All the Adam Curtis documentaries are worth seeing in my opinion. I would try to watch them chronologically, so you can see how his theories develop over time. The must see short list I recommend would be:

The Century of the Self - 2002

The Power of Nightmares - 2004

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom - 2007

It Felt Like a Kiss - 2009

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace - 2011

HyperNormalisation - 2016

Can’t Get You Out of My Head - 2021

Craig Baldwin directed a great documentary about intellectual property and music production titled Sonic Outlaws - 1995

An oldie, but well worth the watch, is titled The Atomic Cafe - 1982

Stare Into the Lights My Pretties - 2017 is about our new found pastime: screen time

And on that note I will stop for now.

The Ken Burns documentary series on the Vietnam War is excellent. Probably the best documentary I’ve seen.

- The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (maybe my all-time favorite)

- Dear Zachary (IT WILL RUIN YOUR DAY, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED)

- I Think We’re Alone Now

And reiterating all of the Adam Curtis recommendations. I especially like HyperNormalisation. I don’t know of anything else like his documentaries.

• Burden of Dreams
• Cats of Mirikitani
• Tickled +1
• The Hermit of Treig
• Free Solo
• Into Eternity: A Film for the Future
• Bureau 39: Kim’s Cash Machine
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi
• The Silence of Others
• Palio
• The Ambassador
• The Babushkas of Chernobyl
• The Act of Killing
• The Kingmaker
• Grande Hotel (2010)
• He Dreams of Giants
• HyperNormalisation +1
• The Extraordinary Voyage (2011)
• The Power of Nightmares
• Feng ai ('Til Madness Do Us Part)

• Dominion
• Cowspiracy
• What the Health
• The Game Changers
• Forks Over Knives
• That Sugar Film

Plenty of others, but there’s a theme here.

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Dick Proenneke - Alone in the Wilderness

This isn’t so much a documentary as it is a video blog, but it’s so worth it.

Recorded back in the late 1960s it is a self documented story of one man moving to remote Alaska and building a cabin/homestead in that untamed wilderness.

I cannot recommend this enough. It’s thoughtful, peaceful, and heartwarming.

Koyaanisqatsi, while not a traditional documentary, is a truly fascinating time capsule featuring a great soundtrack from Phillip Glass. It’s all images/video with no dialog or voiceover. It’s a unique experience (especially in an altered state of mind)

Sick Around the World, a PBS Frontline documentary, is a good one for Americans. Comparing healthcare systems in multiple countries.

Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation (2016)

‘It argues that governments, financiers, and technological utopians have, since the 1970s, given up on the complex “real world” and built a simpler “fake world” run by corporations and kept stable by politicians.’

Searching for sugarman

Dirty Wars is a 2013 American documentary film about American foreign policies and war crimes. It was the first time that I heard about their manipulations, wars and assassinations.

Closer to the Edge - Available on youtube for free, and is a glimpse inside the madness of the Isle of Man TT. I am not a huge fan of motorsports, but this is a fantastic and epic watch that follows a bunch of rides in the run up and through the TT.

If you like sports, Ballon sur Bitume: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhW2CwKXsfE

They Shall Not Grow Old, and the bonus “making of”, is an incredible WW1 documentary and one of my favorite documentaries I’ve ever seen.