Ten Must-Watch Documentaries Streaming On Netflix Australia Right Now

The arrival of Netflix to local browsers this year spelled good news for fans of House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black. In fact, you’ve probably already made your way through the latter’s third season. But amidst all this hype, there was little love given to the rest of the catalogue.

The Netflix Australian library is stacked with scores of must-see docos like Hoop Dreams, cult classics like Kurt & Courtney and crucial contemporary fare like The Act of Killing. Even better, since Netflix has become such a heavy hitter in the realm of film and TV production, there’s also some great original content in the mix such as Jehane Noujaim’s The Square and the Oscar-nominated Virunga.

Netflix’s iconically user-friendly interface makes it easy to search through all this, and with more titles (including more original content) on its way in the coming months, it’s clear there’s a lot more to get through.

Here are a few things to start you off:

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The Cove (2009), dir. Louie Psihoyos

However worthy the cause, the fact that a doco is about a pressing social issue doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good cinema. In this respect, The Cove towers above most of its kind; it’s the Citizen Kane of animal rights docos, and totally deserving of its Oscar win for Best Documentary. Invariably, reviews contend it plays like a thriller, but few thrillers are actually this compelling.

The film’s subject is dolphin trainer-turned-activist Ric O’Barry, whose work on the Flipper TV series in the ’60s helped popularise the marine park industry, to his lasting regret. For decades he’s led efforts to free dolphins from captivity, often through criminal action. The Cove chronicles his efforts to expose government-sanctioned dolphin slaughter in Japan. The piratical O’Barry recruits a team of adventurers, including director Louie Psihoyos, a veteran National Geographic photographer, for a high-tech covert mission to film the bloodbath in the remote Taiji Cove. The intrepid band’s Ocean’s 11-like preparations, the risks they take with local authorities, the hired thugs that come to stalk them, and the awful sense of impending doom for the dolphins all make for gut-wrenching viewing.

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Dirty Wars (2013), dir. Rick Rowley

Following American war correspondent Jeremy Scahill off the approved beaten path and into some truly dangerous places on the trail of shadowy US military operatives, this slick, noir-like documentary brings to light some of the foulest aspects of his government’s ever-expanding war on terror. Night raids in Afghanistan, support for Somali warlords and pre-emptive drone assassinations of US citizens in Yemen are all detailed with unflinching gore.

At first you half-wonder if simply watching this film will mark you down on some list. But, as Scahill says, these horrors are hidden in plain sight, and it’s almost impossible to sustain outrage in today’s media landscape. The world is now a battlefield, and the truths and values that led us down this path are now all but obscured by the fog of endless war. There are no good guys. Scahill takes us into a labyrinth of intrigue, but the result is a weary existentialist shrug; it’s the documentary version of Chinatown or No Country for Old Men.

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Kurt & Courtney (1998), dir. Nick Broomfield

If you’re looking for an enlightening, incisive doco about Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, look elsewhere. Directed by irrepressible English weirdo Nick Broomfield, who often bumbles about on camera with his sound recorder and headphones, Kurt & Courtney is a gonzo meditation on an American tragedy viewed out of focus, from the fringe.

With his funding slashed and no access to Nirvana’s music (thank’s to Love’s iron-fisted litigation), Broomfield sets out to tackle the conspiracy theories that implicate Love in her husband’s death, driving around the West Coast almost aimlessly in search of anyone who will talk to him. The more he chases the legend the less he (and the audience) knows.

Soon the film unravels into a series of disconnected, distorted but strangely affecting portraits of some of the oddballs who orbited the doomed couple, however briefly. Any of them could be from a David Lynch film: Love’s angry, estranged dad, hell-bent on discrediting her; the broken-down detective, still doggedly on the case; the feral circus-freak punk rocker who drunkenly snarls that Love offered him cash to kill Kurt. Looming in the background like a femme fatale villain is Love herself, whom Broomfield eventually confronts in an awkward, unforgettable fashion.

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011), dir. Werner Herzog

Herzog’s documentary about the prehistoric paintings in the Chauvet Cave in the south of France — at 35,000 years old, amongst humanity’s oldest works of art — might look and feel like a dry educational film, but it’s really one of the best docos of the past decade.

A big reason for this is the high stakes involved in filming: because the cave is subject to strict security and climate control, and very few people are ever allowed inside, Herzog was only given a few precious hours to film with a limited crew and special non-invasive equipment. There’s genuine suspense in watching them prepare for this literally once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. (What if the camera had jammed?)

As usual, the mad German genius inserts himself into the proceedings to splendid effect. Since most of us will never see this art in person, Herzog is our surrogate, and his childlike wonder and philosophical flights of fancy are a welcome accompaniment to the paintings’ breathtaking beauty. Through his ramblings and interviews with archaeologists working on the site, Herzog ponders the obviously advanced artistic and spiritual yearnings of these ancient people, making the things they have in common with us apparent across incredible gulfs of time.

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Man on Wire (2008), dir. James Marsh

On August 7 1974, a Frenchman named Philippe Petit strung a wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and performed a tightrope act 450 metres above the streets of New York. By the time he was arrested a few minutes later he was a folk hero. This impossibly mad and daring act, equal parts art and swashbuckling crime, needs nothing else to sell a documentary, but we’re lucky James Marsh got the job: Man on Wire is a splendidly intricate and emotive study of this sublime moment.

Interestingly, the film never mentions 9/11, but it doesn’t need to; the whole thing is already steeped in constant dread. Sadly no footage of the stunt exists, but Marsh mashes up interviews with the eloquently puckish Petit and his accomplices, their reconnaissance photos, old footage of the WTC and recreations of their painstaking planning and execution (involving Jason Bourne-like intrigue and ingenuity). It’s a dazzling, haunting reverie, enhanced by a great soundtrack featuring ethereal compositions by Erik Satie, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Fleetwood Mac.

One warning: even on a small screen in the safety of your home, watching this film — beautiful as it is — will induce dizzying rushes of vertigo.

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Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), dir. Mark Hartley

With outrageous ocker comedies (The Naked Bunyip), softcore porn (Fantasm Comes Again), and cult horror (Razorback, Howling 3: The Marsupials), Australian genre cinema in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s exploded onscreen in an orgy of sex and violence that sent shockwaves around the world’s grindhouses. Not Quite Hollywood is fanboy director Mark Hartley’s full-barrelled, fully-cocked tribute to this glorious bygone era when fly-by-night filmmakers churned out cheap, locally produced trash for quick cash and accidentally started a cinematic revolution.

As dodgy as this lowbrow folk were, their cheeky, free-spirited rebellion —a follow-on from the counterculture — effectively challenged the status quo. Hartley also makes a convincing case that the huge success of this uniquely Aussie phenomenon also helped permanently establish the local film industry we have today. Their grimy aesthetic was a huge influence on a later generation of more legit filmmakers, especially Quentin Tarantino who appears here foaming at the mouth about his favourite Oz flicks.

Other interview subjects include Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Thompson, Barry Humphries and George Miller and the near-constant highlight clips featuring car crashes, gunshots, vomit, bare breasts, monsters and severed heads make for one hell of a supercut.

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Hoop Dreams (1996), dir. Steve James

Roger Ebert wrote, “A film like Hoop Dreams is what movies are for … It gives us the impression of having touched life itself.” Unsurprisingly, it’s widely considered one of the greatest documentaries ever made.

At first you may wonder what that hype is about; Steve James’s study of two high-school basketball prodigies from inner-city Chicago has the unassuming production value of public television, which is where it was originally intended as a 30-minute short. James soon realised he’d tapped into a monumental story about American life — specifically African American life — and spent six years following the two players and their families through wrenching ups and downs on and off the court, with a gripping, brilliantly edited three-hour epic the result.

Watching soft-spoken, intense William Gates and canny, babyfaced Arthur Agee grow and change onscreen as their diverging destinies unfold is quietly devastating. The film is consequently often cited as an influence on Boyhood. It’s also a great, exciting sports film, but basketball is just a framework. The film is really about the year-in, year-out drama of ordinary lives rarely seen in the media, and the grinding cruelty of the systems and power structures arrayed against these kids’ communities.

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The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (2011), dir. Morgan Spurlock

The films of merry doco-prankster Morgan Spurlock, who famously nearly killed himself eating a month’s worth of McDonald’s in Super Size Me, are often dismissed as glib and gimmicky, but that style is perfectly suited to creating impact with this look at product placement in films. Here, Spurlock sets out to make a “docbuster” loaded with corporate sponsorship and characterised by little else.

At first his hustle bears little fruit — the marketing execs he meets are understandably dubious after his assault on Maccas. When he finally lands a major sponsor (spoiler alert: the full, and very delicious, title is POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold) he’s awash in corporate cash, cheerfully halting the “documentary” to flog products left and right.

Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader appear to talk gamely about how compromised by corporate America our media and visual environment have become, but we can see it in action in the boardroom and onscreen here. We laugh so that we may not cringe. A visit to São Paolo, Brazil, where there are no ads on the city streets, provides the brilliant counterpoint that makes this all sink in — the place looks like an alien landscape.

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The Square (2013), dir. Jehane Noujaim

The Square is a street-level view of the bitter struggle for the control of Egypt between the youth movement that led the Egyptian Revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the military strongmen who took over Mubarek’s government. These forces centre on the now-hallowed battleground of Cairo’s Tahrir Square. A lesser film about this topic might end triumphantly with the ouster of Hosni Mubarek in February 2011. But revolution is never so easy; here, director Jehane Noujaim takes that euphoric moment as a starting point for a film about the upheaval that still continues.

Noujaim gained remarkable access to a coalition of revolutionaries, Egyptians from all walks including a tireless activist, an outspoken musician, the well-known British-born actor Khalid Abdalla and a Muslim Brotherhood member sympathetic to the youth. Her cameras capture the constant tension, the passionate discourse, and the people’s fierce desire to determine the future of their country that would make a cynical Westerner feel ashamed. Throughout, the film is punctuated by incredible point-blank footage of the many street battles that have taken place since 2011 with stomach-churning violence and bloodshed to remind us how much there is still at stake.

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Waltz With Bashir (2008), dir. Ari Folman

Few recent films have pushed the boundaries of nonfiction storytelling as much as this: an animated meditation of filmmaker Ari Folman’s own harrowing experiences serving in the Israeli army during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Folman was a witness to the lead-up and aftermath of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanese camps were slaughtered by Lebanese right-wingers while the Israelis stood by and did nothing.

Waltz With Bashir is part reminiscence, part therapy, and part confession as Folman excavates his untrustworthy and shellshocked memories. You can sense his terrible guilt through the narration and fictionalised interviews that are the soundtrack to this hallucinatory fever dream. The animation’s hypnotically constrained movement (it was digitally produced from live-action video) and beautifully desaturated colours lend the horrors of war and death — and the strange mental states people enter to deal with them — a surreal dimension that entirely separates Waltz With Bashir from other cinematic investigations of history. It’s one of the most unforgettable films about war ever made.

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Jim Poe is a writer, DJ, and editor based in Sydney. He serves as publications and content manager at the Sydney Film Festival, contributes to inthemix and The Guardian and co-hosts The DHA Weekly on Bondi Beach Radio. He tweets from @fivegrand1