Historical Documentary Movies

Using original footage and interviews, this documentary tells the nail-biting story of Apollo 13 and the struggle to bring its astronauts safely home.

What happened after Einstein fled Nazi Germany? Using archival footage and his own words, this docudrama dives into the mind of a tortured genius.

Working from the text of James Baldwin’s unfinished final novel, director Raoul Peck creates a meditation on what it means to be Black in the...

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single...

Using archival footage, cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the 85-year-old Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts his life, from...

In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak...

Thirty years after the release of his film JFK (1991), filmmaker Oliver Stone reviews recently declassified evidence related to the assassination of...

This documentary delves into the mysteries surrounding the Neanderthals and what their fossil record tells us about their lives and disappearance.

A keen chronicle of the unlikely rise to power of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and a dissection of the Third Reich (1933-1945), but also an analysis of...

In 1968, art students Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell made a trippy photo collage for their musician friends Syd, David and...

Thanks to new excavations in Mauritius and Madagascar, as well as archival and museum research in France, Spain, England and Canada, a group of...

The mass murder of Jewish people by the Nazi regime is chronicled, with a warning that anti-Semitism is on the rise and the events of the Holocaust...

Egyptian archeologists dig into history, discovering tombs and artifacts over 4,000 years old as they search for a buried pyramid in this documentary.

On January 6, 2021, Americans witnessed an attack on the U.S. Capitol without precedent in our history. Armed militiamen and QAnon followers made...

On the centenary of Sarah Bernhardt's death, we take a look back at the whimsical life of the whimsical and eventful life of "la Divine", who defied...

The sinking of the RMS Titanic remains one of the most enduring and mysterious tragedies of the 20th century. For decades, investigators and amateurs...

An examination of the intimate life of America's most consequential president, Abraham Lincoln. As told by preeminent Lincoln scholars and never...

The story of one of the great environmental disasters to befall the United States, and the terrible movie that helped bring the catastrophe to light.

In Iasi, Romania, from June 28 to July 6, 1941, nearly 15 000 Jews were murdered in the course of a horrifying pogrom. At the time, the programmed...