I’d never owned, and a reclaiming of my mother’s story and my own truth.”

Release date: Premieres on Max June 2025

Thank You Very Much

Andy Kaufman behind the curtain at The Tonight Show in 1978 | Nicolas Russell/Archive Photos/Getty Images

An early originator of the draw back comedy style, Andy Kaufman driven audiences (and blameless bystanders, on the subject of his public pranks) to uncomfortable limits earlier than his premature dying from lung most cancers at 35 in 1984. Absurdist modern day comedians like Tim Robinson and Nathan Fielder owe a lot to Kaufman, whose lifestyles has now been memorialized in a brand new documentary directed via Alex Braverman and produced via the Safdie brothers. Early photos of Kaufman’s upward push to reputation is woven with archival interviews with key avid gamers like Kaufman’s circle of relatives, Lorne Michaels, and Robin Williams, and new ones with Steve Martin, Danny DeVito, and his former female friend, Lynne Margulies to dig deeper into the psyche of the “man on the moon.”

Release date: March 28 in theaters and on call for

SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night

NBC/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

This four-part docuseries explores the wealthy historical past of Saturday Night Live, which turns 50 this yr. Featuring over 60 individuals, together with one of the crucial cartoon display’s maximum iconic names from its inception to its present forged, the collection delves into other facets of the SNL revel in, from the nerve-wracking audition procedure to the dynamic of the author’s room, revealing never-before-seen photos from throughout 5 many years. And sure—there’s a complete episode devoted to “More Cowbell.”

Release date: January 16 on Peacock

The Librarians

Photo courtesy Sundance Film Festival

Sarah Jessica Parker government produced this documentary from director Kim A. Snyder about The FReadom Fighters, a gaggle of librarians shaped in 2021, devoted to preventing expanding censorship via conservative politicians and parental rights teams like Moms for Liberty. The Fighters are made up of librarians from around the nation, as they recommend for the First Amendment, the best to learn, and ward off on primary book-banning projects in states like Florida and Texas.

Release date: Premieres January 24 at Sundance

No Other Land

Cinetic Media

Now nominated for an Oscar (after profitable a bunch of different essential awards), No Other Land was once created via a gaggle of Palestinian and Israeli activists and filmmakers with the purpose of “shout[ing] out something radically different” and developing “a proposal for an alternate way Israelis and Palestinians can live in this land—not as oppressor and oppressed, but in full equality,” a director’s commentary reads. The documentary follows younger Palestinian activist Basel Adra, who has been preventing the profession of his local Masafer Yatta space of the West Bank since early life. He meets Israeli journalist Yuval, and in combination, the 2 fight towards the expulsion of Adra’s neighborhood and the erasure of Masafer Yatta as they navigate the complexity in their courting, which is marked via shared desires however excessive inequality.

Release date: January 31 at New York’s Film Forum; February 7 in Los Angeles

One to One: John and Yoko

Magnolia Pictures

Beatlemania is alive and nicely in 2025. In addition to the 4 Sam Mendes biopics lately within the works, a brand new documentary about John Legend and Yoko Ono is making its method in the course of the competition circuit. One to One: John and Yoko, from Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald, makes a speciality of the couple’s 18-month stint dwelling in Greenwich Village within the 1970s. With audio manufacturing overseen via their son, musician Sean Ono Lennon, and newly restored photos from Lennon’s handiest full-length post-Beatles live performance, One to One supplies a brand new take a look at a well-documented courting.

Release date: After premiering at Venice and taking part in at Telluride, One to One will display screen at Sundance earlier than opening in IMAX theaters on April 11; streaming on Max in past due 2025

Diane Warren: Relentless

Photo courtesy MasterClass

Over the previous 4 many years, Diane Warren has confirmed herself to be a powerhouse, having written large hits for megastars (Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber) throughout genres, however like many behind-the-scenes of the tune business, the prolific songwriter’s tale hasn’t been instructed. Relentless offers a peek into each Warren’s lifestyles and her inventive procedure, and it feels suitable that MasterClass is house to the 15-time Academy Award nominee and Grammy, Emmy, and Golden Globe winner’s movie. Warren’s pals and collaborators, together with Cher, Gloria Estefan, Common, and Jennifer Hudson are featured.

Release date: In theaters on January 10 and streaming on MasterClass on January 16

Eno

Martin Godwin/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Music documentaries are a dime a dozen, however Gary Hustwit’s Oscar-shortlisted Eno, about mythical British digital pioneer Brian Eno, is in its personal class. Using generative instrument, Hustwit and virtual artist Brendan Dawes created a movie that’s by no means the similar two times. Each viewing places in combination uncommon archival photos, unreleased tune and authentic interviews into considered one of billions of conceivable permutations, making it a novel revel in every time—and reflecting the cutting edge musical technique of Eno himself.

Release date: Eno’s streaming debut is a 24-hour livestream tournament with marvel visitors on January 24; restricted tickets to be had

SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)

Photo courtesy Hulu

After the Oscar-winning good fortune of his 2021 documentary Summer of Soul, The Roots drummer and director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson has some other movie at the method. SLY LIVES! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) tells the tale of Sly & the Family Stone, masking the influential band’s upward push to reputation—and the eventual toll such good fortune took—with a distinct emphasis on its chief, Sly Stone. Like Summer of Soul, this documentary could also be a broader cultural exploration of the generation Stone was once a part of. It comprises interviews with tune business icons like André 3000, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan, Q-Tip, Nile Rogers, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, George Clinton, Ruth Copeland, and Clive Davis.

Release date: Premieres January 23 on the Sundance Film Festival, streaming February 13 on Hulu

An Update on Our Family

Photograph via Courtesy of HBO

This three-part collection, in response to a New York mag article via Caitlin Moscatello, uncovers the murky international of circle of relatives vlogging. It makes a speciality of one such account, created via folks Myka and James Stauffer, an Ohio-based couple who, on the top in their recognition in 2020, had over 1,000,000 fans. The Stauffers introduced their target audience in conjunction with them during the method of adopting a baby from China in 2017; a yr later, he mysteriously disappeared from their social pages, sparking controversy, hypothesis, and the eventual finish of the Stauffers’s profitable channels. An Update on Our Family tackles the advanced problems of kids’s privateness, the transnational adoption business, and the ethics of circle of relatives vlogs.

Release date: Streaming January 15 on Max

Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever

Courtesy Netflix

After creating a killing in tech and undertaking capitalism, entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has been on a determined quest to increase his lifespan at any value. The 47-year-old’s excessive biohacking tactics, explored on this document, come with strict vitamin and dozing schedules, common MRIs, fats injections, and maximum famously (and controversially) injecting himself with the blood plasma of his teenage son. Don’t Die, which could also be the title of Johnson’s web page (“We are at war with death and its causes,” it reads), investigates the bounds of the everlasting chase for immortality and whether or not Johnson is any nearer to getting there than all the ones seekers earlier than him.

Release date: January 1 on Netflix

Jerry Springer: Fights, Camera, Action

Photo courtesy Netflix

Running from 1991 to 2018, NBC’s Jerry Springer Show exemplified American trash TV—a forerunner to the truth fare that now overruns streamers (Springer, the dramatic communicate display’s good-natured, pot-stirring host, died in 2023 at 79). A brand new two-part documentary revels within the juicy drama that went on at the back of the scenes of the wild situations that performed out on-screen. It options in depth interviews with more than a few visitors and display staffers, together with manufacturer Richard Dominick, the animating pressure at the back of Springer’s flip from anodyne daylight TV to the sleazy however attention-grabbing cultural juggernaut it later become.

Release date: January 7 on Netflix

Sons of Ecstasy

Photograph via Courtesy of Max

From the staff at the back of Armie Hammer-expose House of Hammer, this documentary hones in at the 1990s drug industry in Arizona all over the peak of American rave tradition. Specifically, it makes a speciality of a “showdown” combat for the ecstasy empire between British stockbroker Shaun Attwood and his rival, Gerard Gravano—the son of New York mob hitman Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano. Told thru first-person accounts, together with from Gerard himself, Sons of Ecstasy is a slice-of-life take a look at arranged crime within the American Southwest.

Release date: January 9 on Max

Selena y Los Dinos

Photo courtesy Sundance Film Festival

Thirty years after her homicide, a brand new documentary focuses now not on Selena Quintanilla’s dying however on her complete and colourful lifestyles. Filmmaker Isabel Castro mixed interviews with Quintanilla’s shut family and friends with non-public house movies and different archival, never-before-seen photos to color an intimate image of the celebrity singer off and on the degree.

Release date: Premieres January 26 on the Sundance Film Festival and to be had January 30-February 2 for virtual go holders

The Alabama Solution

Photo courtesy Sundance

Andrew Jarecki, most likely easiest identified for 2015’s Emmy-winning The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, returns to Sundance with a tale concerning the jail commercial advanced and its inequities. The Alabama Solution facilities on a gaggle of incarcerated males seeking to reveal a dangerous jail cover-up and, in doing so, sheds gentle at the dysfunctionality and brutality of the American justice machine.

Release date: Premieres January 28 on the Sundance Film Festival

Deaf President Now!

Apple News

In 1988, scholars at Gallaudet University effectively protested towards the appointment of a listening to president over the famend college’s predominantly Deaf pupil frame, marking a vital turning level within the motion for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Deaf President Now!, which paperwork this inspiring however lesser-known tale, was once co-directed and produced via style, actor, and fourth-generation Deaf recommend Nyle DiMarco and Academy Award-winner David Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth). In addition to interviews with key figures of the motion at Gallaudet, the movie makes use of an experimental narrative methodology referred to as Deaf Point of View, mixing pictures and sound design to recreate a semblance of the Deaf revel in for its target audience. In a free up, DiMarco stated, “This film not only preserves a pivotal moment in civil rights history but also celebrates the resilience of my Deaf community, whose triumphs deserve to be recognized, celebrated, and remembered.”

Release date: Premieres January 28 on the Sundance Film Festival; to be had January 30-February 2 for virtual go holders; streaming TBA 2025 on Apple TV+

Devil within the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke

Photo courtesy Hulu

Family vlogging is a scorching subject this yr; the unregulated business could also be explored in Devil within the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, which tells the tale of the titular Utah vlogger and her stressful fall from grace. Arrested for kid abuse in August 2023, Franke had till then broadcast her idyllic circle of relatives lifestyles as a mom of six to the 2.5 million fans of her extremely in style YouTube channel, “8 Passengers.” Notably, this collection comprises in-depth interviews with Frankes’s two eldest kids and her husband, Kevin, about what in point of fact took place of their house.

Release date: February 27 on Hulu

Apocalypse within the Tropics

Cinematic Media

Four years after liberating her Oscar-nominated documentary, The Edge of Democracy, Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa returns with some other movie exploring her house nation’s contentious political panorama and long run. Originally billed as a take a look at former president Bolsonaro’s arguable reaction to the pandemic, Apocalypse within the Tropics (which was once made in partnership with Brad Pitt’s manufacturing corporate, Plan B) ended up specializing in distinguished televangelist Silas Malafaia for instance of Brazil’s Evangelical motion and its rising affect at the executive. By analyzing the issues dealing with Brazil’s rather younger democracy, Costa sheds gentle on equivalent problems cropping up world wide.

Release Date: Streaming later this yr on Netflix

Untitled Melania Trump Documentary

Newsday LLC/Newsday/Getty Images

Melania Trump is government generating this as-yet-untitled documentary about herself, which was once received via Amazon Prime Video for a reported $40 million and can be launched in the second one part of 2025. The movie, directed via Brett Ratner and that includes cameos from each the President and their son Barron Trump, will in all probability be a moderately flattering portrait of the enigmatic and polarizing First Lady as she returns to the White House for Trump’s 2nd time period.

Release: Mid-2025 on Amazon Prime Video

Musk

Taylor Hill/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

The results of documentarian Alex Gibney’s years-long investigation into Elon Musk couldn’t come at a greater time. Just because the South African Tesla founder and X proprietor has won an immediate line to the manager workplace, Gibney’s movie, Musk, is reported to be a “definitive and unvarnished examination” of the arena’s richest guy. Gibney isn’t any stranger to masking arguable topics, having made movies concerning the downfall of Enron, the Church of Scientology (Going Clear), and huckster Elizabeth Holmes. On X, Musk referred to as the movie a “hit piece,” to which Gibney spoke back, “How would you know?” There’s no authentic free up date, however Musk is predicted out this yr.

Release date: TBD—each HBO and Universal have distribution rights

Untitled Luigi Mangione Documentary

XNY/Star Max/GC Images/Getty Images

Gibney is additionally taking at the contemporary killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and his alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione. The December 4 homicide in Midtown Manhattan spark off a multi-day manhunt and a national dialog concerning the state of the USA medical insurance business. With 26-year-old Mangione now in custody, it’s most likely that the dialog is handiest simply starting. Gibney’s manufacturing corporate is teaming up with Anonymous Content to make the untitled mission.

Release date: TBD

Untitled Titan Submersible Disaster Story

INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

In 2023, Aron Arngrimsson was once the closing user to look the five-man staff of the OceanGate Titan submersible alive, final the hatch door himself at the ill-fated expedition. An knowledgeable diver and underwater filmmaker, Arngrimsson is the usage of his intimate wisdom of the staff and his distinctive ability set to create a documentary concerning the exploration-turned-disaster. Using first-hand photos from that day, the untitled document will reportedly focal point at the staff contributors who misplaced their lives, “revealing the family stories behind the media headlines.”

Release date: TBD


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