Best Foreign Documentary Films

Filmmaker James Marsh mixes actual footage with new re-enactments. He recreates Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire stunt: performing acrobatics on a wire strung between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Petit plots his feat like a master cat burglar. He enlists friends to calculate every detail, from getting building access to stringing the wire, pulling off an amazing crime.

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is a 2020 British documentary film. Alastair Fothergill, Jonathan Hughes, and Keith Scholey directed it. The film shows life on Earth through the eyes of the man who has seen more nature than anyone. For over 90 years, Attenborough visited every continent, exploring wild places and documenting living things. The film sends a message of hope for future generations addressing planet challenges.

Documentary photographer Zana Briski entered Calcutta's underworld to photograph prostitutes. She offered to teach the prostitutes' children photography basics so the kids could document their own lives on the streets of a poor city. The resulting photographs, often astonishing, appeared worldwide. Many are in this film, which won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2005.

At the end of each Antarctic summer, emperor penguins at the South Pole go to their breeding grounds. Luc Jacquet's documentary captures the mating ritual. The journey across frozen tundra is the simplest part. After the egg hatches, the female must move it to the male and return to the sea to feed herself and bring food to her chick.

German filmmaker Wim Wenders follows guitarist Ry Cooder and his son, Joachim. They travel to Cuba and gather top musicians to record an album. The project includes singer Ibrahim Ferrer and pianist Rubén González, both interviewed and in studio footage. The group then travels to the United States to perform for large audiences.

My Best Fiend is a 1999 German documentary film. Werner Herzog wrote and directed it. The film covers his difficult but productive relationship with German actor Klaus Kinski. Anchor Bay released it on DVD in 2000.

Archival footage and personal accounts show an intimate look at the life and career of British singer/songwriter Amy Winehouse.

Filmmakers show the horrifying mass executions of accused communists in Indonesia. They also show those celebrated in their country for committing the crime.

Nazis forced actor and filmmaker Kurt Gerron, stuck in a concentration camp, to make a propaganda movie.

An early '70s musician named Rodriguez faded in the U.S. obscurity. He became a huge hit in South Africa. Rumors spread about his death. Two obsessed fans sought to find the man's true fate.

This film shows the epic migration of winter birds. Filmed across all seven continents over four years, the footage forms one picture of a journey. The film shows the intense physical effort birds face on their separate paths. Viewers see the dangers they encounter, from garbage to hungry crabs.

Men and women, including former SS members and civilians, share their memories and views on the Holocaust.

An optician faces the men who killed a brother he never knew during the 1960s Indonesian genocide.

In 1975, as the Vietnam War ended, Operation Babylift brought thousands of orphans and Amerasian children to the United States. "Daughter from Danang" shows the story of one child, Heidi Bub (Mai Thi Hiep), and her Vietnamese mother, Mai Thi Kim, who separated at the war's end and reunited 22 years later.

Filmmaker Rithy Panh recreates the atrocities of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979.

A group risks their lives to save Yazidi women and girls held as sex slaves in the deadly ISIS camp, Al-Hol in Syria.

Thousands of Myanmar citizens protest the Asian nation's repressive regime in several cities. Dozens of monks join the marches. This documentary by Anders Ostergaard focuses on videographers and citizen journalists who defy the government crackdown, sending footage of the uprising to the world.

A journey across the planet explores the simple, strange ways dogs affect people's daily lives.

Filmmaker Elizabeth Lo follows three stray dogs as they find human companionship on Turkish streets.

A few men search for rare, costly, and tasty white Alba truffles deep in the forests of Piedmont, Italy.

Banksy, the infamous British graffiti artist, left his mark on cities globally. He met Thierry Guetta, a Los Angeles Frenchman who filmed underground art. Guetta later became the art phenomenon "Mr. Brainwash." Rhys Ifans narrates an overlapping documentary where real and fake art and celebrity blur.

Agnès Varda and photographer/muralist JR made a 2017 French documentary, Faces Places (aka Visages Villages). They traveled rural France and built an unexpected friendship.

Werner Herzog shot Fata Morgana in 1969, showing mirages in the Sahara desert. Lotte Eisner wrote the Mayan creation myth that some narration repeats, a text Herzog himself wrote.

Brave individuals risk their lives to protect the last mountain gorillas.

Famous feline Abatutu shows off cats' best and friskiest moments using a collection of home videos for this cat celebration.

Forester and author Peter Wohlleben talks about how trees live, die, and grow back.

A therapist's questions and access to a large archive drive a story about a day in the life of musician and cultural icon Nick Cave.

The story covers Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian woman whose two oldest daughters were radicalized by Islamic extremists.

Intrepid Viennese biologist Florian "Doc" Kaps risks his career and money to save the world's last Polaroid factory.

David Morris and Jacqui Morris directed the 2012 documentary film, McCullin.

This film tells the complete story of the man who embodied soccer, calling it "the beautiful game," and how he shifted the sport's history.

Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb directed This Is Not a Film, an Iranian documentary from 2011. It follows Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, stuck in jail awaiting a court verdict.

Ayrton Senna became a three-time Formula One racing champion and Brazil's national hero before he died at age 34.

Starting in 2005, Palestinian Emad Burnet records his village's fight against Israeli settlement expansion.

The film uncovers discrimination in Nigeria and explores charismatic, non-conformist youth. These youths must choose between fighting for free expression or fleeing to the United States. Through social media and bold creativity, they spark a cultural shift challenging gender, conformity, and civil rights ideals in Nigeria.

Actor Marlon Brando shares personal thoughts about audio tape, giving insight into his life and career.

The film shows how the Chinese government turned pandemic cover-ups in Wuhan into a success for the Communist Party.

In this gripping documentary, young, unaccompanied Central American children struggle through Mexico toward the United States border. Director Rebecca Cammisa follows these would-be illegal aliens as they face poverty, dangerous train rides, and predators, seeking a better life in a new country.

Matthew Heineman directed 'City of Ghosts' in this 2017 Arabic documentary film. The film shows the Syrian media activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently facing life under ISIS control in 2014, while they operate undercover, on the run, and in exile.

Billy Tipton, a jazz musician and transgender icon, has an extraordinary life and career.

Ari Folman wrote, directed, and starred in this autobiographical animated film. As a 19-year-old infantry soldier in the 1982 war with Lebanon, Folman saw the Sabra and Shatila massacre. He realizes he has no memory of the event. In 2006, he found others from Beirut to talk about their memories, including a psychologist treating post-traumatic stress disorders and the first journalist to cover the massacre.

Maite Alberdi directed this 2020 documentary, 'The Mole Agent' (Spanish: El agente topo). A private investigator hires an elderly man to go undercover in a nursing home in Chile.

Journalists found healthcare fraud after a deadly nightclub fire in Bucharest, Romania, in 2015.

'Kedi' is a 2016 Turkish documentary film by Ceyda Torun. The film profiles an ancient city and its people through the eyes of the most mysterious and beloved animal humans know: the Cat.

John Hull uses his recordings to explain the world of blindness.

'Sherpa' is a 2015 Australian documentary film directed by Jennifer Peedom. In 2013, media reported a shocking mountain brawl as European climbers fled angry Sherpas. Director Jennifer Peedom and her team sought the cause, intending to film the 2014 climbing season from the Sherpa's view. Instead, they captured Everest's greatest tragedy: a huge block of ice crashed onto the climbing route.

'The Story of the Weeping Camel' is a 2003 German docudrama from ThinkFilm, released internationally in 2004. Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni directed and wrote the movie. The plot follows nomadic shepherds in the Gobi Desert trying to save a rare white bactrian camel calf after its mother rejects it.

Millions of monarch butterflies live in the forests of Michoacán. Activist Homero Gómez spoke strongly for their preservation until he disappeared.

Hubert Sauper's Oscar-nominated documentary covers the Nile perch, a species introduced to Lake Victoria as an experiment in the sixties. Since then, the fish has destroyed other lake marine life and tends to eat its own young. The Nile perch is also the region's most profitable export; market participants downplay the ecological disaster.

On May 7, 2000, Mary Ann Stephens, aged 65, was shot in the head in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn in Jacksonville, Florida, while her husband watched. Ninety minutes later, 15-year-old Brenton Butler faced arrest. Investigators and the media treated this as just another messed-up youth, another wasted life.