The Best Documentaries of 2022

Whether it’s celebrities, gun violence, systemic racism, addiction, or love, these movies made common problems feel new.

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30 Olivia Rodrigo: Driving Home 2 U

Follow Olivia Rodrigo as she recounts the memories of writing and creating her debut album. Take a look on her journey from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles.

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29 Fire of Love

Intrepid scientists and lovers Katia and Maurice Krafft died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: unraveling the mysteries of volcanoes by capturing the most explosive imagery ever recorded.

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28 The Andy Warhol Diaries

After he’s shot in 1968, Andy Warhol begins documenting his life and feelings. Those diaries, and this docuseries, take a peek behind his persona.

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27 Moonage Daydream

A cinematic odyssey exploring David Bowie’s creative and musical journey. From visionary filmmaker Brett Morgen, and sanctioned by the Bowie estate.

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26 Benjamin Franklin

Exploring the life and work of writer and publisher, scientist and inventor, diplomat and signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution: Benjamin Franklin.

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25 Our Father

Jacoba Ballard decided to take a DNA test one day, in hopes of finding one or two half-siblings with the same sperm donor. “Growing up, I felt different,” she says in the documentary’s trailer. But when she found seven matches, she realized that she had stumbled across a major discovery: a shocking scheme involving donor sperm and a popular fertility doctor.

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24 Jackass 4.5

Through outrageous, never-before-seen footage, witness the making of the Jackass crew’s last go at wild stunts.

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23 Gaming Wall St

Explores the stock market frenzy of GameStop, and how a group of armchair investors and online vigilantes ultimately helped expose the dark underbelly of Wall Street.

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22 Halftime

Global superstar Jennifer Lopez reflects on her multifaceted career and the pressure of life in the spotlight in this intimate documentary.

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21 Neymar: The Perfect Chaos

Beloved worldwide but also a lightning rod for critics, Neymar shares the highs and lows of his personal life and brilliant football career.

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20 Jackass Forever

Celebrating the joy of being back together with your best friends and a perfectly executed shot to the dingdong, the original jackass crew return for another round of hilarious, wildly absurd, and often dangerous displays of comedy with a little help from some exciting new cast. Johnny and the team push the envelope even further in Jackass Forever.

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19 Phoenix Rising

Actress and activist Evan Rachel Wood takes her experience as a survivor of domestic violence to pursue justice, heal generational trauma, and reclaim her story in a culture that instinctively blames women. The film intimately charts her journey as she moves toward naming her infamous abuser for the first time.

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18 The Janes

Police arrested seven women who were part of a clandestine network. Using code names, blindfolds and safe houses, they built an underground service for women seeking safe, affordable, illegal abortions calling themselves JANE.

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17 Elbrus. Point of No Return (Эльбрус. Точка невозврата)

On September 23, 2021, a group of tourists, accompanied by four instructor guides, climbed Elbrus, and on the way back they got into a snowstorm. Five people died, 11 were hospitalized with injuries and frostbite. The media wrote a lot about this case, and the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against the organizers of the campaign.

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16 Payment system. How does it work? (Платёжная система. Как это устроено?)

About how the payment system works, how bank cards are created, and what modern achievements are hidden from the eyes behind instant payment by card or phone.

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15 Return to Space

For the first time, Oscar-winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (“Free Solo,” “The Rescue”) point their lenses to the sky, covering the inspirational rise of SpaceX and Elon Musk’s two-decade effort to resurrect America’s space travel ambitions. Offering rare access inside the first crewed mission launched from U.S. soil since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011, this is an intimate portrait of the engineers and astronauts chosen for the historic moment. Following NASA veterans Bob Behnken, Doug Hurley, and their families in the leadup to launch, RETURN TO SPACE brings viewers along for their thrilling ride to the International Space Station, and into mission control with Musk and the SpaceX team as they bring them back to Earth for a dramatic splashdown return.

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14 Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

Outline the tragedy that occurred between March 2019 and December 2020, when two Boeing planes mysteriously crashed, causing the deaths of 346 people. As a result, the Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliner was grounded. While the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration resisted grounding the planes initially, they quickly discovered evidence of similar accidents, and by March 18th, 2019, all 387 aircraft were grounded.

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13 Girl in the Picture

A young mother’s mysterious death and her son’s subsequent kidnapping blow open a decades-long mystery about the woman’s true identity and the murderous federal fugitive at the center of it all.

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12 The Tinder Swindler

Swipe, swipe, swipe, It’s not easy to find love online, so when Cecilie matches with a handsome billionaire playboy, she can’t quite believe it when he turns out to be the man of her dreams. But dreams aren’t reality and by the time she discovers this international businessman isn’t who he says he is, it’s too late. He’s taken her for everything. Where this fairytale ends, a revenge begins.

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11 Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me

After years in the limelight, Selena Gomez achieves unimaginable stardom. But just as she reaches a new peak, an unexpected turn pulls her into darkness. This uniquely raw and intimate documentary spans her six-year journey into a new light.

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10 Babi Yar. Context

On September 29-30, 1941, Sonderkommando 4a of the Einsatzgruppe C, assisted by two battalions of the Police Regiment South and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, and without any resistance from the local population, shot dead 33,771 Jews in the Babi Yar ravine northwest of Kyiv. The film reconstructs the historical context of this tragedy through archive footage documenting the German occupation of Ukraine and the subsequent decade. When memory turns into oblivion, when the past overshadows the future, it is the voice of cinema that articulates the truth.

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9 Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy

Follows the life of Kanye West, in an intimate portrait as he builds his way from singer to businessman and becomes a global brand.

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8 What Is a Woman?

Political commentator Matt Walsh explores the changing concepts of sex and gender in the digital age, particularly the transgender rights movement, anti-transgender bigotry, and what it means to be a woman.

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7 Light & Magic

Showcasing the people of Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects division of Lucasfilm, this series takes us back in time as they create the effects for some of the biggest and most successful films of the last 45 years.

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6 The Rehearsal

The series is set in a world where nothing seems to ever work out as you had hoped, Nathan Fielder gives people the opportunity to rehearse for their own lives. HBO wouldn’t say whether it was scripted or more in the vein of Nathan For You.

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5 Tam Gde Nash Dom (Там, где наш дом)

Each of the characters personifies different professions, cultures and outlooks on life, but they definitely agree on one thing – in the boundless love for the place in which they live.

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4 The House That Dragons Built

HBO takes viewers behind the scenes of House of the Dragon. Each episode showcases everything from set construction and digital effects to cast interviews and producer insight.

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3 Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off

Follows famous skater Tony Hawk’s personal life, career and relationship with skateboarding, including never-before-seen footage and unprecedented access to Hawk, along with interviews with figures from the skateboarding world.

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2 Prehistoric Planet

A documentary that follows dinosaurs recreated with computer-generated imagery living around the globe in the Late Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago. It set out to depict dinosaurs using current palaeontological research such as feathered dinosaurs.

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1 Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts

Anlässlich des 20-jährigen Jubiläums von „Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen“ kommt es im Rahmen eines Specials zu einem großen Wiedersehen mit „Harry“ Daniel Radcliffe, „Ron“ Rupert Grint, „Hermine“ Emma Watson und vielen weiteren Stars aller acht „Potter“-Filme.

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