travel documentaries 2023

23 Binge-worthy Travel Documentaries on Netflix (2024)

By: Author Tracy Collins

Posted on Last updated: April 14, 2024

If you enjoy watching travel shows (whether for inspiration or research) you are in for a treat with this selection of the best travel documentaries on Netflix in 202 4

This eclectic list of Netflix travel documentaries and series will take you across every continent to meet the people, cultures, history and geography, natural wonders and wildlife that make up our beautiful planet.

Chosen by travel bloggers this is a selection of the best travel documentaries available on Netflix around the world.

Please bear in mind that not all these shows may be available on Netflix in your location ! If you would like unrestricted access to 15 Netflix libraries around the world (including Germany/USA/UK) we recommend Surfshark VPN. You only need 1 subscription to cover every gadget in your house. Click here for more information about Surfshark

Taco Chronicles

With surfshark vpn you can, dark tourist, down to earth, grand tours of the scottish islands, expedition happiness.

• Chef's Table

Somebody Feed Phil

Extreme engagement.

• Joanna Lumley's India

Chasing Coral

Magical andes, cuba and the cameraman, jack whitehall travels with my father, restaurants on the edge, tales by light, christiane amanpour: sex & love around the world, the serpent, the dawn wall, my octopus teacher, anthony bourdain: parts unknown, street food series (latin america and asia), more tv shows & movies from countries around the world, 23 best travel documentaries on netflix.

If you didn’t love the idea of eating tacos in Mexico City already, Taco Chronicles will make sure you do! In fact, you’ll discover that there’s even more to authentic Mexican tacos than you ever knew about.

In Taco Chronicles, you’ll go on a taco journey to Mexico City and beyond, to discover the unique types of tacos eaten in Mexico’s various regions and states. The show does start off in Mexico City, with the king of Mexican tacos — the taco al pastor.

From Mexico City, enjoy a virtual Mexican culinary food tour to its neighbouring state of Hidalgo, home of barbacoa (BBQ) tacos. Beyond Central Mexico, this food and travel documentary takes you all over Mexico.

In subsequent episodes of this two-season show, you’ll discover cochinita pibil (slow-roasted suckling pig) tacos in the Yucatan Peninsula, fried fish tacos in Baja California state on the west coast, cabrito (goat) tacos in Northern Mexico, and more.

Places/countries featured – Mexico

Chosen by Shelley of Travel Mexico Solo

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Over recent years, the public’s fascination with dark tourism destinations has boomed. Sites such as Chernobyl and Auschwitz draw in thousands of tourists every year. With so many of the population sharing a fascination for dark history, it is no wonder that so many have tuned into Netflix’s ‘Dark Tourist. 

The show follows journalist David Farrier as he travels around hoping to experience the most macabre destinations that the world has to offer. Farrier’s quest to unearth the morbid takes him to several high profile dark tourism destinations, including the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, on a JFK assassination tour and he even witnesses an exorcism in Mexico City.  

Although Farrier sometimes comes across as a mediocre Louis Theroux, this thought-provoking travel show succeeds in its aim and transports you into the unknown. The result is an interesting series that explores the darker side of life (and death).

Chosen by Sheree   of Winging the World

In the Netflix series Down To Earth , actor Zac Efron and wellness author Darin Olien travel across the globe learning about the wellness and sustainability efforts being made in numerous destinations.

Each of the eight episodes focuses on a different location and aspect of sustainability or personal wellness.

In the first episode, you’ll learn all about harnessing the earth’s energy in Iceland. From there, travel to Paris to see their efforts to reduce bottled water impacts, learn about sustainability in Costa Rica, and nutrition in Sardinia.

Also included in the series are food education in Lima, post-hurricane sustainability in Puerto Rico, London pollution reduction efforts, and Iquitos wellness in the Peruvian Amazon.

In one of the most intriguing segments, they learn about tap water differences from a water sommelier. The series lends a glimpse into some beautiful destinations and what locals are doing to keep them beautiful for decades to come.

Chosen by Samantha of PAonPause.com

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Historian and film-maker Paul Murton brings you on a fascinating journey to many Scottish islands over four seasons. He meets with locals; finds hidden gems; and explores the rich, unique, and sometimes tragic history of each of the islands. 

You may be surprised to find yourself binge-watching this relaxing travel documentary series. You will get caught up in Murton’s contagious curiosity about its people and his great admiration for its beauty. Every episode is filled with stunning scenery. The high production quality and engaging soundtrack heighten the enjoyment of the show. Fans can follow this up with his three other Scottish travel series.  

Queue up, Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands to enjoy some dreamy armchair travel or to gain a deeper understanding of the islands as you plan your trip to Scotland .  

Places featured: Isle of Skye , Islands of Loch Lomond, Hebridean Islands, Orkney Islands, and many more

Contributed by Erica at Trip Scholars

Expedition Happiness is a home movie/travelogue that follows the story of a German couple as they give up their life in Germany to do an epic road trip in the Americas with their dog Rudi.

The couple, whose names are Selima and Felix, purchased a yellow school bus in Florida for 9500 USD. After working on it for three months, they transformed it into their “Loft on Wheel”, a comfortable, spacious, and well-equipped adventure bus. 

The itinerary was to start in Alaska near Denali National Park , drive all the way down to Central America, cross over to South America, and finish in Argentina.

On their adventure, they documented all the incredible landscapes they saw, the people they met, and more.

Whether they were able to finish their epic adventure or not, you will have to find out on Netflix! 

Chosen by Sean of Living out Lau

Chef’s Table

Even if you’re not a foodie but love to travel, be sure to watch Chef’s Table on Netflix. This documentary series features renowned Chefs from around the world who are creating inspired culinary experiences.

Now in its 6th season with 30 episodes, the series doesn’t just showcase a chef’s creations, but takes you on a journey through each of their personal stories that has led to their creativity.

World renowned chefs like Italy’s Massimo Bottura will inspire you with how he came from humble beginnings to being on the world culinary stage. But one chef in particular has inspired us to travel for her food — Chef Ana Rôs, owner of  Hiša Franko restaurant  in Kobarid, Slovenia. 

After initially pursuing a career track in business, she spent years honing her craft and experimenting with the local foods of her native Slovenia. Today, she is now one of the top chefs in the world, Hiša Franko is one of the 50 Best Restaurants in the World and newly Michelin-rated — and our dinner there on my birthday might possibly be the best meal of my life.

Watch the series and decide where your next culinary adventure will be.

Chosen by Lori of travlinmad.com

In “Somebody Feel Phil”, the creator of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” Phil Rosenthal, travels the world to indulge in the scrumptious local cuisine and to learn more about the culture of these destinations.

There are currently four seasons on Netflix and each episode features a different city around the world. This documentary does a great job of portraying local customs and traditions and viewers will feel like they’re actually in that city with the locals.

Phil has a childlike wonder to him when he’s learning about the different cultures and he answers basically any potential questions the viewers could have about the destination. One of the best parts about the documentary is watching Phil turn the strangers he meets into his family. 

Places featured – Bangkok, Saigon, Tel Aviv, Lisbon, New Orleans, Mexico City, Venice , Dublin, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Cape Town, New York City, Marrakesh, Chicago, London, Seoul, Montreal, Rio De Janeiro, San Francisco, Singapore, the Mississippi Delta, and Hawaii. 

Chosen by Disha of Disha Discovers

While most people get engaged and then begin planning their perfect wedding, Tim and PJ, stars of the Netflix show Extreme Engagement, do anything but that. Instead, Tim and PJ get engaged and then set out on a worldwide exploration of marital traditions around the world. 

The couple journeys to places such as Mongolia, Brazil, China, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea facing challenging experiences along the way that has them questioning their relationship and each other. 

You get to see a glimpse inside the cross-cultural challenges associated with a new romance along with an interesting insight into how other cultures celebrate love and marriage. 

Chosen by Michelle Snell from That Texas Couple

International travellers Scott Wilson and Justin Lukach cross the world and push their limits on an expedition to find genuine, unforgettable experiences.

DEPARTURES is an international award-winning and inspiring television travel series that will take you on the journey of a lifetime and beyond. From epic landscapes to unforgettable culture, learn what it takes to make it all happen through personal successes, crushing disappointments and memorable new friendships that could only be made by travelling abroad.

With two episodes for every continent, DEPARTURES will arm and reassure your wanderlust with hours of riveting programming that captures the beauty, drama, wonder and humor of taking a leap abroad.

DEPARTURES covers every aspect of world travel, showing you exactly what to expect at destinations around the globe. From beaches in Bali and cruising in the South Pacific Islands, to trekking on Mt Kilimanjaro and sailing up icebergs off Greenland, DEPARTURES takes you straight into a location’s unique atmosphere… giving viewers insight into a whole new way of life.

Places featured – Nearly 30 countries around the world including Japan, New Zealand and Russia

Chosen by Casandra of Karpiak Caravan Adventure Family Travel

Joanna Lumley’s India

Joanna Lumley is a British actress probably most well-known for her role as the outrageous Patsy of Absolutely Fabulous. What is perhaps less known about her is that she was born in Kashmir, India, in 1946, and the descendent of British colonists in India going back to 1777.

Originally aired in 2017 with three episodes, Joanna Lumley’s India takes viewers on a personal trip across the country where she explores modern India and finds connections to members of her own family and the experience of being and speaking English in India .

Lumley has also hosted travel shows on Japan, the Silk Road, the Caribbean, and the Trans-Siberia express train.

Places featured:  Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, Gujarat, Mumbai, Ranthambhore National Park, Delhi, and Srinagar, Kashmir.

Chosen by Mariellen of Breathedreamgo

Chasing Coral is a fascinating documentary about the disappearance of coral around the world. In this chasing coral, a team of divers, researchers and photographers set out on an ocean adventure to document the bleaching of Coral in warming seas. This phenomenon is when corals lose their beautiful and vibrant colors to become white, dying shortly after. 

The point of this documentary is to show that the coral’s death is the result of climate change and the rise in temperatures that are absorbed by the oceans. 

The documentary takes us to some of the most beautiful destinations in the world such as the Florida Keys, Hawaii and the Bahamas. More than that, this documentary also shows the important damage climate change has done to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. 

I definitely recommend this documentary to anyone who wants to really understand the impact of human activity on the ocean’s ecosystem. 

Chosen by Camille from Everything Yoga Retreat

Magical Andes is one of the best travel documentaries on Netflix if you are looking to learn about the natural gems of South America. When searching amongst the 100’s of other documentaries you’ll find this particular docuseries created by Luis Ara and Alexandra Hardorf concentrates solely on the magical landscape of the Andes mountain range. 

This docuseries not only shows you all about the longest continental mountain range in the world, but talks about the wildlife, lakes, and forests, deserts, volcanoes, and other Mother Earth creations that exist in that region. 

Magical Andes focuses on truly stunning imagery and gives you a look into some of the  best places to visit in South America  that you simply wouldn’t see passing through in a car.

Places featured  – In season one, the Netflix documentary features spectacular views from Argentina and Chile. Then from the Aconcagua desert in Bolivia over to some of the more ancient cultures in Peru. The lush mountain of Colombia and Ecuador are also featured.

Chosen by Daniel of LayerCulture.com

If you’ve ever thought of visiting Cuba there are many Cuban movies and documentaries to help you to research your trip, but none are as epic as this one. 

Many people believe that Cuba is a country frozen in time, but this Netflix documentary features Jon Alpert’s travels to Cuba over a span of nearly five decades. 

And while the relationships between the United States and Cuba has been fragmented at times, he visited each time as an American journalist. It starts in 1970s, just over a decade since the Cuban revolution when the country was thriving. 

Instead of giving his perspective on Cuba, he interviews three families who share their own stories of every day life. He continues to visit Cuba to find these families to update their stories. Over the decades the political situation and relationship with the United States changes quite dramatically.

And while he also interviews Fidel Castro, most of the film is really about everyday Cubans and their highs and lows.

Chosen by Ayngelina of Baconismagic.ca

Jack Whitehall is a British comedian who attended private school and has a somewhat disjointed relationship with his father Michael because of this. Jack also never got to take a gap year before going to university so season one of Travels with my Father is all about Jack finally embarking on a traditional ‘gap year’ trip to Southeast Asia. The twist is he takes his father with him so they can strengthen their bond.

The series takes place in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and highlights some of the gap year activities that can be done including full moon parties on the beach and visiting Angkor Wat. By the end of their travels, they reflect on what they have learned about each other and themselves.

The show continues in a similar fashion in the subsequent seasons where Michael takes Jack on a culture and history tour around Europe, Jack shows Michael everything the US has to offer, and both his mother and father join him for a road trip in Australia.

Chosen by Steph from Book It Let’s Go!

If you love travel, design and food, Restaurants on the Edge needs to be on your Netflix list. In each episode, the show highlights a restaurant in a stunning location. 

The restaurants get a makeover from a design expert and the menu often gets an upgrade from the show’s chef, the goal is to take struggling restaurants and make them sustainable for the business owners. 

There are currently two seasons of Restaurants on the Edge on Netflix, with locations throughout the world. 

In season one, you’ll be treated to beautiful ocean views in Malta, as well as stunning architecture. The views continue with a cliff side restaurant in Costa Rica. 

Season two will take you around the world again, with restaurants in Finland, St. Croix and Arizona. 

Not only is it fun to see the upgrades these restaurants go through, but it’s also inspiring to see the impact the changes have on each person’s life making this show a must-watch. 

Chosen by Alenis of seasaltandfog.com  

If you are a fan of Italy, Italian art and History, then watch the gorgeous and surprisingly brutal history of the famous Medici’s of Florence.

The Netflix show is so well done with gorgeous cinematography, beautiful costumes and stage settings. The show includes all the surrounding countryside and historic sites that document the Medici Family and their major influence on Florence, Venice, and even Rome (two popes were related to the Medici family).

It also showcases early Catholic power and greed. The Pope had absolute power and a religious mission that seemed corrupt whichever person was Pope and ruler. 

The Medici focus really hits the major sites of the city and also the start of the Renaissance period in Italy. The crowning of the main dome in the cathedral was a major achievement during this time frame and it was really fascinating to see how this was depicted and shown in development and the struggles of the Medici family to get this undertaking done.

Also, it was interesting to see how easy it was during that time frame to create wealth and also lose it depending on your affiliations and business relationships with the pope and other influential rulers of that time.

Watch the Medici’s on Netflix and if you visit Florence, you’ll gain a better understanding of the Medici fame and fortune in the area.

Chosen by Noel of Oahu Travel Now

Below Deck is a series of reality TV shows. Each show is set on a luxury yacht which is rented out by wealthy charter guests, but the real action is with the young yacht crew, or yachties, who serve them, the characterful captains who lead them and the stunning locations. The original Below Deck was so successful that it rapidly gained two spin offs, Below Deck Mediterranean and Below Deck Sailing Yacht.

The original Below Deck saw the crew sail around Sint Maarten in the Caribbean, followed by seasons in the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, the US Virgin Islands, Tahiti, Thailand and Antigua.

Below Deck Mediterranean’s locations have included Mykonos in the Greek Islands, Split and Cavtat in Croatia, the Amalfi Coast in Italy, the Cote d’Azur in the south of France and Mallorca in Spain’s Balearic Islands. Below Deck, Sailing Yacht has only had one series, set in Corfu.

Contributed by Helen of HelenOnHerHolidays.com

The documentary series “Tales by Light” follows renowned professional filmmakers and photographers as they visit worldwide destinations and capture fascinating content which highlights different features of the natural world. 

Every episode focuses on a different subject such as wildlife, the oceans, landscapes, adventure activities, or cultural practices and traditions. The distinct approaches of the featured photographers really help to bring the stories to life and this program presents many less well-known countries and regions in a compelling way using panoramic landscapes and stunning visuals. 

The first season explores multiple destinations per episode, with visits to Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Alaska and Colorado in the United States, Vanuatu, the Himalayas, Antarctica, Ethiopia and Uganda.

The second season covers Kenya, Norway, Brazil, the Bahamas, India and Namibia, and the third season highlights Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Australia.

This series presents a journey across the globe and is sure to inspire travellers who are looking for their next adventure.

Contributed by Claire from  Claire Pins Travel  

In this cultural travel show, CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour (who in the past has covered major stories from countries like  Iran , Rwanda, and Pakistan) travels to six different cities around the world to explore women’s love lives across multiple cultures. She talks to experts in the field as well as everyday people — revealing facts and details that give a very insightful glimpse into the culture and values of women around the world. 

Christiane is a natural at asking just the right questions and at shining a spotlight on the stories of the women in each city.

While this show focuses heavily on love and sex, viewers will get to learn a whole lot about the overall mentality and life approach of each country — making this a perfect travel show that fosters deeper cultural appreciation.

Places featured – Tokyo (Japan), Delhi (India), Beirut (Lebanon), Berlin (Germany), Accra (Ghana), Shanghai (China)

Chosen by Jiayi of The Diary of A Nomad

Released at the beginning of 2021, The Serpent is not a travel show in and of itself, but it will inevitably allure travelers into visiting the many places explored by the main characters.

Aired on Netflix, the series tells the real story of Charles Sobhraj, a French serial killer of Indian and Vietnamese origins who in the mid-1970s drugged, robbed and killed a large number of backpackers travelling between Thailand, India and Nepal. 

Sobhraj and his Quebecoise girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc were finally identified as the authors of the crimes thanks to the work of Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg, who, albeit the many reservations of the Dutch ambassador to Thailand, set to investigate the disappearance of a Dutch couple and through a series of lead eventually managed to uncover the culprits.

Places featured: Over the course of 8 episodes you will be taken to Bangkok, the coast of Thailand, the peaks of Nepal, the streets of several Indian cities and even to Paris .

Chosen by Claudia Tavani of My Adventures Across The World

When Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson free climbed the Great Wall of the El Capitan rock face in the Yosemite National Park in 2018, the news spread like wildfire.

Dawn Wall is a US documentary about this story of perseverance and adventure.

Cameras follow these legendary free climbers as they undertake this nearly impossible task. It took Cadwell 7 years to reach the goal and we are given a detailed look into the events that led to this decision and the struggles that were involved throughout the journey.

There’s one constant theme that runs throughout the story and that is the strength of the human spirit.

This captivating documentary with great visuals should not be missed. The documentary is in English, but subtitles are available in different languages that include Spanish, French, and Chinese. 

Places featured : Yosemite National Park

Chosen by Rai from A Rai of Light

My Octopus Teacher is an award-winning and very heart-touching documentary on Netflix that covers how a filmmaker spent a year trying to capture a wild octopus on camera and also form a friendship with it. 

For about a year, Craig Foster films a wild octopus he came across while trying out free-diving through an underwater kelp forest in South Africa.

Over the period, Craig and the octopus develop a bond with the octopus almost showing Craig around and not being uninhibited by his presence as he follows it.

Craig watches as it protects itself, loses an arm to an attack and then regrows it too. At the end of the documentary, the octopus naturally passes away after mating and trying to protect its eggs. 

Filmed entirely near Cape Peninsula in South Africa, this beautiful documentary is not to be missed as it covers an offbeat relationship between man and nature. 

Places featured – A kelp forest off False Bay near Simon’s Town in South Africa

Chosen by Lavinia of Continent Hop

For the foodies of the world, who travel the world, and are strident realists about the world, “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” is an absolute must-watch.

Rugged, painfully honest, internationally renowned chef Anthony Bourdain travelled the globe in search of authentic food, people and life experiences. With no time for nonsense and all the time in the world for simple food done to perfection, he takes the viewer to eating establishments from tiny street food stalls to the finest of fine dining.

In his search for amazing food in amazing places, he guides you from the brutality of the Bornean jungle to the madness of Seoul’s foodie nightlife and the pure joy of a perfectly cooked steak in an Argentinian steakhouse accompanied by a glass of locally bottled Malbec. 

Parts Unknown leaves you an appetite for dinner and a bigger one for travel. Wanderlust is baked into every episode.

Chosen by Rosie of the Flying Fluskeys

The Street Food series is one for foodie lovers around the world to enjoy! Each episode follows the story of a local chef and how they started their now-famous street food shops.

From family restaurants to cultural fusions, you learn about a destination through food from the people who make it possible.

Volume one takes place in various Asian destinations, such as Bangkok (Thailand), Singapore, Delhi (India), Seoul (South Korea), and others.

The second volume takes place in Latin America, highlighting food in Salvador (Brazil), Bogota (Colombia), Lima (Peru), Oaxaca (Mexico), and more.

It is a delicious docuseries that will keep you salivating and also inspire you to understand how food and travel are one. Street Food will also encourage you to get out of your comfort zone if you normally avoid street food!

It is the ideal blend of travel and food for everyone to indulge in from home.

Chosen by Sojourner of Sojournies.com

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Second-Half Travels

Adventures of a Fifty-Something Cubicle Escapee

13 Best Travel Documentaries on Netflix (2023)

These Netflix documentaries about travel will pacify your wanderlust between trips as you explore the world from the comfort of your couch.

Here are some of the best travel documentaries on Netflix in the US as of July 24, 2023. Many are also available in other countries. Watch them while you can, because content disappears as licensing agreements expire.

Also, don’t miss the bonus list of travel documentaries on Amazon Prime below.

Table of Contents

Netflix Travel Documentaries

1. dark tourist.

Netflix meets Vice in this travelogue by New Zealand filmmaker David Farrier, who sets his sights on the world of dark tourism.

From a nuclear lake to a haunted forest, he visits macabre — and sometimes dangerous — tourist destinations around the world.

Countries : Various

2. Street Food: Latin America

Experiencing street food culture is one of the joys of travel. This mouth-watering docuseries travels to Latin America to meet the local stars of street food.

Countries : Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, and Bolivia

3. Street Food: Asia

This inspiring series from the makers of Chef’s Table is as much about the compelling survival stories of these talented street chefs as it is about their signature dishes.

The first season takes the viewer to nine Asian destinations.

Countries : Thailand, Japan, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam

4. Pedal the World

Over the course of one memorable and adventure-filled year, German-born Felix Starck documents his 18,000-kilometer bicycle journey across 22 countries.

The Oscar-nominated heart-rending true story of the rangers risking their lives to save Africa’s most precious national park and its endangered gorillas.

Country: Congo

6. Chef’s Table

Each episode of this Emmy-nominated docuseries visits a different international location for an in-depth interview with one of the world’s most renowned chefs.

Creator David Gelb also directed the critically acclaimed Jiro Dreams of Sushi , and the two productions share a similar emotional and artistic sensibility hallmarked by compelling narratives and mesmerizingly beautiful cinematography.

7. Magical Andes

No English subtitles available for trailer – but you don’t need them to admire the stunning photography

From Argentina to Colombia, this inspiring documentary follows five characters who share their deep connection to South America’s majestic mountains.

Countries: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia

8. Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Chef David Chang brings his trademark irreverent humor and curiosity to Vancouver, Marrakech, Los Angeles, and Phnom Penh as he explores the culture and food accompanied by various celebrity guests.

Countries : Canada, Morocco, US, Cambodia

9. The Trader (Sovdagari)

At only 23 minutes, this award-winning documentary short provides a fascinating and poignant window into impoverished rural life in post-Soviet Georgia.

The camera follows a traveling trader as he sells secondhand goods in exchange for potatoes. Beautiful cinematography that captures the stark Georgian landscape.

Country: Georgia

10. Ugly Delicious

Smart-ass chef David Chang leads his buddies on a mouthwatering, cross-cultural hunt for the world’s most satisfying grub.

Each episode of this highly original show tackles a topic like tacos, pizza, or dumplings, examining its cultural and culinary history and visiting different countries to compare how it’s made.

Warning: Chang can be obnoxious, and racial and political commentary is liberally sprinkled throughout the show, which may not be to everyone’s taste.

11. Period. End of Sentence.

This Oscar-winning documentary short takes us to rural India, where local women fight the stigma surrounding menstruation by manufacturing low-cost sanitary pads.

Country: India

12. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat

Based on Samin Nosrat’s best-selling book, this visually stunning series travels to the home kitchens of Italy, the southern islands of Japan, the heat of the Yucatán, and to Berkeley’s Chez Panisse.

Samin’s contagious laugh and genuine passion for cooking inspire as she explores the central principles of what makes food delicious.

Countries: Italy, Japan, Mexico, United States

13. Taco Chronicles

Note: No English subtitles available for YouTube trailer; click to watch subtitled trailer on Netflix Warning: Don’t watch if you’re hungry. Explore the complex histories of the world’s most beloved tacos in this love letter to the iconic handheld food.

Country : Mexico

Travel Documentaries on Amazon Prime

See below for some of the best travel documentaries on Amazon Prime Video. I’ve indicated whether each is free to Prime members or available for rental.

Note that these films may also be found at your local library.

A Map for Saturday

Classic travel documentary that follows a variety of solo budget travelers — from teens to seniors — through 26 countries on four continents.

Young filmmaker Brook Silva-Braga trains his inquisitive lens on backpackers lending a hand to tsunami victims, trekkers forming brief but intense relationships, and fascinating moments of self-discovery and adventure.

Available for rental on Amazon Prime .

This inspiring documentary follows the record-breaking round-the-world voyage of Dutch teen Laura Dekker, youngest person ever to sail around the world alone.

Available for free to Prime members on Amazon Prime.

This beautifully filmed docu follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey to Patagonia of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins, legendary founders of The North Face and Patagonia sportswear and pioneering conservationists.

Along the way Johnson gets shipwrecked off Easter Island, surfs the longest wave of his life, and attempts to climb a Patagonian peak.

Available for free to Prime members on Amazon Prime .

Countries: Mexico, Chile

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About Ingrid

Ingrid left software engineering at age 43 to devote herself to language learning and travel. Her goal is to speak seven languages fluently. Currently, she speaks English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and is studying Italian.

Reader Interactions

July 5, 2018 at 3:56 pm

Definitely going to start ploughing my way through some of these before I head off next!! 🙂

July 5, 2018 at 10:38 pm

Definitely… Netflix travel shows provide some of my best inspiration! 😉

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30 Best Travel Documentaries & Series To Watch

• by Jonny Duncan
• October 20, 2023 December 7, 2023

We all need a bit of travel inspiration and these are some of the best travel documentaries that will give you some wanderlust, and understanding, of the regions of the world involved.

These are my favourite travel documentaries and series that have inspired my travels.

Disclaimer: I own none of the images in this post, they are used under fair-usage terms to discuss the travel documentaries.

Himalaya With Michael Palin (2004)

Michael Palin is my all-time favourite travel presenter, writer, and hell, just an awesome person in general and his travel documentaries are some of the best you can watch.

His sense of humour, interest in the places he visits, how he interacts with the local people, and the way he presents himself is what makes this travel journey one of the best.

Add to that epic Himalayan scenery and adventure and you have the perfect combination for the best travel documentary.

You can watch it here as well as some of his other travel documentaries.

The Endless Summer (1966)

Surfs up! And also lots of fun, fun, fun, in the sun.

Set in the mid-sixties it follows two surfers from California as they travel around the world, including countries like South Africa, Australia, and Ghana, in search of the ‘perfect wave’. 

It’s very laid back to watch and entertaining and a good insight into surfer travels in the sixties.

I would love to hit up some of the waves they found! If you want one of the best travel documentaries based around surfing and beaches then watch this.

Watch it online here .

Encounters at the End of the World (2009)

Want some cold weather viewing, beautiful scenery in the vast expanse of Antarctica, and some fun with scientists? This is it.

Filmmaker Werner Herzog tackles this perfectly, exploring the desolate and vast wilderness of Antarctica around the US base of McMurdo Station, and the people who live and work there.

This will make you want to go to a remote and cold place.

Watch it here .

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (2013 – 2018)

Anthony Bourdain was one of my travel heroes. He died in 2018. His style of reporting and meeting the people he visits around the world and coming together around a common theme worldwide, food, brought a personal approach to the travel genre.

Parts Unknown is one of the best travel documentaries to watch for food. 

The other series with Anthony Bourdain exploring world cuisine, such as No Reservations is also worth watching.

See it on Netflix here .

Under An Arctic Sky (2017)

This is a short travel documentary coming in at only 40 minutes, but worth the watch for sure.

I had been recommended this by a fellow travel blogger and was glad about it.

It’s beautifully shot in Iceland in winter, following a group of surfers looking for (as usual) the perfect waves. 

But a storm comes through during this time and they have to outrun it.

The first time surfers have been filmed under the Northern Lights.

This has made me want to return to Iceland again to explore more of the country in the Arctic darkness.

See what it’s like surfing under the Northern Lights !

Sahara With Michael Palin (2002)

Yes, another Michael Palin travel documentary. I can’t help it his journeys are just so good.

This time he’s out exploring the Sahara Desert, getting into remote adventures with tribal nomads, and so much more.

This will inspire you for a desert adventure.

Watch the epic Sahara journey here .

180° South (2010)

180° South follows Jeff Johnson, an adventurer who travels across South America to Patagonia to visit the places that Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins had visited in 1968, two people who had inspired him.

Easily one of the best travel documentaries about South America to see.

Chasing Coral (2017)

Chasing Coral is a documentary for anyone interested in the ocean and, given the title, especially coral reefs.

It follows scientists and divers who explore the coral areas to see why they are disappearing and to explain it all to you. A good conservationist documentary as well as one for travel to these beautiful parts of the world.

Billy Connolly’s World Tour of Australia (1996)

Billy Connolly is one of the great all-time stand-up comedians.

He also travels a lot and his ‘world tour’ series has taken him to lots of different countries around the world, with Australia being the best.

It’s a combination of him exploring Australia and what is there, with a great sense of humour for everything, as well as some short clips of his stand-up performances in each area he visits with views and opinions about his experience in Australia.

A must-see travel documentary for anyone interested in Australia with a very amusing outlook on travel there.

It ain’t cheap but if you’re a Billy Connolly fan, or want to give a gift to someone who is, this is the Billy Connolly box set of all his world tours.

Dark Tourist (2018)

For some people (myself included) there’s a strange and weird fascination with some of the ‘darker’ tourist spots to visit and dark tourism has become more popular.

From nuclear disaster zone tours to death-worshipping cults, this travel documentary covers them all.

It can be disturbing given the tragedy behind some of the events, but it is history, and it is part of humanity. 

To escape the ‘normal’ tourist spots this will give you an idea of an alternative travel experience.

Right or wrong it is fascinating.

See it on Netflix .

Given (2016)

This is such a unique and refreshing take on a travel documentary as it’s narrated by a six-year-old boy.

It follows a family from Kauai (part of Hawaii) on a journey through 15 countries around the world.

This a really good insight into family travel and the life-teaching experiences travel can have on young children.

Watch their website for the documentary.

Stephen Fry In America (2009)

Stephen Fry is one of my favourite comedians and in this travel series, he travels across the U.S. in search of what makes America.

Just like Billy Connolly and Michael Palin, there is lots of humour involved.

It gives a great insight into American culture.

This is one of the best travel documentaries to watch if planning a trip to the United States. 

Watch here .

The Eagle Huntress (2016)

One of those interested in Central Asia travel, this documentary is about a 13-year-old Kazakh girl called Aisholopan who wants to be an eagle hunter, the first female in her family for twelve generations to do it.

Beautiful scenery and an inspiring story make this a spellbinding travel documentary to watch.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2010)

Have an interest in sushi and Japanese food? Then this is the ultimate travel documentary for you.

It follows an 85-year-old sushi master called Jiro Ono and how he makes some of the best sushi in the world and tries to teach his son the way and the family business.

It’s one of the best documentaries about Japan to watch.

Baraka (1992)

Out of all the travel documentaries, this is one of the older ones but it has aged well. It’s also one of the most beautiful travel documentaries to watch.

The tagline is “A world beyond worlds”, and after watching it you will see why.

There is no narrative, just epic films from all over the world showing natural environments, cities and everything else.

Personally, I remember watching this in the 90s and being inspired to see the places it showed.

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010)

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga is another Werner Herzog travel documentary that is absolutely brilliant if you have an interest in cold places and Siberia in particular.

It follows the people in a remote village in the Siberian Taiga region and shows the repeated way of life in how they deal with living in a harsh cold environment. It includes footage of some of the native Ket people as well.

Tawai: A Voice From The Forest (2017)

Out of all the travel documentaries, this is one of the best ones taking a look at indigenous people around the world.

Adventurer Bruce Parry explores the forests of the Amazon and Borneo, as well as the Isle of Skye in Scotland where he looks at the ways the native people get on with the nature around them.

Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (2019)

Nomad is yet again another one with Werner Herzog and this time it’s a much more personal one.

His good friend Bruce Chatwin, who was a well-known travel writer, died of AIDS in 1989 he left Werner his rucksack as a parting gift. Thirty Years after his death Werner heads out to explore places inspired by his friend’s travel life.

Maidentrip (2013)

Maidentrip will make you want to get a yacht and go on an adventure around the world! It’s about a 14-year-old sailor who leaves home for a 2-year journey around the world alone to become the youngest person to ever achieve such a task.

This is one of the best travel documentaries not just about yachting and boats but also about the determination of the human spirit to achieve something great.

Travel Man (2015 Onwards)

Travel Man is a great travel documentary series where each episode host Richard Ayoade visits a new city with a different celebrity to explore what the city has to offer in the way of tourist attractions and other things.

Lots of fun to watch and one of the best recent travel documentaries to see.

Fishpeople (2017)

Fishpeople is a group of stories about various individuals who have dedicated their lives to the sea. It includes a long-distance swimmer, surfers, and many more.

This is one to watch if you have an interest in anything related to life with the ocean.

Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands (2013 – 2016)

If you love Scotland or really want to go there then this is the ultimate Scottish travel series for you. The presenter is Paul Murton and he explores all around the Scottish Isles.

He also has other shows such as the Grand Tour of Scotland and Grand Tour of Scotlands Lochs. He really gets into the culture of Scotland.

Backpackingman note: I am of Scottish ancestry with my great-grandfather being a proper Scotsman from Aberdeen and I have visited Scotland a few times now and can highly recommend this series.

Rick Steves’ Europe (2000 – Onwards)

Rick Steves’ Europe is one of the longest-running travel documentary series out there, if not the longest.

Given the title of the show, it follows Rick as he travels around Europe showing everything the place has to offer. The series from 2018 focuses on Scotland so goes nicely with the Grand Tours of the Scottish Islands mentioned above.

Desert Runners (2013)

Desert Runners is the ultimate documentary about people who run in some of the harshest environments and in this case the desert.

But the twist to this story is that it explores a group of people who join the hardest ultra-marathon race series on the planet and none of them are professional runners.

Watch this one if you have an interest in deserts and running.

Down To Earth (2020)

Down To Earth is a travel documentary series on Netflix that follows actor Zac Efron to different parts of the world where he looks at the sustainability efforts of each destination.

For example, in Iceland, he learns about the efforts to use the natural energy of Earth for power.

Magical Andes (2020 – Onwards)

Magical Andes a travel documentary series is set in South America and takes a look at the Andes Mountain range, from the mountains themselves to the deserts, forests, and everything else that surrounds them

Highly recommended if you’ve ever wanted to visit South America and in particular the Andes region.

Expedition Happiness (2017)

Expedition Happiness follows a couple who get an old school bus and then drive throughout North America with their dog.

The couple is so lovely it’s worth watching just to see them and their life.

Free Solo (2018)

Free Solo follows Alex Honnold, a professional rock climber, as he attempts to be the first person to free solo climb El Capitan’s rock face.

It’s set in Yosemite National Park and is thrilling to watch not just for the action but also for the scenery. Watch this documentary if you are interested in mountain travel and rock climbing as a sport.

The Dawn Wall (2017)

Following on from Free Solo, The Dawn Wall is also set in Yosemite National Park, and this time follows Tommy Caldwell, a free climber, who tried to climb the Dawn Wall of El Capitan.

As with Free Solo, watch this one for mountains.

Mountain (2017)

The Mountain is one of the best travel documentaries about mountains and is breathtaking to watch.

It explores mountains around the world and tells at the same time the history between humans and mountains.

Notable Mention: BBC Planet Earth 1+2 (2006 + 2016)

The BBC Planet Earth series is absolutely beautifully filmed and epic to watch.

In each episode, they explore different parts of the planet, such as deserts, mountains, oceans, forests, etc.

There are also other travel documentaries by the BBC, like The Blue Planet, Frozen Planet, and a lot more. Each one shows a different side of our planet.

These will get you wanting to get out and see the world!

The Best Travel Documentaries

And that’s the list of the best travel documentaries that will hopefully give you some inspiration for your own travels.

Interested in more travel-related movies? Check out 10 movies to watch before travelling to Japan .

You can find some of the older travel documentaries on places like YouTube. In fact, YouTube is a great place to find new and old travel documentaries in general.

And for some travel reading 20 books to read set in the Arctic and Antarctic .

If you liked this article about the best travel documentaries a share would be appreciated :

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Hi Jonny, this is Christian from Germany I pic you up from Zagreb 2008 and we travel to Germany by car. Later I visit you in Amsterdam. My speciality is Africa. Like to contact you again cause I cannot find you anymore on Couchsurfing. May I ask for your PM adress? see you Christian

Dark Tourist is the best part of this post ..

Oh, It’s too good. I like this blog very much I also bookmark this.

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The 25 Best Documentaries of 2023 (So Far)

From hard-hitting historic stories to bombshell moments in pop culture.

Sometimes, when the mind-numbing cattiness of The Real Housewives gets old, it's nice to turn on something that gets the ole noggin' spinning—something you'll enjoy watching that teaches you something new. Enter: The year's best documentaries. As with the best documentaries of 2022, these are the series and films that will garner your full attention with real-life stories from the past and present day. 2023's slate of awe-inspiring titles has a little something for everyone, from insightful sports stories to pop culture bombshells. Get ready to add these new documentaries to your watchlist.

'Sometimes When We Touch'

Premieres : Out now on Paramount+

This music doc chronicles the mostly-untold story of soft rock, the genre whose artists dominated pop music worldwide in the 1970s—think The Carpenters, Barry Manilow, "The Pina Colada Song"—only to crash and burn in the 1980s. The pioneers of the rock/pop sound chronicle the rise and fall, as well as one of the most unlikely comebacks in music history.

'Break Point' 

Premieres: Out now on Netflix 

Sports lovers and tennis fans especially are sure to love Netflix's new docuseries, Break Point . This series follows up-and-coming tennis stars over a year as they train and compete their way across the globe in the hopes of becoming the sport's number one player.  

'Super League: The War for Football'

Premieres: Out now on Apple TV +

It turns out there's a lot of tension behind the scenes of the world's most popular sport. Over four episodes, this series follows what happens when plans for a breakaway soccer league emerge. Leaders of the sport are forced to decide whether that want to defend or upend soccer's long-held traditions. 

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'The 1619 Project' 

Premieres: Out now on Hulu

Brought to you by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole-Hannah Jones and the New York Times Magazine, this docuseries isn't your average history lesson. This six-part series places the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the forefront of our nation's history.  

'Pamela: A Love Story' 

Premieres: Out now on Netflix

We all become extra obsessed with the story of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee thanks to Hulu's Pam & Tommy, but Anderson herself is taking back her own narrative in this documentary. In her own words and personal videos, Anderson tells the story of her rise to fame from small town girl to international sex symbol. 

'The Reluctant Traveler' 

Premieres: Out now on Apple TV+

When you can't afford to trot across the globe, the next best thing is to watch someone else do it on TV. This travel series sees Schitt's Creek star Eugene Levy explore some incredible places including Japan, Portugal, Maldives, Finland, and more. Knowing Levy, the series' eight episodes are sure to be filled with dry jokes and funny situations. 

'Emergency NYC'

Premieres : Out now on Netflix

First responders have one of the most demanding jobs in the world, and many who don't work in the industry only have a faint idea of everything they face. This docuseries following several frontline medical professionals in NYC as they balance their intense work with their personal lives.

'Little Richard: I Am Everything'

Premieres : Out now on VOD

In this electric documentary, Lisa Cortés lays out the history of the early rock 'n' roll star's career and inescapable influence, peppering footage of his performances and speeches with appearances from artists including Mick Jagger and Billy Porter.

'Longest Third Date'

Imagine: you meet a cool guy, decide to go one a spontaneous trip with him... and a pandemic hits while you're in another country. This doc follows Khani Le and Matt Robertson as they find their way to love while stranded in Costa Rica in the early days of COVID.

'Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie'

Premieres : Out now on Apple TV+

This captivating documentary about the Back to the Future star tells the story of his career and his experiences learning to live with Parkinson's disease, with the actor opening up about keeping his health condition secret for years.

'Bama Rush'

Premieres : Out now on Max

In August 2021, #BamaRush took over Tik Tok, as millions of grown adults became deeply invested in whether potential new members were admitted into sororities at the University of Alabama . Filmed ahead of 2022's rush, this doc follows several PNMs in the year leading up to the process, in an exploration of Southern fraternity culture, and how far people will go for acceptance.

'The Deepest Breath'

In this documentary about the dangerous world of free diving, director Lauren McGann follows the early lives and careers of Italian free diver Alessia Zecchini, who's determined to break the world record, and Irish safety diver Stephen Keenan, who accompanies Zecchini partway down to help in case something goes wrong.

'The League'

This nuanced sports documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Sam Pollard tells the history of the Negro League, and the triumphs and challenges that the Black baseball players faced throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

'Kokomo City'

D. Smith's award-winning documentary profiles four Black trans sex workers in Atlanta and NYC—Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell, and Dominique Silver—as they tell the stories of their lives and their work in all their unfiltered, humorous, and stunning glory.

'Stephen Curry: Underrated'

Even if you're not a fan of basketball, you'll be able to appreciate Stephen Curry's coming-of-age story. From his time as a college player to a four-time NBA champion, this film documents Curry's rise to stardom with intimate cinéma vérité, archival footage, and on camera interviews. 

'King Coal'

Premieres : Out now in theaters

This acclaimed, poetic documentary follows the families who live and grow up in Central Appalachia's coal mining towns, as director Elaine McMillion Sheldon examines the coal industry’s history and influence on the region she calls home.

This three-hour doc from French director Claire Simon offers an emotional study of the diverse patients at the gynecological unit of a Paris hospital. As the film documents the various procedures in the ward—ranging from pregnancy consultations and deliveries to fertility and cancer treatments to gender-affirming care—it provides a compassionate look at the frontlines of gender-related healthcare.

'The Heart of Invictus'

The long-awaited docuseries about Prince Harry 's Invictus Games has finally landed on streaming, as it chronicles the players and production behind the annual sporting event for wounded, injured, and sick veterans and members of the armed services internationally.

'Invisible Beauty'

Fashion trailblazer Bethann Hardison co-directs this highly-anticipated doc about her own legacy of championing racial diversity in the modeling industry, with commentary from the countless models and stars she has inspired, including Naomi Campbell, Tyson Beckford, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Zendaya .

'The Super Models'

This four-part docuseries brings together four of the world's most iconic supermodels—Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington—to reminisce on the early days of their career and the behind-the-scenes events that the public did not see.

'Beyond Utopia'

This engrossing documentary on North Korean defectors follows the harrowing journey of the Roh family as they journey from their home country to Thailand, via footage captured by the family as well as operatives on the underground network which helped them escape.

Oscar nominee Sylvester Stallone will be the subject of a retrospective documentary covering his decades-long career, showing the parallel between his personal underdog story and the iconic characters he's brought to life,  Rocky to  Rambo .

'Stamped from the Beginning'

Premieres : November 20 on Netflix

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s 2016 New York Times- bestselling book is getting a feature documentary adaptation. Propelled by vivid animation and commentary from leading female academics and activists including Dr. Angela Davis and Dr. Jennifer L. Morgan, the doc will guide viewers through a comprehensive account of how racist tropes were developed and enshrined in American culture.

'20 Days in Mariupol'

Premieres : November 21 on PBS

After a year's worth of hype from its decorated film-festival run, Mstyslav Chernov's Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary will finally be aired for the general public, showing the struggles of an AP team of Ukrainian journalists as they report on the atrocities of the Russian invasion while trapped in the city of Mariupol.

'American Symphony'

Premieres : November 24 on Netflix

In 2021, on the same week that Jon Batiste received 11 Grammy nominations for his eventual Album of the Year winner "We Are," his longtime partner Suleika Jaouad discovered her rare form of leukemia had returned after 10 years in remission. This intimate musical by Matthew Heineman follows the couple over the following year of their lives, as they each balance their creative pursuits with Jaouad's treatment.

Brooke Knappenberger is the Associate Commerce Editor at Marie Claire, where she specializes in crafting shopping stories—from sales content to buying guides that span every vertical on the site. She also oversees holiday coverage with an emphasis on gifting guides as well as Power Pick , our monthly column on the items that power the lives of MC’s editors. She also tackled shopping content as Marie Claire's Editorial Fellow prior to her role as Associate Commerce Editor.

She has over three years of experience writing on fashion, beauty, and entertainment and her work has appeared on Looper , NickiSwift, The Sun US , and Vox Magazine of Columbia , Missouri. Brooke obtained her Bachelor's Degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism with an emphasis on Magazine Editing and has a minor in Textile and Apparel Management.

The "Sex and the City" star continues to take a page out of Carrie Bradshaw's book.

By Danielle Campoamor Published 29 June 24

"The children's grandmother is spoiling her eldest quite openly and will do so with Anne if she got a chance!"

The actress channeled 2001 Britney Spears during a night out with friends.

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Love and Road

The 20 Best Travel Shows on Netflix to Watch in 2024

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Whether you’ve been missing the thrill of traveling or are currently feeling inspired to pick the destination for your next adventure, travel shows can help. Netflix has no shortage of cool travel documentaries and shows, but we’ve decided to pick 20 of the best travel shows on Netflix.

If you’re traveling right now, or if some of these shows are not available in your country, use a VPN to access them without any restrictions. To play the shows, open up your VPN app and select a server located in a different state. If the show is available in your country, but you’re currently traveling internationally, choose the server of your home country to enjoy the show. 

Now let me tell you why these Netflix travel shows are worth watching and don’t blame me if you get hooked on some (or all) of them.

The best travel shows on Netflix

Before we start, let me tell you that this list is in no particular order. It’s up to you to choose the one you want to watch first, but we recommend watching them all. At home, traveling for a holiday, or at a new destination, these Netflix travel shows and documentaries will set you in the mood for discovering new places, tasting exotic food, maybe even cycling, driving, or just staying at home until you finish all the seasons. Lol 

The list is divided into travel shows or documentaries focused on nature, food, dark tourism, cycling and cars, photography, family travels, and specific destinations. Enjoy it!

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The best travel and nature Netflix shows 

Arguably one of the most famous travel documentaries on Netflix, Our Planet takes you on a world tour of earth’s fascinating creatures. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough and filmed in Ultra High Definition, this show takes you to over 50 countries and perfectly captures the wonders of the earth. 

Our Planet is the perfect Netflix travel show to give you some new ideas for your bucket list. Trust us!

Untamed Romania

While most seasoned travelers deeply appreciate Romania’s natural beauty, it is still overlooked in the mainstream media. Untamed Romania is a feature-length film celebrating the country’s immaculate wildlife.

Untamed Romania is one of the best Netflix travel documentaries for those who love nature and want to discover a new destination to travel to.

The best travel and food Netflix shows 

Down to Earth

Down to Earth documentary follows Zac Efron, the actor, and wellness expert Darin Olien as they explore healthy and sustainable practices across different cultures. This documentary showcases the diversity and creativity seen across the globe to make the most of one’s resources.

It’s intriguing and can be inspiring, not only about travel but how we think of sustainability and health. 

Street Food Asia

Sometimes the most accessible way to connect to a different culture is food. Asian food holds a special place in the world regarding street food and is probably one of the most universally beloved cuisines today. Street Food Asia takes you on a food journey across Asia and Southeast Asia’s best food cities, including Bangkok, Delhi, Osaka, and Singapore.

Street Food Asia is one of our fave travel shows on Netflix. We love Asia and Asian delights you can only find from street vendors. If you have never visited this part of the world, watch this show, and it will open your mind to a new world of flavors, aromas, and ways of life. If you are craving an Asia trip, watch it and plan international travel soon. 

Also, read our guides and articles about Asian destinations as they have many travel and food recommendations. Read our guides about Thailand , Vietnam , Indonesia , Malaysia , The Philippines , China , Taiwan, India , and Cambodia .

Ugly Delicious

Ugly Delicious is another food travel show where a star chef David Chang is looking for the world’s most satisfying grub with his buddies. Despite being a professional chef, Chang isn’t pretentious with his picks and takes us on a cross-cultural food trip filled with laughter.

Another great travel and food show on Netflix about food culture.

Somebody Feed Phil

In this series, we follow the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, Phil Rosenthal, as he explores world cuisines and meets the locals. Phil’s upbeat attitude is probably one of the best parts of the Somebody Feed Phil travel show together with a lot of food scenes that will help your plan your future trip to incredible destinations including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

On this Netflix travel show, you will visit cities like Bangkok , spend days in Mexico City , see Lisbon , and many more. Well-known travel destinations are pictured with flavors and a local touch.

High on The Hog: Culinary Journey From Africa to America

This show explores African American soul food and its long journey from Africa to North America. It has been dubbed the most engaging history of African American cuisine. It traces the process of cultivating, harvesting, cooking, and serving the food that enslaved Africans brought with them to the States.

This Netflix cultural travel and food show will take you on a true gastronomic journey. 

Restaurants on the Edge

As you might be able to guess from the name of the show, these hour-long episodes take us to restaurants that are located in some of the most stunning locations in the world but are struggling with their menus and dishes. They are located on the edge of the world but are also on the edge of closing down.

This travel show on Netflix pictures unique locations and a bit of drama, as you can expect. 

Netflix shows about travel, cycling and cars

Biking Borders

This one is for lovers of slow traveling and less-known countries. Two friends go on a 15,000 km bicycle journey worldwide, including the Balkans, Central Asia, and other countries, to build a school in Guatemala.

Rob and I love cycling, so this Netflix travel documentary series is tremendously appealing to us. Biking Borders is also an excellent travel inspiration for those who dream of traveling by bike or going on a cycling holiday. And if this is you, read our article about cycling on Taiwan’s East Coast and cycling in Spain .

Pedal the World

This is another Netflix travel documentary that portrays a world tour on wheels, but this time our protagonist visits 22 countries during his year-long journey, searching for the meaning in life and discovering something new in each country.

Pedal the World is an inspiring and realistic epic road trip that might give you ideas of how you want to spend your life and what really matters. 

Paul Hollywood’s Big Continental Road Trip

Paul Hollywood studies the ties between popular cars in Europe and their local culture and identity as an actor and a baker. In this short but educational Netflix documentary , Hollywood will visit France, Germany, and Italy.

This isn’t your Netflix show if you are looking for food and baking goods. But if you like cars, speed, a bit of history and traveling in Europe, you will enjoy the ride. 

Netflix travel shows about a specific destination

Katla  

This travel series focuses on Iceland, specifically the volcano Katla , which began constantly erupting just recently. The show has eight episodes and does a wonderful job portraying Iceland’s breathtaking beauty . Katla serves as a great reminder of all that we still don’t know about the earth. 

This Netflix travel show is a powerful trigger for wanderlust, and it will make you want to book a trip to Iceland as soon as possible. 

Magic Andes

A documentary following five characters from the Andes, South America’s breathtaking mountains. It is a fascinating series that highlights real people living in communities located under the mountains and paints a nuanced picture of the region of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia .

After watching Magic Andes read our Peru travel guides , and for sure, you will want to visit South América. If you are worried about safety, then read our guide to the safest countries in South America , and you will be surprised. 

Guatemala: Heart of the Mayan World

This documentary focuses on Guatemala’s rich landscape and culture, the territory where 2000 years ago, the fascinating Mayan civilization collapsed. The Mayan influence is still all over Guatemala and Central America, and this documentary does an amazing job of connecting the dots between the past and the present.

Guatemala: Heart of the Mayan World is an inspiring Netflix travel documentary that will add interesting facts to your travel knowledge, and it might make you want to explore more of Latin America. 

Zulu Man in Japan

Starring South African rapper Nasty C, this Netflix travel documentary focuses on Japanese culture. The film takes place in Tokyo, where Nasty C explores the city’s go-to places, culture, sounds, and much more.

Zulu Man in Japan was released in 2019. It’s a 44-minute episode, perfect for those days that you want to have just a little dose of wanderlust knowing that you won’t be addicted to long travel series. 

The best Netflix travel show for unusual tourists

Dark Tourist

Filmed by journalist David Farrier, the author of the 2016 hit documentary Tickled, Dark Tourist takes a different approach to tourism. Farrier travels to places associated with death or tragedies that have turned these destinations into tourist attractions. You can expect anything from haunted places, nuclear lakes, and unusual and weird destinations. Those spots might not be on your travel bucket list, but it is interesting to know that they exist so you can avoid them on your next holiday. 

It’s one of the most-watched travel shows on Netflix, so it’s worth trying.

Netflix show for photography and travel lovers

Tales by Light

Created by Abraham Joffe, this show embraces the art of travel photography and film and the people behind them. This is an Australian documentary/reality travel series on Netflix that follows photographers around the globe as they chase that perfect shot.

This Netflix travel documentary is a good match for those who love photography and travel. It’s perfect for inspiring you to travel and photograph more. 

The best Netflix show about traveling with family

Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father

A comedian Jack Whitehall and his uptight father, Michael Whitehall, travel across the world together. The show starts with Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, with the second season focusing on Eastern Europe. The third season explores the American West, the fourth features Australia, and the fifth is all about the United Kingdom, their homeland. On this last season expect everything from dining with Gordon Ramsay to searching for the Loch Ness monster.

A great Netflix travel show for those thinking of traveling with family. It also sparkes a reflection of our relationships with parents and how travel can be a good way to get together or break apart.

Netflix show that combines travel and design

Cabins in the Wild

This show takes place in Wales and follows engineer Dick Strawbridge and craftsman Will Hardie as they inspect eight unique cabins built for a pop-up hotel in Wales. Their final goal is to construct a cabin of their own.

If you like the British Tv series, chances are you will love Cabins in the Wild as well. If you like architecture and construction shows too. This type of Netflix show combines different elements, from traveling to design, making you want to have a cabin in the wild just for you. 

We end our list of the 20 best Netflix travel shows here. Drop us a comment if you have watched any of them or if you have any other good travel series to recommend. 

Love these Netflix travel shows and documentary ideas? Pin it for later!

4 thoughts on “The 20 Best Travel Shows on Netflix to Watch in 2024”

I’m so glad you mentioned The Latchkees! I’ve been obsessed with their adventures since I saw their episode on Netflix. It’s amazing how they make travel look so effortless and fun. I’m definitely adding some of the other shows on your list to my queue 😍

Such a great show!

I can’t believe I never knew about some of these shows! The Travel Diaries is definitely going on my watchlist. 😍

Glad you enjoyed it!

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72 Dangerous Places to Live, Dark Tourist, and more: Sate your wanderlust with the best travel shows and documentaries on Netflix

You'll love these amazing travel documentaries.

Traveling is something that many people wish they could do more of. Whether you lack the time, money, or know-how to travel the world, though, it can be comforting to watch others do it from the comfort of your couch. A great travel show or documentary can be a wonderful escape and a reminder that the world is much bigger than the tiny slice of it you live in every day. What’s even better is that many great travel documentaries on Netflix, if you’re willing to go looking for them.

These documentaries will deliver stunning panoramic shots of the U.S. National Parks , as well as plenty of international wonders, and a little bit of good food as well. If you like all kinds of docs, travel or not, we’ve got you covered with Netflix documentaries (or maybe you’re just really into crime docs and action flicks). We also have an overall guide on the best Netflix movies and the best Netflix shows .

72 Dangerous Places to Live (2016)

Down to earth with zac efron (2020), the chef show (2019), street food collection (2020), tales by light (2015), dark tourist (2018), midnight asia: eat dance dream (2022), jack whitehall: travels with my father (2017), lorena, light-footed woman (2019), the world's most amazing vacation rentals (2021), our planet (2019), salt fat acid heat (2018), editors’ recommendations.

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For more than a decade now, there have been plenty of great Netflix shows to stream. If you're an animation fan, that's especially true, because, in addition to housing some of the best anime series in the world, there's a wide variety of cartoons on Netflix for adults and kids alike. If you're looking for the best place to watch cartoons online, you really don't need to look much further than Netflix.

Whether you're looking for action, some adult-oriented comedy, or a great animated show that the entire family can enjoy, the streamer has got you covered. Some of these series are ones that Netflix has produced, while others were acquisitions, but what unites them all is that every fan of animation will love them. Here are Netflix cartoons to add to your must-watch list.

The best sci-fi shows are able to capture the imagination of audiences with the perfect amount of realism, while also dissociating from reality enough to entertain and thrill. There are plenty of sci-fi movies on Netflix that are well worth checking out, but if you’re in the mood for something that will take a little bit longer to consume, you may be looking for a series. To find the best show for you, we've done the hard work of looking through all of Netflix's many options to find the best options. Below are the greatest sci-fi TV shows on Netflix. Once you’re done watching any of these sci-fi TV shows, you may want to check out the best sci-fi movies of all time.

Dark (2017)

Have you ever found yourself looking through all the movies on Netflix, only to find that actually choosing one to watch is very taxing? That's not even mentioning all the Netflix shows to dig through. If you know you're looking for a particular kind of movie, that can help, but even then, there can be too many movies to choose from. Luckily, we've been watching tons of great sci-fi movies and have already determined which ones rise to the top of the pile on Netflix. So if you're looking for the best sci-fi movies on Netflix this year, you've come to the right place. If you're looking for Netflix movies that will keep you occupied for a whole weekend or an evening, you can also check out our list of the best sci-fi series on Netflix right now.

10 Best Travel Shows On Netflix

by Melissa Giroux | Last updated Dec 31, 2023 | Inspiration , Travel Tips

If the worldwide pandemic has halted your travel plans like most of us, you’re probably suffering from travel blues. However, closed borders and travel restrictions don’t mean travel can no longer be a part of your life.

Stay productive by filling your time with travel inspiration and plan your next big adventure for when the time is right. And who can help you do that? Good old Netflix. 

That’s right; there is a host of travel shows on Netflix right now awaiting your viewing. So order your favorite takeaway, get comfy, and work your way through our list of the ten best travel documentaries on Netflix.

1. Our Planet

Our Planet is essentially Netflix’s version of ‘Planet Earth.’ It is so similar it even features narration from Sir David Attenborough. The mindblowing way this series showcases the most awe-inspiring nature makes it one of the best travel shows on Netflix in 2021. 

Our Planet will reawaken your wanderlust and have you itching to get out into the wilderness. While it’s not possible to go to the far corners of the earth as shown in this series, perhaps you can settle for exploring a new nature reserve in your home state for now.

2. Down To Earth With Zac Efron

In Down To Earth, hunk Zac Efron travels the world in search of more sustainable ways of living. It is an eye-opening and upbeat documentary that looks for solutions to problems, finding ways we can do things better. Therefore, it’s the best travel documentary series for those looking to learn how they can contribute to creating a greener, more sustainable world.

3. The Chef Show

What better combination than food and travel! If you love trying new cuisines or have ever dreamt about building a business on four wheels, this is one Netflix travel documentary you will adore. In The Chef Show, duo Jon Favreau and Roy Choi reunite to travel around the world cooking with celebrities and famous chefs. They celebrate different flavors, cultures, and people and take you through various delicious recipes.

4. Street Food

While we’re on the subject of food, you need to check out Street Food. Season one showcases the street eats found in Asia. They visit Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and more, tasting the locals’ go-to bites. This is one of those Netflix travel documentaries that will remind you of your travels. From the vibrancy of the sights and sounds, you’ll almost be able to smell and taste those Asian delights again. 

5. Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to take your parents traveling, this comedy road trip series will give you an idea. In Travels With My Father, comedian Jack Whitehall takes his dad to Southeast Asia to try to strengthen their bond. Jack is very jolly and easy-going whereas, his father couldn’t be any different, making for an interesting duo. 

The show is very lighthearted and not the most serious of the travel shows on Netflix. However, you can’t help but laugh at the awkward situations the pair continuously find themselves in.

6. Larry Charles’ Dangerous World Of Comedy

In this Netflix travel documentary, comedy writer-director Larry Charles sets out to find humor in all corners of the world. He travels to some of the most feared places, such as Somalia, Liberia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. 

Here Larry seeks out people who use humor to combat their dire circumstances. He meets some of the most unlikely comics and delves deep into the world of dark, dangerous comedy. This is undoubtedly one of the most daring travel shows on Netflix!

7. Night On Earth

In Night On Earth, nature meets technology to disclose the biggest wonders of the nocturnal world. Using state-of-the-art, low-light cameras, the series shows the hidden lives of some of the world’s most extraordinary creatures, from lions on the hunt to bats on the wing. The footage captured is nothing less than mind-blowing. The narrating is just as beautiful, making it one of the best travel shows on Netflix for nature nerds. 

8. Pedal The World

If the day-to-day stresses are getting to you and you’re losing sight of your dreams, Pedal The World will give you the inspiration you need to do something big. In this self-made adventure documentary, Felix Starck documents his 18,000-kilometre bicycle journey across 22 countries in 365 days. Felix gives us a visual diary of him cycling & camping around the world, which is emotional, inspiring, and never dull.

This is a must-watch for anyone that is feeling down due to the current state of the world. It’s one of those Netflix travel documentaries that will prompt you to reflect on the way you live and question the meaning of life.

9. Expedition Happiness

All digital nomads can relate to that desire to escape their hometown and get out into the world. This is precisely what Expedition Happiness is about. In this travel documentary, a young couple transforms an old school bus into a motorhome and travels with their dog across North America in it. 

This travelogue is organically beautiful, featuring many relatable problems. Moreover, it’s a representation of the freedom we all crave, which is why we believe it’s one of the best travel documentaries on Netflix.

10. Dark Tourist

Finally, if you want to watch something a bit out of the ordinary, here’s one for you. Dark Tourist with David Farrier is probably the weirdest (and most morbid) of all the travel shows on Netflix. Farrier explores the lesser-known and usually avoided cultures of the world and opts to visit places that are historically associated with death and tragedy. Highlights of this series include when Farrier meets vampires in New Orleans and a death-worshipping cult in Mexico. You’ll need an open mind for this one!

Final Thoughts

Even if you’re unable to have your own big adventure right now, these Netflix travel documentaries will remind you of why you fell in love with travel in the first place.

Utilize these travel shows on Netflix to draw inspiration and reignite your wanderlust, then get planning the best trip of your life. 

Need more inspiration? Check out these lists:

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The Best Documentaries of 2023

Here’s a brief history of documentary moviegoing.

In the 1960s, the documentary as we know it was being invented, but hardly anyone saw them. In the ’70s and ’80s, a new generation of masters — Barbara Kopple, Ken Burns, Errol Morris, Claude Lanzmann — came to the fore, and mainstream audiences began to take notice. In the ’90s, people at film festivals starting saying things like, “The documentaries are the best part!” And now?

We think of each of the films on this list as a kind of moviegoing adventure. Today, the sheer range of nonfiction film — the subjects, the styles, the voices — is extraordinary in its reach. Does that mean that we’re in a renaissance era? You might say that. But you could also say that when it comes to this form of filmmaking, the art of reality knows no season.

To see Variety’s collection of the best films of 2023, read here.

American Symphony

In Matthew Heineman’s lovely portrait of an artist and a marriage, Jon Batiste, with his inner light that doesn’t seem to have an off switch, comes across as the most ebullient performer in all of popular music. Yet he’s dealing with grim stuff behind the grin. His wife, Suleika Jaouad, is waging a war against recurring leukemia, and Batiste is having his own skirmishes with anxiety and panic attacks related to her illness, even as he’s making headlines as the surprise Grammy hoarder of 2022. “American Symphony” gets into some of the lesser battles Batiste is facing, like resentment from the classical world as he prepares the film’s title work for its world premiere at Carnegie Hall. The movie’s ultimate inconclusiveness feels like a feature, not a flaw: Music is forever, and so is chemo, in some cases. Holding those elements in balance is one way to create a symphony. —Chris Willman  

Not enough directors have capitalized on the ability of 3D to convey a sense of physical depth; fewer still have seized on the possibility of adding philosophical depth. Thank goodness, then, for Wim Wenders, whose tour-de-force 3D 6K portrait of the artist Anselm Kiefer is both rich in ideas and breathtaking in technical execution. We see Kiefer using flamethrowers to torch and distress his materials, and we experience the brutal beauty of molten metal destroying the surfaces Kiefer ladles it onto. The stereoscopy and sharp focus push our noses into the physical texture of the work, while also pulling us forward and backwards through time. Time is the film’s fourth dimension, as it presents each of Kiefer’s past selves overlapping, sometimes literally, with the images functioning as both eye and mind’s eye. —Catherine Bray

Beyond Utopia 

As you watch Madeleine Gavin’s staggering film, which is about what really goes on in North Korea, and about a handful of desperate souls who attempt to defect from there, you see life inside the totalitarian cult state — the full nightmare of the place — as never before. The filmmaker got ahold of forbidden footage that was smuggled out of the country. She uses it to make the case that North Korea is a place of such relentless terror that the only country it’s comparable to is Nazi Germany. But the film also chronicles, with footage shot on a cell phone, the attempt by five members of a family to leave this bad dream of a nation, and their escape story has a scary, suck-in-your-breath suspense. In recent years, North Korea’s nuclear weapons, with the mobster-autocrat Kim Jong Un in charge, have seized our attention. What we’ve forgotten about for too long is the North Korean people. For years, their misery has existed under a blackout. “Beyond Utopia” looks behind the wall and shines a light. —Owen Gleiberman  

Bobi Wine: The People’s President

The political activism of pop stars is, as a rule, on the restrained side. Yet for Ugandan singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu — better known to his adoring fans as Bobi Wine — there’s both everything and nothing to lose by getting more involved in national politics than most celebrities would dare. Entering a presidential election against corrupt, long-ruling incumbent Yoweri Museveni is, he knows, both a folly and a necessary stand to take in a country still reeling from the brutal military dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s. Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo’s punchy, plainspoken film documents his journey with angry urgency and bitter gallows humor. At moments, the movie startles you with its immediacy, not least of all in the moving, spontaneous scenes of Wine’s young children grappling with his absence. — Guy Lodge

The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Nicole Newnham’s astonishing documentary is about who Shere Hite was — and about why we even have to ask. It‘s a beautifully made corrective to the amnesia that for decades surrounded Hite, the author of “The Hite Report,” a landmark 1976 survey on female sexuality that is still ranked as the 30th best-selling book in history. A former model with a gorgeous cloud of strawberry blonde hair, Hite had a casual, soft-spoken way of deploying words like “clitoris,” “penetration” and “masturbation” that, back then, seemed to make everyone uncomfortable but her. The film is put together with such visual verve that even its most prickly passages are compulsively enjoyable. But to what extent have we been gaslit into excising Hite’s place in feminist history? It’s hard to definitively say, though by the end of Newnham’s film we are unlikely ever to forget her again. —Jessica Kiang

The Eternal Memory

Dementia and neurodegenerative disease have been extensively portrayed onscreen. But Maite Alberdi’s film treats inexorably sad material with a lighter, more lyrical approach than most, focusing less on the day-to-day ravages of living with Alzheimer’s than on the slippery, transient concept of memory itself. Key to the film’s thesis is that its subject is Augusto Góngora, a veteran Chilean political journalist who labored through the 1970s and ’80s to bring the iniquities of the Pinochet regime to public consciousness, and later dedicated himself to conserving that national memory for future generations. Yet it’s the simple love story between Gongóra and his devoted wife and carer, former Chilean cultural minister Pauline Urrutia, that gives Alberdi’s film its spine and heart. The film is a powerful reminder of how our best efforts to keep and curate memories — for ourselves and others — can be thwarted by time. —GL     

Four Daughters

Kaouther Ben Hania’s gripping true story of a Tunisian mother whose two elder daughters joined ISIS is overlaid with fictional, self-analyzing elements. The real Olfa Hamrouni appears throughout the film, but she’s also played by the Egyptian-Tunisian star Hend Sabri. Were Olfa’s daughters, 16 and 15 at the time of their disappearance, eaten up by their overprotective mother, or were they consumed by the predatory wolves of religious fundamentalism, cultural indoctrination and ISIS itself? The film may operate better on a scene-to-scene basis than as a holistic narrative, yet its effect is cathartic — for the way it reveals Olfa as both sympathetic and repellent, charming and chilling — and also because we’re so unused to seeing this experimental an approach applied to the daily struggles of Arab women in a majority-Islamic North African country. The elliptical strategy of “Four Daughters” is to uncover some truths and leave others veiled. —JK   

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project

The title teases galactic possibilities and plays with the concept of the unfinished work. One of the luminaries of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s into the 1970s, the now 79-year-old poet Nikki Giovanni continues to address the pain and joy, the anger and resilience of the descendants of the Middle Passage, who know much about uncertain and dangerous journeys. Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster’s beautifully crafted film takes us on an adventure, responding creatively to the call of its ingenious subject by touching on themes of aging, ailing and the oppressions with which she’s still reckoning. The filmmakers exhibit a soulful grasp of Giovanni’s poetry (voiced in the doc by executive producer Taraji P. Henson), but they also honor the untidy realities of the writer herself. —Lisa Kennedy   

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

It’s been nearly 30 years since the global franchise of Body Worlds exhibitions — collections of dissected and plastinated human cadavers — racked up ticket sales. That sense of revelation is recalled, without the circus-sideshow dimension, in Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s extraordinary documentary, which delves dizzyingly beneath the flesh to show organs, systems and actions that we know are inside us but tend to keep tidily out of mind. The movie takes us into the living, heaving, breathing body, using microscopes, ultrasounds and endoscopic and scialytic cameras to present its inner workings as vividly as any nonfiction film has managed. There’s a psychedelic spell to the imagery that suggests a state-of-the-art “Fantastic Voyage,” except that there’s no fantasy here: Every body probed is a real-life patient at once of several Parisian hospitals, their lives hanging in the balance as we gawk at their insides. —GL   

In the Court of the Crimson King

Can a band that seems to operate under rigidly precise conditions still produce music that sparks spontaneous ecstasy in listeners? The question might not seem unusual if it were a classical ensemble we were talking about, or the ballet. But Toby Amies’ film is about King Crimson and its natty genius of a leader, Robert Fripp, who’s as tough a taskmaster as anyone in the so-called finer arts. Amies gets the eight current members of the group on-camera, but he also goes back and interviews what we might think of as disgruntled ex-employees (notably Adrian Belew). It’s up to you whether you identify more with the many players who couldn’t hack the stress and got out or the ones who decided it was worth the high expectations and frayed nerves to remain in the court of prog-rock’s most enduring royalty. Fripp, almost always clad in a formal vest and necktie, is the ultimate English gentleman whose willingness to suffer fools even half-gladly is often being tested, not least by the filmmakers he commissioned to make this document. —CW

Judy Blume Forever

In Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s Crayola-bright documentary, the author Judy Blume is as sparky as ever in her mid-80s — and she has a game storytelling presence. The film encapsulates the trailblazing, still-rare appeal of her work, which presents adolescent social and sexual insecurities with both the uncanny recall of a child’s in-the-moment perspective and the reassuring wisdom of a grown-up who’s been through it all. “Come for the female masturbation, stay for the empowerment,” quips one interviewee. Yet anyone imagining Blume as a righteous, bra-burning feminist of the era may be surprised by the doc’s touching portrait of a young woman caught between demure domesticity and itching rebellion, her calling to write driven by the more repressed aspects of her upbringing in postwar suburban New Jersey. “Judy Blume Forever” is a study of one woman finding herself through the liberties of storytelling, though it’s also lent a stirring dimension by its focus on Blume’s work as an ardent correspondent to legions of fans. —GL

Kokomo City 

The title doesn’t refer to a real place. It’s more like a state of mind, invented by director D. Smith, who is Black and trans, to describe the space that her sisters occupy in the world. Theirs is an identity that is barely understood by the public and frequently misrepresented by the media, but is here defined by a handful of tell-it-like-it-is trans sex workers who offer snappy, whip-smart insights into their lives, dreams and the down-low dudes who adore them. In Smith’s unforgettable, format-defying, micro-budget doc, the t-girls spill the tea, totally reframing the conversation, opening up about the stuff that more mainstream trans-empowerment movies tell us should be off-limits, like their bodies and what they do in the bedroom. Smith’s subjects aren’t afraid to offend, but they’re irreverently eloquent in their assessment of how the world works, dishing on everything from image culture to what one of them, Daniella Carter, sees as the hypocrisy of her fellow Black people ­— one of the film’s key themes: “We all scream the narrative that we oppressed … but we’re the first motherfuckers to turn our nose up to the next person who wants to stand out and be different.” —Peter Debruge

Lakota Nation vs. United States

Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli’s unprecedented Native-issues essay film puts the question of Land Rights front and center in a lucid and uplifting way. Central among the film’s concerns are promises made, and later broken, by the United States in the peace treaty of Fort Laramie, which established the Great Sioux Reservation in 1868. The film explains how those 60 million acres were then taken away, how guns were confiscated and buffalo killed to force Natives into a European-style farming system, how Indigenous religions were outlawed and children were sent away to be Christianized in boarding schools. It also deconstructs how mainstream American media otherized the Natives, making “invasion look like self-defense.” Solutions don’t come easy when attempting to rectify decades of dehumanization and erasure, but “Lakota Nation” offers a clear-eyed look at some of the murkiest corners of American history. —PD  

Little Richard: I Am Everything 

The enthralling documentary that Little Richard deserves. Lisa Cortes’s movie understands, from the inside out, what a great and transgressive artist he was, how his starburst brilliance shifted the whole energy of the culture — but also how the radical nature of what he did, from almost the moment it happened, got shoved under the rug of the official narrative of rock ‘n’ roll. The documentary uses stunning archival footage to channel the electricity of Little Richard, and the eruptive glory of his volcanic gospel-on-amphetamines music still hits you like a revolution. Yet the movie also takes a deep dive into how Little Richard, a Black queer man who was not about to conceal who he was, intertwined the very DNA of rock ‘n’ roll with the perverse power of his identity. His story becomes the stirring and, in some ways, tragic tale of an artist so ahead of his time that even his own life couldn’t catch up with how he’d changed the world. —OG

Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros

It’s the quiet that strikes you in Frederick Wiseman’s languidly mesmerizing 240-minute documentary about one the world’s greatest restaurants. The film is a rejoinder to every image of cacophonous haute cuisine environments — clattering pans, hissing steam, chefs screaming invective — that’s been fed to us by “Hell’s Kitchen”-style reality shows and the propulsive drama of “The Bear.” The masters and staff of Le Bois Sans Feuilles, a three Michelin-star establishment in France’s Loire region, work with a hushed intensity of concentration. And that suits Wiseman, who explores every dimension of this culinary cathedral from the inside out. The astonishing plates on display resist “food porn” categorization, and it’s the human element of the restaurant that most interests Wiseman: a family business with a tradition of gastronomic innovation, here found at a compelling tipping point between father and son. —GL

Milli Vanilli

It’s one of the inside-out realities of our era that scandal, if you give it enough time, turns into myth. So it is with Milli Vanilli, the German-French R&B pop duo of the late ’80s and ’90s who, having sold close to 50 million records, were revealed to be a fake: a pair of lip-syncing Euro pretty boys who hadn’t sung a note on any of their hits or at any of their concerts. Luke Korem’s captivating and surprisingly moving documentary adds another, richer layer to the saga. It tells the Milli Vanilli story from the point-of-view of Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan themselves — especially, Fab, who unveiled himself to the filmmaker (Rob died in Los Angeles in 1998). We see how they started, why they struck their “deal with the devil,” and who, exactly, the devil was. Were they complicit in a deception that was sleazy and greedy? Yes. But by the end of the movie, a wide circle of influence has been implicated: the Svengali who pulled the strings, a music industry full of people who saw through the ruse yet rationalized it away, and, in a sense, the public itself. There’s no way that we could have known, yet the movie captures how the myth of Milli Vanilli now touches on the pathology of image-making that’s at the very core of pop music. —OG

The Mission

The world will never know what was going through 26-year-old Christian missionary John Allen Chau’s head when he was shot and killed by arrows off the coast of North Sentinel Island. Was he an evangelical martyr-hero who answered God’s calling and gave his life trying to convert a remote and hostile tribe? Or was he an arrogant and unprepared American, brainwashed by the church into undertaking a suicide mission? The filmmakers, Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, reconstruct his story à la Herzog’s “Grizzly Man,” creating a haunting meditation on the very nature of missionary work. “The Mission” becomes a kind of philosophical quest in which wild ambition goes hand in hand with folly at the very limits of so-called civilization. —PD    

Money Shot: The Pornhub Story  

It’s not a movie about the cultural prominence or significance of porn in our time, though it does touch on key aspects of how pornography today is manufactured and consumed. Instead, Suzanne Hillinger’s documentary mostly tells the story of how Pornhub, the largest porn site in the world, became a lightning rod of controversy when it was accused of being a place that abetted sex trafficking and the sexual abuse of children. You’d think there wouldn’t be two sides to that issue. But “Money Shot,” in chronicling the war against Pornhub as led by activists like Laila Mickelwait and journalists like Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, reveals what it means when porn evolves into a corporate entity. The film captures the ambiguity of the real Pornhub revolution, which is that every viewer of pornography is now viewed as a consumer . The dark message of the film is that in the no-boundaries world of the web, you can police a company like Pornhub but you can’t make what it’s selling go away. —OG

Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV  

There are a lot of people who know the name Nam June Paik, or even got to experience one or more of his video installations, yet still don’t know very much about him. Amanda Kim’s gorgeously crafted documentary does a splendid job of filling in what a visionary figure Paik was — the way he interfaced with people like John Cage, lived for years as a starving artist in New York and built his surrealist TV museum exhibits from the ground up, literally inventing an art form. Paik’s art had a let’s-try-it-on spirit that was cosmic but playful, and the opposite of pretentious. After all, he was creating high art… on television! And what’s most intoxicating about the film is that it becomes a supreme vehicle for experiencing the psychedelic majesty of Paik’s creations, which were driven by his obsession with finding the hidden soul of technology. In “Moon Is the Oldest TV,” Paik, who died in 2006, emerges as a figure both impish and daunting — the artist as explorer of uncharted terrain, with an almost mystical connection to the arsenal of electronic media he wielded like a plugged-in paintbrush. —OG

Orlando, My Political Biography

Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando: A Biography” is a centuries-spanning tale of a nobleman who, after a slumber of several nights, metamorphoses into a woman. And Paul B. Preciado’s docu-manifesto is an ode to the many Orlandos who walk the world. Playful, urgent and brilliantly innovative, the film is predicated on the notion that if society is a set and gender a performance, what better way to capture that than to revel in the very constructed nature of filmmaking? The movie’s aesthetic creates a trans cinematic archive that reaches back to images of Christine Jorgensen, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera — all to tell a mosaic of a collective story. —Manuel Betancourt

The London-born French filmmaker Claire Simon has amassed a body of work somewhat comparable to that of the American master Frederick Wiseman. Her latest outing, luxuriant in length but never less than eye-opening, immerses us in the interactions between female patients of all ages and the medical professionals in a French hospital, with typically compassionate and insightful results. Typical, that is, until Simon herself unexpectedly becomes one of her own subjects. Her personal journey is sketched in roughly the same number of scenes she dedicates to anyone else’s, so that she becomes one more strand in the film’s breathing, sometimes bleeding tapestry: just one of “Our Body’s” vital organs. What happens in the course of the film is sometimes tragic, often painful, but it is always instructive — demystifying and de-objectifying the female body, still the locus of so much secrecy and mystery. —JK     

The Plains 

Australian filmmaker David Easteal’s first feature is a striking docu-hybrid filmed almost exclusively inside a car during the peak-hour commute. The movie places viewers in the back seat to observe a middle-aged Melbourne lawyer, Andrew Rakowski, during his drive home from work over the course of a year. It’s remarkable how fresh and spontaneous the result feels. As we listen in on Rakowski’s phone conversations with his wife or his in-car chats with the filmmaker, a picture emerges of a man who is traveling long distances but feels like his life momentum has stalled. And yet the movie achieves the feat of making three hours fly by. —Richard Kuipers

Radical Wolfe

It was Tom Wolfe, more than anyone, who taught journalism to dance. Richard Dewey’s impeccably chiseled portrait, the story of how he did it, and the heights he rose to, makes for an irresistible watch. The tale of how Wolfe’s celebrated style came into being — the exclamation points!! The spontaneous but knowing word salad!! — is one for the ages, and the documentary tells it exquisitely. It also does a memorable job of exploring his strategy and achievement in writing “Radical Chic,” the New York magazine cover story in which he spent 20,000 words describing a party thrown by Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia, at their Park Avenue apartment to raise funds for the Black Panthers. (It’s as if Wolfe defined the concept of bourgeois political correctness and disemboweled it in the same moment.) The documentary is full of photographs and film footage of Wolfe, and we see how vital his floppy-haired-ironic-Southern-gentleman look was to the whole Wolfe mystique — the white suits that made him seem like he’d arrived from another planet. Yet Tom Wolfe was hipper than the hipsters, with feelers that allowed him to see all, and in 76 highly entertaining minutes “Radical Wolfe” packs in more or less everything you need to know about him. —OG    

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

In Estonia, in a log-cabin sauna nestled in a pretty woods by a lake, a group of women gather on and off through the changing seasons to sweat out their secrets and heal each other with heat, talk and arcane sauna-based rituals. The small smoky miracle of the movie is that it creates something so intangible, so lyrical, from the absolutely elemental: fire, wood, water and lots of naked female flesh. We don’t necessarily get to know the women as individuals, despite how intimate and sometimes harrowing their shared stories are. Instead, the director, Anna Hints, lets their soft chatter narrate a kind of choral experience of modern womanhood, operating on the most practical yet optimistic of assumptions: that with the application of enough heat and fellowship, everything painful can be soothed and everything dirty can be made clean. —JK   

Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis

Anton Corbijn’s documentary about Hipgnosis, the legendary 1970s album-cover design team, is full of great stories about how pop music’s most indelible visual form arrived at all that unforgettably strange imagery. Only Hipgnosis could shoot a photo of a cow against a blue sky, put it on a Pink Floyd cover (“Atom Heart Mother”), and make it look like an act of mysterious profundity on a level with the works of Magritte. The two main creatives of Hipgnosis were the late Storm Thorgerson, the prickly visionary of the pair, and Aubrey “Po” Powell, the long-suffering partner who oversaw the execution of Thorgerson’s insane ideas. “Squaring the Circle” is nothing if not a testament to absurdly high record-company budgets in the ’70s, which couldn’t all be spent on analog tape and blow. The movie doesn’t ask what transpired after the story abruptly ends, amid financial ruin and changing tastes in 1982. But it’s clear that Corbijn, well-known for his own album design work, is a true believer, just like all of us who grew up in a golden age of album art and lament that it was the pictures that got smaller. —CW

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie

It’s a lot funnier and more entertaining than you might think. Michael J. Fox tells his own story in “Still,” which director Davis Guggenheim treats as “a Michael J. Fox movie” by remixing clips from the Emmy-winning actor’s career with cleverly restaged scenes from his private life. The “Family Ties” and “Back to the Future” star was one of the most beloved personalities of the 1980s, and though his personal story has been overshadowed by his struggle with Parkinson’s disease (diagnosed when he was just 29), Guggenheim’s upbeat, ultra-polished documentary reminds us what a peppy and relatable actor Fox was — and is. The film presents him as a trouper, focusing on how he fought to hide his symptoms for years, burying himself in his work so as not to face his handicap head-on. Today, Fox is a good sport, cracking jokes about his tremors. And looking back, he always made it look easy, coming across as laidback and cool even while secretly stressed. He never wanted to be the poster boy for Parkinson’s, but if Michael J. Fox could sell Pepsi to a generation, he realized it was within his power to raise awareness of the disease he’d been dealt. —PD  

Sam Green has crafted a documentary the likes of which you’ve never heard before. Meant to be watched with headphones, this unique, immersive, audio-driven essay film invites audiences to reconsider their relationship to sound: how it works, what it can do and the way that specific noises can unlock memories or spark entirely new ones. The director investigates the source of certain sounds (like a tree falling in the forest), though he’s generally more interested in how we receive them, literally and emotionally. The film has an uncanny quality, yet it wouldn’t be as rewarding if not for its human subjects, such as the experimental musician Annea Lockwood, who once set a piano on fire to hear how it would sound, or Nehanda Abiodun, an African American revolutionary, holed up in Cuba, for whom the 1979 disco song “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” opens a wormhole of memory. —PD

20 Days in Mariupol

Offering a refresher in outrage on Ukraine’s behalf, Mstyslav Chernov’s bleak but essential film is a nerve-jangling piece of on-the-ground combat reportage. It’s built around a team of Associated Press correspondents who traveled to the port city of Mariupol on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Vladimir Putin launched the war. They assumed that this key city, just 30 miles from the enemy border, would be an early objective — the hunch was correct. Within hours, the bombs began to fall; the documentary is a strikingly immediate record of citizens under siege. The grotesque injustice of the situation is reinforced by our periodically hearing Russian leaders’ flat denials that civilians are being targeted, even as we spend 90 minutes witnessing apartment buildings, hospitals, and more reduced to charred ruins. There’s no sermonizing, just a punishingly up-close look at the toll of modern warfare on a population. “What did we do to deserve this? What are these people guilty of?” a mother asks — questions to which there can be no answer. —Dennis Harvey

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The best documentaries of 2023

From festival favorites to surprisingly deep films about celebrities, we're counting down our favorite nonfiction films of the year.

In the age of the internet, the world has become smaller, more connected—and a lot messier. In fact, it can be convincingly argued that the events of especially the last 10 to 15 years show humankind isn’t really wired for the type of constant connection that social media can provide. The rawness and pain of life, presented in volume, can be overwhelming.

But if movies are, first and foremost, mainly entertainment for most people, the best of them provide rich avenues of unique escape, illumination, and, yes, apportioned heartbreak. This is particularly true in the nonfiction arena, which offers the most affordable form of travel there is—one doesn’t even need a passport. And once a lamplight of intellectual curiosity is lit, it can last a lifetime. With that in mind (and shrugging apologies to a couple of high-profile but ultimately disappointing films excluded here), here are the 20 best documentaries of 2023.

20. Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story Of The Cabbage Patch Kids

Explorations of zeitgeist-gripping commercial trends have enjoyed a recent cinematic boom, and many of these fiction adaptations ( BlackBerry , The Beanie Bubble , Tetris ) are quite entertaining. Billion Dollar Babies , though, serves up a nonfiction chronicling that is equal parts entertaining and shrewdly insightful. Narrated by Neil Patrick Harris, the movie includes candid interviews with the businessmen (Xavier Roberts, Roger Schlaifer, Al Kahn) responsible for crafting and shepherding the consumer phenomenon, while also edging into more ruminative territory. Comparing favorably to other stories of popular products wrested away from their entrepreneurs (see also: Instant Life , about the creator of Sea Monkeys, and Burt’s Buzz , about the Burt’s Bees founder), Billion Dollar Babies is a fascinating look at arguably ground zero for America’s cult of consumerism.

19. Judy Blume Forever

The story of America’s misguided quest to protect childhood innocence through, you know, simply not talking about things with kids is one told over and over, dressed up in different ways across many generations. An entertainingly invaluable resource, friend, and one-woman diversionary program for many would-be lost souls receives her (overdue) due in Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s warm documentary, which celebrates the bestselling author of its title. A movie of forthright eloquence, Judy Blume Forever reflects the huge heart of its subject—trying to throw her arms around the world—but also shows how meaningful art and literature can help shape and save lives.

18. 20 Days In Mariupol

Despots count on the fact that the grim realities of war understandably grind most of us down. But 20 Days In Mariupol , a World Cinema Audience Award winner at the Sundance Film Festival, is a work that punches beyond the news cycle, a sobering piece of frontline docu-journalism that achieves its own special transcendence. Director Mstyslav Chernov’s film is a gripping historical record, yes, but it’s shot through with moments of extraordinary bravery that counterbalance its bleakness. It gives one hope even as it breaks your heart. Watch it in tandem with 2022’s Navalny for a fuller understanding of the stakes of the war in Ukraine.

17. You Can Call Me Bill

Rejecting the expected construction and tone of so many glad-handing biographical snapshots, Alexandre O. Philippe’s engaging and introspective You Can Call Me Bill instead delves into the passions, hopes, and concerns of actor William Shatner, and leans heavily on his prowess as a natural-born storyteller. The result is a movie that honors the boundless curiosity of its larger-than-life subject and imparts some magical lessons from a life lived with few filters.

16. The Disappearance Of Shere Hite

History is often so dryly presented as to be off-putting to millions of people. Sex-adjacent subject matter helps, of course, but the skillful, tapestral construction and additionally bolstering visual vocabulary of director Nicole Newnham’s The Disappearance Of Shere Hite is what most recommend it. An absorbing portrait of groundbreaking sex researcher Shere Hite, her rise to fame and notoriety, and her retreat from the public eye, this astutely interwoven mélange of character study and mystery embraces the complexities and many contradictions of its subject, making history come alive.

15. Silver Dollar Road

Any number of documentaries have plumbed unjust criminal convictions, but few recently with as much commingled compassion and contextualization as Raoul Peck’s riveting and moving recounting of the plight of the North Carolina Reels family. The novel nature of the seed of its focus (purloined land rights) is perhaps part of its hook, but Silver Dollar Road also strikes a unique balance, assaying intersections of racial justice, capitalistic exploitation, gender issues, and more. By leaving certain questions unanswered, the movie hints at the unsolvable nature of certain modern problems with deep-stretching roots, sparking thought and conversation.

14. American Symphony

A special music documentary that affectingly doubles as a story about the fuller dimensions and depths of love, Matthew Heineman’s American Symphony begins as a portrait of Grammy-winning multi-instrumentalist Jon Batiste, tackling the challenge of composing an original symphony that reimagines the classical traditions of the form. This effort is upended when Batiste’s life partner, author Suleika Jaouad, learns that her cancer has returned. A uniquely gifted hybrid filmmaker, Heineman has deep experience in conflict zones, but here captures roiling inner landscapes, delivering an incredibly intimate and lived-in film that lingers on questions of the human heart as much as art and the creative process.

13. Film: The Living Record Of Our Memory

A documentary about film preservation and restoration would seem to have a self-selecting (and rather limited) audience. Yet Inés Toharia’s absorbing Film: The Living Record Of Our Memory possesses a trenchant instructiveness and sneaky emotional punching power for those willing to submit to its probing thesis. Spanning both time and the globe, and full of all manner of fascinating narrative tangents, the film asks viewers to consider how diminished our world and thus our shared humanity would (or, darkly, will) be without the ability to retain and see films from different eras and cultures? This is more than just a cinematic cri de coeur —it’s a standout work on its own.

Wim Wenders is a filmmaker who has, from almost the first flashes of the digital age, committed to marrying his interests in the fine arts with advances in state-of-the-art technology. Anchored by Leonard Küssner’s enveloping, award-winning score, and shot in both 3D and 6K resolution, Wenders’ meticulously constructed film delves into the work of innovative German painter and sculptor Anselm Keifer, delivering a fascinating meditation on human existence.

11. A Revolution On Canvas

Part art-heist thriller, part personal history, married co-directors Sara Nodjoumi and Till Schauder deliver an engrossing portrait of one of Iran’s most revolutionary artists — who also happens to be Nodjoumi’s father. In telling the story of his quest to locate more than 100 of his so-called “treasonous” paintings that disappeared after the Iranian Revolution, A Revolution On Canvas is, naturally, shot through with social and political commentary. But there are so many other threads here, too, making it a work that substantively addresses personal identity’s relationship to family history, as well as a generational portrait of a woman’s sacrifice. The big, looming question, though: voices of political opposition can be exiled, and protestors tortured or even killed, but what does it mean to a society to vanish works of culture?

10. The Pigeon Tunnel

A work of sober reflection, both on the part of the subject and its maker, documentarian Errol Morris’ latest offering begins as a straightforward interrogation of the life of David Cornwell, the British former spy who’s enjoyed a celebrated career writing under the pen name John le Carré. Slowly, almost surreptitiously, however, the movie extends into more universal themes, and an examination of the current state of the world. Richly sharing stories of his upbringing and his absent mother and especially his con-man father (“I can see my own life as a succession of embraces and escapes,” he says), Cornwell eloquently elucidates some of the perceived value of assumed masks and false identities—qualities that are richly evident in political and social realms today.

9. Kiss The Future

In 1993, the biggest rock ’n’ roll band in the world, U2, chose to effectively splash cold water in the faces of hundreds of thousands of European concertgoers. As part of its groundbreaking Zoo TV Tour, the band featured live nightly satellite link-ups to citizens trapped in Sarajevo during the bloody Bosnian War. It was both heartrending and eye-opening. Director Nenad Cicin-Sain’s Kiss The Future , which had its world premiere in Berlin, tells the story of how this risky emotional high-wire gambit came to be, plus all that flowed from it. The end result uncommonly balances insight and uplift — showcasing the pulsing, indefatigable human need for creative expression, as well as art’s essential role in combatting the horrors of war and weaponized ethnic hatred.

8. Four Daughters

Winner of both the Cannes L’Oeil D’or and Gotham Award documentary prizes, director Kaouther Ben Hania’s film is a profoundly introspective work of inventive and layered storytelling, staged with a deceptive simplicity. A piece of cinematic therapy, Four Daughters reconstructs the story of Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian woman whose two eldest children have been lost to the radicalization of Islamic extremists. By casting professional actresses as the missing daughters, along with acclaimed Egyptian-Tunisian actress Hend Sabari as Olfa, the movie explores trauma and taps into a deep wellspring of the human spirit, while honoring the complexities of motherhood, loss, grief, and resilience.

7. Bobi Wine: The People’s President

Last year Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning Navalny , named for the leading Russian political opposition leader, presented an incredible tale of personal sacrifice in an autocratic state. Bobi Wine is no less engaging as a portrait of resilience and unfathomable courage. The top prize winner at the International Documentary Awards, Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp’s film follows the titular 41-year-old music star, activist, and opposition leader during Uganda’s 2021 presidential election. Beautifully and intuitively balancing the intimate and the dynamic, Bobi Wine is a well-crafted movie that sweeps you up in both the personal and broader arcs of its stories.

6. Beyond Utopia

Few nonfiction films of 2023 present more jaw-dropping moments than Beyond Utopia , which tells the story of various families as they attempt to escape the brutally oppressive North Korea. Director-editor Madeleine Gavin has a keen grasp on pacing and tone; the film’s embedded-viewer aesthetic gives it an inherent tension and propulsiveness, but she also knows how to elicit incredible viewer investment in character, especially in the form of a man who has served as a longtime guide to freedom. In-the-moment explorations of life-or-death stakes don’t get much more compelling than this.

5. Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros

Paying loving tribute to a French family’s culinary legacy, legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s latest effort, Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros centers on a Michelin-starred restaurant that has remained in the same family for four generations. Languidly paced but never dull, the film showcases everything for which one could yearn in a movie — interesting characters, conflict, humor, and the application of enormous skill and discipline in a pursuit of a dream. Skip The Food Network’s clamorous holiday programming and slot this affectionate, inquisitive gem at the front end of a double feature with The Taste Of Things , before treating yourself to a sumptuous meal.

4. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie

Buoyed by a canny, superlative, and enriching technical package, director David Guggenheim’s documentary is an elevated, stirring tale of unbowed hopefulness and continued engagement with the world at large, despite its subject’s grappling with the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s Disease. Working with editor Michael Harte, Guggenheim incorporates footage from Fox’s filmography and blends it with flashes of staged recreation, other archival footage, and interviews old and new to craft a narrative which courses with a lively, forward-leaning energy that perfectly complements the remarkably gifted Fox. Affecting but also thought-provoking, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie makes a powerful statement about living and loving.

3. The Mission

Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s film tells the story of a young man, John Allen Chau, who embraced the fervor of religious evangelicalism. Left unsatisfied by a number of missionary trips, Chau then set his sights on a sort of holy grail of Christian conversion—making contact with and preaching the gospel of Jesus to a small pre-Neolithic island tribe off the coast of India. The casual brilliance of The Mission lies in the way it examines everything from white-saviorism and modern influencer culture to hormonal male energy and the impact of familial embarrassment. All of this is done in a way that presents questions without definitive answers, deftly acknowledging the polarities of a world that will sometimes remain unbowed and indifferent to even our strongest convictions.

2. The Eternal Memory

The tragedy of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia , and more broadly the fragility of life, are affectingly unpacked in this singular documentary, which traces eight years of romance and heartrending cognitive decline as Chilean journalist and television presenter Augusto Góngora is cared for by his wife Paulina Urrutia, both before and through COVID. While not short on direct emotionalism, director Maite Alberdi’s skillfully edited The Eternal Memory eschews cheap sentimentality, connecting eroded memory on an individual level to the broader issue of a country’s identity.

1. The Mother of All Lies

A high-wire act of emotional excavation, Asmae El Moudir’s cinematic memoir takes as its leaping-off point the question of why there exists only one grainy and somewhat dubious photo of her as a child. The Best Director winner in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival and the International Documentary Awards (where it was also nominated in the Best Feature and Best Writing categories), The Mother Of All Lies is a sort of spiritual cousin, perhaps, to Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell —a high-degree-of-difficulty unpacking of personal identity, family, trauma and unspoken truths, incredibly interweaving interviews and voiceover narration with miniature puppets and sets which painstakingly recreate the Casablanca neighborhood of El Moudir’s youth. The one-of-a-kind end result, in which layers of additional resonance and meaning come slowly into focus, is the most deeply personally felt movie of the year.

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Best Documentaries 2023

For his latest film, acclaimed documentarian Davis Guggenheim focused his camera on Michael J. Fox, the beloved actor who gave us Alex P. Keaton, Marty McFly, and Teen Wolf , and the result was a thoughtful, intimate portrait of Fox’s personal and professional life that earned nearly universal acclaim and a spot at the top of our Best Documentary category.

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (2023) 99%

KOKOMO CITY (2023) 99%

20 Days in Mariupol (2023) 100%

The Disappearance of Shere Hite (2023) 100%

Beyond Utopia (2023) 100%

A Disturbance in The Force (2023) 100%

It Ain't Over (2022) 98%

The Pigeon Tunnel (2023) 96%

Little Richard: I Am Everything (2023) 94%

Joan Baez I Am a Noise (2023) 94%

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15 Travel Documentaries to Fuel your Wanderlust

Last updated on April 6th, 2023 at 09:35 pm

If there are travel documentaries being broadcast on British TV, we can guarantee we’ll be ready with remote control in hand. When we’re back home in London , we spend hours on the sofa, fuelling our wanderlust by watching others travelling the world.

For us, watching travel documentaries helps fill those gaps between trips. For an hour or so we’re transported somewhere far away from the normality of home. We reminisce of faraway places we’ve been to if filming locations are in countries we’ve already visited. Or we get excited and inspired if filmed in countries we are yet to discover. Both are just as enjoyable.

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Along with cookery shows and reality TV, there are so many travel documentaries to choose from. Via terrestrial TV, Sky, Netflix, Amazon or other online sites, they’ll be a documentary to satisfy anyone’s wanderlust.

We’ve picked 15 of our favourite travel documentaries from the more thoughtful travel subjects to less serious and humorous ways of seeing the world. Viewing access to these shows changes regularly so we’d suggest entering the title into Google to find which viewing platforms are currently available at the time of reading this post.

Regular guys Scott Wilson and Justin Lukach are bored. So what do they do? Take a road trip, of course. Departures follows them and their cameraman, Andre Dupuis, as they journey to countries all over the world. We love the non-premium feel of this show. It’s just three nice Canadian guys filming themselves travelling the world. They make an effort to visit hard to get to places and interact with locals wherever they go. This brings experiences that not all travellers get to do. Departures make the top of our travel documentaries list. 

Walking the Nile & Walking the Himalayas

Levison James Wood is a British Army officer and explorer. He’s best known for his extended walking expeditions in Africa and Asia. Over the course of nine months from 2013-2014, he undertook the first ever expedition to walk the entire length of the river Nile .

In 2015 he walked the length of the Himalayas. Both adventures were commissioned into four-part travel documentaries for Channel 4 in the UK. His journeys bring amazing landscapes, local interaction, massive highs and some disastrous lows.

Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer with Simon Reeve

Simon Reeve makes two “round the world” trips following the tropic of Capricorn in the Southern hemisphere and the tropic of Cancer in the Northern hemisphere . These two travel documentaries include visits to one or more countries, in Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, Arabia and Hawaii. Simon explores daily life for locals, tourists and wildlife, as well as the history, culture and politics which all prove quite varied.

Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild

New Lives in the Wild is a television series on UK’s Channel 5 hosted by adventurer Ben Fogle . The series is about meeting people who live in some of the most remote locations on earth. More often than not, these are western families or individuals who have had enough of the big city rat race. They’ve escaped to remote parts of the world to set up new lives in the wild.

Examples are the Alaskan wilderness, a Polynesian Island and the Arizonian desert. These are courageous and inspirational people who Ben stays with for a few days to learn how they live so remotely.

World’s Most Dangerous Roads

World’s Most Dangerous Roads is a British BBC TV series first aired in 2011. Two celebrities per episode are filmed as they journey by a 4×4 vehicle along roads considered among the world’s most dangerous. Episodes include the Death Road in Bolivia and the Ho Chi Minh trail in Vietnam . Many of the chosen celebrities are comedians so some humour is added to what otherwise is a fascinating and educational watch.

Long Way Round

In 2004, Ewan McGregor , Charley Boorman and cameraman Claudio von Planta, travelled from London to New York City on a motorbike. In the process, they created some awesome travel documentaries. The journey visited thirteen countries, starting in the UK, then passing through France, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Canada, and the USA, ending in New York City for a cumulative distance of 18,887 miles (30,396 km).

They take the time to visit a variety of sights and landmarks while travelling, including the Church of Bones in the Czech Republic, the Mask of Sorrow monument in Magadan, Russia, and Mount Rushmore in the USA. They, of course, encounter many hurdles along the way. It wouldn’t be a great adventure without them.

Top Gear: Road Trip Specials

This one’s a bit of a wild card as Top Gear does not usually fall in the travel documentaries category. However, we love the Top Gear road trip specials. Why? Because they take place in some incredible world locations. Typical Top Gear antics include driving around Africa trying to find the source of the Nile, going off road from Bolivia to Chile and getting across the length of Vietnam on two wheels with a budget of just $1000. We know a lot of what happens is scripted but we still can’t help but enjoy these adventurous episodes.

An Idiot Abroad

An Idiot Abroad is a British travel documentary / road trip comedy television series broadcast on Sky 1. It’s  created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and starring Karl Pilkington . The ongoing theme is that Pilkington has no interest in global travel, so Merchant and Gervais make him travel to the Seven Wonders of the World while they stay in the UK and monitor his progress.

Most of each episode focuses on Pilkington’s humorous reactions to cultural differences and idiosyncrasies in the countries he visits. He also gets set hilarious tasks, often not related to why he believed he was there. The silliest of our travel documentaries but well worth a watch. 

Asian Provocateur

Comedian Romesh Ranganathan is sent by his mother on a ramshackle odyssey around his parents’ homeland of Sri Lanka in an attempt to connect him with his roots. Romesh is the kind of guy who likes his home comforts and finds friendliness uncomfortable so Sri Lanka is not his ideal place to visit. As he quotes, ‘I was a bumbling Englishman in a Sri Lankan disguise’, so you can imagine the funny situations he gets himself into.

Our Guy in India

Motorbike racer  Guy Martin buys a Royal Enfield motorbike at a Delhi market, gets a traditional Hindu blessing and sets off on a 1000-mile motorbike trip.  Guy explores a rarely-seen side of modern India as he heads to one of the world’s maddest bike races. He travels through various parts of the country coming across all kinds of interesting people and sights on the way. Does he win the race at the end? You’ll have to watch to find out.

The Mekong River with Sue Perkins

TV presenter Sue Perkins embarks on a life-changing, 3,000-mile journey up the Mekong , South East Asia’s greatest river, exploring lives and landscapes on the point of dramatic change. It’s a really interesting watch, learning how 1000s of people live on and around one of the world’s great rivers. There’s plenty of smiles and tears as Sue listens to the locals stories and changing way of lives.    

The Secret Caribbean with Trevor McDonald

The newsreader and journalist, Sir Trevor McDonald embarks upon a stunning and epic journey across the Caribbean. From the Bahamas in the North to his birthplace Trinidad in the south, uncovering the sun-kissed islands along the way.

In this three part series, Sir Trevor visits The Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, Barbados, Grenada and Trinidad. It’s an unforgettable expedition as he experiences the huge contrasts in cultures and lifestyles these islands have to offer.

Travel Man 48 hours

If you’re looking for more laughs with your travel documentaries then Travel Man is the British documentary series for you. It features presenter Richard Ayoade , travelling to a different location each episode with a celebrity guest. Ayoade takes a ruthless approach to getting the maximum from each city break. Cramming as much as he possibly can in 48 fast and funny hours. His unique presenting style has us laughing through every episode.

Charley Boorman by Any Means

By Any Means , also known as Ireland to Sydney by Any Means , is a television series following Long Way Round star Charley Boorman . Travelling from Wicklow , Ireland, to Sydney , New South Wales, Australia, it features him completing the journey using 112 modes of transport and only travelling by plane when absolutely necessary. A real epic adventure!

Joanna Lumley’s Trans-Siberian Adventure

Joanna Lumley embarks on the world’s greatest train journey for this three-part documentary series. Travelling from East to West, she departs from Hong Kong across 5,777 miles of both Asia and Europe. Joanna travels through seven time zones, taking in an immense panorama of vistas and cultures, people and places, before her final arrival in Moscow.

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New Documentaries Coming to Netflix in Fall 2023

All the documentaries and docu-series we know that are coming to Netflix for the remaining months of 2023.

Illustration by What’s on Netflix – Pictures courtesy of Netflix

Over the years, Netflix has built a huge library of documentaries and docu-series. In fact, that library is now over 700 titles strong, and there’s more to come in the Fall of 2023. Here’s a preview of all the announced documentaries still set to release in 2023. 

Want to see what new scripted movies Netflix has in store for the remaining months of 2023? You can find our regularly updated Fall 2023 movie preview guide .

Please note: This list was compiled using available information and all titles subject to change. Netflix has not officially released its own list of unscripted documentaries for Fall 2023 – we will update if they do.

Dated Documentaries Coming in Fall 2023

Heart of invictus.

Coming to Netflix : August 30th

Picture: Netflix

Coming to Netflix from the Archewell Productions output deal is the new documentary sports series looking into the Invictus Games, which is a special event put on for ex-veterans who often have wounds from the battlefield.

The new five-episode series seeks to tell the stories of these athletes from the early days of training through to the big day.

Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones

This new four-part documentary series is a travel show at heart, with host Dan Buettner navigating the world in pursuit of ways to live longer and perhaps even happier.

Visiting places like Japan, Italy, and Greece, you’ll tag along with Buettner’s investigation into the diet, behavior, and lifestyles of those living the longest, most vibrant lives.

Coming to Netflix : September 6th

Picture: Netflix / Sky Nature

Narrated by Tom Hardy, this nature documentary series looks at some of the world’s most well-known and formidable predators.

Please note that this documentary is only expected on Netflix regions outside the United Kingdom.

Scout’s Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America

Pictures: Netflix

From the director of The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez and the executive producer of the award-winning The White Helmets, this investigative documentary looks into whistleblowers, survivors, and former employees of the Boy Scouts of America and the attempts to cover up systematic child sexual abuse.

Spy Ops (Season 1)

Coming to Netflix : September 8th

Over the course of multiple episodes, you’ll get to hear the inside story behind some of the world’s most secretive organizations such as MI6 from the UK and the CIA. You’ll hear how they’ve operated throughout history and how they operate today.

Coming to Netflix : September 13th

From BBC Studios and the director behind Netflix’s Last Chance U and Cheer comes a new sports documentary following the Ohio Valley Wrestling gym based out of Louisville, Kentucky. The gym has trained some of the all-time wrestling greats, including John Cena and Dave Bautista.

Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons (Season 7)

Coming to Netflix: September 15th

Now one of Netflix’s longest-running documentary series of all time, Raphael Rowe is back to explore new prisons. Locations in season 7 include Finland, the Czech Republic, Indonesia, and the Solomon Islands.

The Saint of Second Chances

Coming to Netflix : September 19th

From Morgan Neville and Jeff Malmberg, this new documentary that Netflix picked up for release over the summer will feature the narration of Jeff Daniels and stars Charlie Day as the subject of the doc Mike Veeck.

Mike Veeck, the son of legendary Major League Baseball owner Bill Veeck, managed to blow up his father’s career and then spent the next few decades learning the value of a second chance.

Who Killed Jill Dando ?

Coming to Netflix : September 26th

Produced in the United Kingdom, this documentary looks into a national tragedy that occurred in the late 1990s when a TV presenter was murdered.

Coming to Netflix: September 27th

Produced by Amblin Television, this documentary series looks to the stars and the growing collection of evidence of UFO sightings from across the globe.

It is a four-part series that will house interviews with top scientists, military officials, and those who have experienced contact with extraterrestrial life.

Coming to Netflix : October 1st

Picture: Luchina Fisher

Having completed the rounds at various film festivals, Netflix acquired Luchina Fisher’s docu-short in June 2023.

The LGBTQ documentary has the following synopsis:

“On a fishing trip with Matthew Shepard’s father, five disparate dads discuss their love, hopes and fears for their trans kids in this short documentary.”

The Devil on Trial 

Coming to Netflix : October 17th

Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

This new documentary feature seeks to retell the strangest cases in US history. Arne C. Johnson of Brookfield, CT, arrived at Danbury Superior Court to face justice for his crime of the stabbing to death of Alano Bono, with his attorney arguing that he did it on behalf of the devil.

Christopher Holt directs. 

Life on Our Planet (Season 1)

Coming to Netflix : October 25th

This new eight-part limited series takes a look into the history of the planet Earth. It details some of the species that have gone extinct over the years and how we evolved.

Amblin Television produces with Steven Spielberg serving as executive producer. Morgan Freeman provides the narration and uses groundbreaking technology from Industrial Light & Magic to bring the old animals to life.

Coming to Netflix : November TBD

Netflix has two documentaries in 2023 looking into two of the biggest action stars in Hollywood history. It began with the mini-series Arnold earlier in the year, and next to be profiled will be Sylvester Stallone.

Per Netflix, “the retrospective documentary offers an intimate look at the Oscar-nominated actor-writer-director-producer, paralleling his inspirational underdog story with the indelible characters he has brought to life.”

The documentary will make its world premiere first at the Toronto Film Festival .

Undated Netflix Original Documentaries Confirmed for Fall 2023

Beckham / david beckham.

Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images

Some huge soccer football stars have been profiled on Netflix over the years, with Neymar being perhaps the biggest. Next up is the legendary England player who found success in the States in his later year in the sport.

Set to be a multi-part series, the series will look into the star’s roots from growing up in East London and how he progressed through his career.

Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul

From Amblin Television, this documentary series tells the story of the controversial e-cigarette company that began as a small tech startup to disrupt the billion-dollar tobacco industry. It soon came under intense scrutiny.

R.J. Cutler directs the mini-series.

FIFA World Cup: The Greatest Show on Earth

Photo by Richard Sellers/Getty Images

Originally scheduled for release over the Summer, it looks like Netflix’s first major documentary with FIFA in partnership has been delayed to later in the year.

The series, produced by Fulwell 73, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022 with access to all 32 teams.

Robbie Williams

Photo by Rocco Spaziani/Archivio Spaziani/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images

Following Netflix’s documentaries on British pop groups and artists such as Lewis Capaldi and WHAM! in 2023, Netflix will be diving into Take That and solo-singer star Robbie Williams.

Joe Pearlman (the director of the aforementioned Capaldi doc) for this new series looking into the singer’s 30-plus years in the limelight.

Stamped from the Beginning

Multiple projects were at one point being developed using the works of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi. One of the first to emerge will be Stamped From The Beginning, which is due to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September.

The new feature-film documentary, directed by Roger Ross Williams, uses testimony from leading scholars and animation to explore “the history of anti-Black racist ideas.”

Untitled US Women’s Soccer Docu-series

Directed by Rebecca Gitlitz, this multi-episode documentary follows the US Women’s National Team’s recent World Cup journey.

World War II: From the Frontlines

Pictures: Getty Images

John Boyega will narrate this new six-part World War II series that comes from British outfit 72 Films.

The series, featuring rare WW2 footage, is described as” a moving and innovative series which plunges the viewer directly onto the frontlines of WW2.”

International Documentaries Coming in Fall 2023

• Rosa Peral’s Tapes – September 8th – Spanish true-crime documentary of a woman who was convicted after murdering her parter aided by an ex-lover.
• Ice Cold: Murder, Coffee and Jessica Wongso – September TBD – Indonesian documentary looking into the trial of Jessica Wongso.
• Vasco Rossi: Living It – September TBD – Italian doc covering rock star Vasco Rossi and his successful career over the decades.

We’ll keep this post updated throughout the coming months as and when we learn of more upcoming documentaries. Let us know if we’ve missed any in the comments down below.

Founder of What's on Netflix, Kasey has been tracking the comings and goings of the Netflix library for over a decade. Covering everything from new movies, series and games from around the world, Kasey is in charge of covering breaking news, covering all the new additions now available on Netflix and what's coming next.

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The Best Documentaries and Docuseries of 2023

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There were some heavy hitters working in 2023. Matthew Heineman, Maite Alberdi, Steve James, and Errol Morris all delivered impressive new pieces. Breakthroughs came screaming to the forefront as well, many aided by festival or critical support (or both). Films like “Kokomo City,” “Beyond Utopia,” and “A Still Small Voice” managed to crack the zeitgeist and pique cinephiles’ interest. While over in television, genre hybrids like “Paul T. Goldman” and experimental adaptations (like “The 1619 Project”) got people talking, and plenty of powerful stories found room to grow and expand along with their audience. (“How To with John Wilson,” you will be missed .)

The documentary landscape is shifting, along with an industry adapting to a new reality. To some, the end of the “too much TV” era and the studios’ slow pivot away from streaming indicates less space for documentaries, even if there’s more demand for true crime tales and continuations of established hits. (Get ready for “The Jinx 2” in 2024 — no, really .) But to others, it’s just another sea change. Hollywood has seen them before, and we’ll see them again. Documentaries always find a way through, and this adjustment will be no different. Instead of feeling worried or threatened, take heart in the abundant offerings that broke through in 2023. Below, we’ve listed the best documentaries of the year — listed in alphabetical order — for both features and series. Enjoy, and don’t worry: There will be even more next year.

Kate Erbland, Marcus Jones, Ryan Lattanzio, Tony Maglio, Mark Peikert, Sarah Shachat, and Brian Welk contributed to this list.

1. “American Symphony”

What starts as a fascinating portrait of Oscar- and Grammy-winning New Orleans musician Jon Batiste attempting to expand the definition of a symphony with his pending Carnegie Hall debut contracts into something much more intimate. Director Matthew Heineman, more often known for taking audiences to the frontlines of war, is uniquely adept at capturing the former “Late Show” bandleader and Suleika Jaouad, his successful author and wife, battle some of the greatest challenges that life can throw. Meanwhile, Batiste’s emotional rollercoaster of a personal life runs parallel to the pinnacle of his career, as he becomes the first Black artist to win Album of the Year in over a decade. Quite simply, “American Symphony” needs to be seen to be believed. —MJ

2. “Beyond Utopia”

This nonfiction exposé reveals what it’s like to live in North Korea — and to try to escape. Editor-turned-director Madeleine Gavin (“City of Joy”) tracks two riveting and dangerous attempts at defection in this eye-openier which won the U.S. documentary audience award at Sundance 2023. After some reluctance to tackle the subject of North Korea, Gavin’s deep research persuaded her to dive in, including hidden camera footage that had been brought out (some of which is in the film). Gavin tracks two narratives, as heroic underground railroad leader Pastor Kim steers the Roh family of five (including two children and an 80-year-old grandmother), with the help of 50 brokers, on a torturous journey over jungles, mountains, and rivers, through Communist countries China, Vietnam, and Laos before they reach safety in Thailand. He also tries to help a mother, Soyeon Lee, who — having successfully defected to South Korea — struggles to bring her 17-year-old son to join her.

As much as the Roh story is riveting, dangerous, and rigorous — often shot with iPhones by the participants themselves — the heartbreaking narrative is Soyeon Lee’s unsuccessful attempts to rescue her son, which we watch unfold in real time. Gavin expertly threads the two storylines, while also providing snippets of history and what it’s like to live in North Korea. “Beyond Utopia” is landing key documentary nominations on the road to the Oscars. The film nabbed four Critics Choice nods, including Best Feature, and will vie for the Cinema Eye Honors audience award. —AT

3. “Bill Russell: Legend”

The savvy and power of “Bill Russell: Legend” can be gleaned from one seemingly innocuous detail: The two-part documentary features plenty of talking heads, from NBA greats Magic Johnson and Stephen Curry to Russell’s family members and the titular legend himself. It’s also narrated, quite well, by Corey Stoll. But there’s another voice that’s instrumental to director Sam Pollard’s story: Jeffrey Wright’s. The “American Fiction” star reads passages from Russell’s memoirs, pulling key quotes directly from the legendary center’s writing, by way of providing insight into times long past and memories that risk being forgotten.

“Bill Russell: Legend” is dedicated not just to its subject, but to each of his many sides: a basketball great worthy of study for his sheer skill alone; a winner with more team titles and personal triumphs than many dare to dream possible; a civil rights icon whose unflinching fight for racial equality began long before he became a beloved American athlete and continued long after he could sprint from one end of the Boston Garden to the other. Pollard’s film leaves no stone unturned, without bloating itself beyond its most potent version. Including Russell’s memoirs — his memories, his own recollection of events — by way of Wright’s distinct yet expressive recitation not only shows the film’s commitment to reflecting Russell’s fascinating life, but also to ingraining it in as many memories as possible. It’s a story worth telling, and a story that demands to be told well. —BT

4. “Break Point”

Netflix released the first part of “Break Point” Season 1 on January 13, 2023; the back half would wait until June 21. The “break” in “Break Point” kept tennis fans in suspense, but it was really a production necessity. Like “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” (the two share the same production company), 2023 IndieWire honorable mention “Quarterback,” and other similar Netflix sports docuseries, you don’t have to be a fan of the sport to be a fan of the show. These well-done documentaries are about the personalities and the stakes, not just the matches, races, and games. “Break Point” makes viewers love Ons Jabeur — and love to hate Nick Kyrgios (if you didn’t already).

The first set in “Break Point” covers the Australian Open, Indian Wells, and the French Open. It’s enough to capture viewers and a Season 2-renewal from Netflix. Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the WTA and ATP Finals have to wait for summer. —TM

5. “The Deepest Breath”

Laura McGann’s “The Deepest Breath” will, forgive us, have you holding yours, as the filmmaker spins through a heart-stopping true story (and a tragic one at that), framed through gut-churning footage that approximates the feeling of being a freediver (like the subjects of the film) as they plunge ever-deeper in pursuit of a crazy dream.

While the story at the heart of the Netflix feature — which follows the paths of freedivers Alessia Zecchini and Stephen Keenan as they pursue their passions (and, for awhile, each other) — is compelling enough (and that’s even without knowing both of the film’s subjects don’t make it out of this story alive), it’s how the entire outing is presented that thrills. Zecchini, Keenan, and myriad other talking heads are driven to dive to insane depths on a single breath (of note: viewers will learn significantly more about the rules of the sport), a pursuit that sounds nuts and is even more shocking in practice. McGann and her team strive to show us as much of that practice as possible, all organized around a story that somehow also feels remarkably relatable.

Think of it this way: I watched this film on a plane, and even I couldn’t catch my breath the entire time. To call it “immersive” is only breaks the surface. —KE

6. “The Eternal Memory”

A vivid docu-essay, a moving romance, and a resonant metaphor for Chilean dictatorship, Maite Alberdi’s “The Eternal Memory” documents the impact of Alzheimer’s on married couple Augusto Góngora and Paula Urruti. Working for some 60 hours of footage, Alberdi follows Góngora’s rapid mental decline and actress-turned-Minister of Culture and the Arts Urruti’s loving efforts to make his final years as joy-filled as possible, even as the COVID pandemic accelerates his condition. Góngora died in June this year, just six months after the film first premiered at Sundance, but he left behind a long legacy of keeping the atrocities of Pinochet’s rule preserved in the national memory.

“The Mole Agent” director Alberdi not only assembles archival footage and home videos spanning their 23-year relationship, but also captures intimate new footage of the couple alone at home or revisiting their past over meals or physical therapy sessions while Góngora slips away but tries to stay tethered to reality. Meanwhile, Góngora’s personal connections to Chilean national trauma, including the murder of a colleague, give the film a political urgency that — using dreamlike editing that hops, skips, and free-associates in ways memory does — threads seamlessly within a portrait of a marriage battling time. Memory is a collective experience, whether in human or political terms, and “The Eternal Memory” is a touching reminder of what shouldn’t be forgotten even amid unknowable disease. —RL

7. “Every Body”

Explaining what the “I” is in LGBTQIA+ should not be this lighthearted of a viewing experience. Make no mistake: The coming-out stories and hardship of intersex people as told in “Every Body” are emotional and difficult conversations. But director Julie Cohen (“RBG”) develops such trust with the film’s three subjects that they’re often willing to frankly discuss their genitalia, chromosomes, and other thorny identity questions in ways that are inspiring, funny, and easy to comprehend, whether you’re straight or part of that wider queer spectrum.

Cohen gets laughs out of activist and writer Alicia Roth Weigel dismantling a conservative pundit who insists there are only two genders. She repurposes a previously salacious “Dateline” story into the context of how doctors trying to impose gender norms has had ripple effects on intersex individuals for generations. She even weaves gender-flipped versions of pop staples into the soundtrack to further drive home the point of gender not being a binary. It’s essential viewing that never feels like homework. —BW

8. “How To with John Wilson” Season 3

John Wilson calls each episode of “How To with John Wilson” a movie, not a documentary. But the structure of his now-concluded HBO series shows just how emotional and personal a great storyteller can get by using building blocks of the documentary form. Each episode is constructed out of Wilson’s astonishing eye for found footage, of course. He interviews subjects and organizes each entry with voiceover narration. There is an explicit hunt for information about a topic, like how to get into bird-watching, or how package delivery works in a city as big as New York. But of course the true subject of “How To with John Wilson” is Wilson’s own interest-spirals, as each episode transforms a straightforward question into an odyssey through how bizarre and unexpected humans can be, which then ends up reinforcing Wilson’s initial curiosity.

The result is that “How To with John Wilson” doesn’t just feel factually accurate, but emotionally true. It’s a show that’s constructed and real, and somehow lives in the poetry Wilson is able to make out of real New Yorkers just waiting on the subway. “How To with John Wilson” stands as a series of sometimes absurd, sometimes profound, really funny movies. We’re so glad we watched them. —SS

9. “Judy Blume Forever”

Throughout Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s warm-hearted documentary “Judy Blume Forever,” the beloved American author is joined by a number of talking heads — a classy assortment, from Blume’s own kids and childhood pals to fellow authors like Mary H.K. Choi and Jacqueline Woodson, plus famous devotees like Lena Dunham and Molly Ringwald, as well as long-time fans (and Blume pen pals) Lorrie Kim and Karen Chilstrom. It should come as little surprise that the best-selling author gets (even to this day!) tons of fan mail, but that Blume delights in saving much of it, often responding to it, and truly cherishing it is just one of the pleasures to be found in this nourishing doc.

Organized mostly chronologically, Blume herself walks us through some of her biggest books and what was going on in her life at the time she was writing them (cute and kicky animations provide a backdrop when Blume reads aloud from her works). Firstly, though, there is her childhood, which sheds light on how some of Blume’s most essential obsessions formed. A child of World War II (she keenly remembers turning seven as it ended), Blume still recalls the feeling that adults weren’t being totally truthful with her about the big stuff. The war was “far away” and couldn’t hurt her. She didn’t need to worry about her father’s health. Being happy was easy. Even as a kiddo, Blume knew it was bunk.

But who could tell other kids that? Eventually, Judy Blume could, though “Judy Blume Forever” also takes us through the many years before she reached that point: swapping secrets with gal pals in high school, going to college to find a husband, always hoping to meet an ideal that didn’t actually appeal to her. Blume was a late bloomer, at least when it comes to her work, and she’s remarkably frank about the years spent not writing (and wanting to) and then early attempts (that were not appreciated). But Blume’s belief that what she was doing was important and was going to help kids feel less alone drove her, and — guess what? — proved to be totally true. —KE

10. “Kokomo City”

D. Smith’s Sundance sensation “Kokomo City” is a rollicking first feature that focuses on the lives of four Black trans sex workers who live in Georgia and New York, illuminating the joy and hardships they face, and imbued with plenty of wit as we get to know this fascinating quartet and their hard-won points of views while living ever in flux. “Kokomo City” in 2023 feels as urgent and revolutionary as something like Jennie Livingston’s ball-culture panoramic “Paris Is Burning” did in 1990.

A lively black-and-white portrait of trans women delivering hope, wisdom, and cutting truth, “Kokomo City” was unfortunately mired in a real-life tragedy that brings an unfortunately timely resonance to the film, given the current forces working politically against LGBTQ people in America. One of the film’s subjects, Koko Da Doll, was murdered this past April not long after the film’s Sundance premiere. Songwriter-turned-filmmaker D. Smith is the ideal and compelling cinematic voice to tell this story — in the documentary’s contrast of black-and-white lighting, its needle drops and deep-cut tracks, and an indie spirit that suffuses every frame. Smith waxes as poetic as her subjects. —RL

11. “Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York”

Serial killer true crime stories are a genre in and of themselves — so much so that the repeated revisiting of murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy almost turn them into clichés that threaten to trivialize the very real consequences of their killings. But rarely are true crime and social justice as cohesively intertwined on the small screen as they are in “Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York,” a four-part docuseries from HBO.

Directed by Anthony Caronna and executive produced by Howard Gertler from Elon Green’s 2021 nonfiction book, “Last Call” pulls back the curtain on the killing spree of Richard Rogers, a male nurse who, as far back as the 1980s and until 2001 (when he was eventually caught by authorities), targeted gay men in New York and New Jersey. (Prior, in 1973, he was acquitted of killing his college housemate in what he alleged was a fit of gay panic.) His reign of terror also fell at a time when queer people were under siege by the NYPD and whose stories were largely ignored by the mainstream media amid the AIDS crisis and the still-felt influence of the Anita Bryants of the world. Through sensitively conducted interviews with the victims’ surviving family members, friends, and lovers, and through noirish reenactments that recall the work of Errol Morris and “The Thin Blue Line,” “Last Call” seeks to reclaim those stories and the socially vulnerable people who tell them. —RL

12. “Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God”

The world is so much more fucked up than we can ever know. That’s what I kept thinking watching Hannah Olson’s HBO docuseries “Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God,” the sort of portrait of a sick-at-the-roots fanatical American underbelly that makes you feel like you have the flu watching it, its bad vibes imbuing your own. Executive-produced by the Safdies among others, “Love Has Won” centers on the rise of Love Has Won cult leader Amy Carlson, aka Mother God, whose body was found mummified in April 2021 in her Crestone, Colorado compound, ensconced in a sleeping bag and Christmas lights, her skin a dark steely blue after years of chronically ingesting colloidal silver.

After opening with that harrowing image of Carlson’s desiccated corpse as Saguache County authorities raid Love Has Won’s stomping grounds, the docuseries retraces how Carlson convinced a few dozen impressionable conspiracy theorists and lost souls to follow her out West. The group’s specific dogma — built around the concept that its acolytes are “lightworkers” who can communicate with aliens — is almost impossible to parse, often emerging out of Carlson’s drunken and drug-addled ravings and stupors. She also believes she’s the reincarnation of some 500 luminaries, from Harriet Tubman to Robin Williams. (When she goes into an especially drunken rampage, one follower says that’s in fact Robin in the room.)

While cult documentaries are a dime a dozen dating back to Netflix’s smash “Wild Wild Country,” Olson’s “Love Has Won” is exceptionally well-crafted from the talking-heads interviews with subjects still mentally in the cult and those who escaped. There’s no moral astringence or reckoning with trauma, as the cult is still so new and still has its hooks firmly in a few who remain unable to reframe their brainwashed delusion as just that. Already the word-of-mouth nonfiction hit of the winter TV season, “Love Has Won” is worth a rewatch for the cult’s dense and unfurling mythology, but there are so many “WTF did I just watch?!” moments that it succeeds as a true, tawdry piece of entertainment on its own terms. —RL

13. “The Luckiest Guy in the World”

Steve James doesn’t miss. Not when he’s directing one of the most influential documentaries of all time, not when he’s pivoting to streaming via top-tier docuseries, and not when he’s making one entry in ESPN’s long-running “30 for 30” franchise — a chapter about the famed basketball star and commentator, Bill Walton. While providing a thorough portrait of the Oregon athlete’s life and profession, James also challenges Walton, whose easygoing nature helped make him one of the cheeriest sports stars of his era. The director does this in both storytelling structure and interview style. He dives headfirst into Walton’s successful career on the court, showing highlight reels that emphasize his dominance, while still finding time to speak to his shifting public image.

Walton’s college-era protests of the Vietnam War cast him as an agitator, even in hippie-friendly California, while injuries in the NBA cost him years of his prime. Seeing Walton prickle at accusations that he was cashing a paycheck while feigning pain only speaks to his character, his commitment, and his love of the game. They draw you closer to him, even though they clearly created a gap between filmmaker and subject. Walton wants you to be happy for him; he’s the self- (and oft-)described “luckiest guy in the world.” But James’ job is to showcase not just why he believes that, but what challenges Walton overcame to maintain such a positive perspective, as well as what he may be overlooking to make those views easier to hold onto. With so many over-polished vanity docs out there, James reminds us what a great documentarian can do with an objective lens. No matter the assignment, James just doesn’t miss. —BT

14. “The Mother of All Lies”

At the beginning of Asmae ElMoudir’s innovative hybrid documentary, which uses clay puppets fashioned by the filmmaker’s father to recreate incidents from her family’s past, we meet her formidable grandmother Zahra. She has long refused to allow any photographs in her home, preferring to keep the past under lock and key. Only after three years, when ElMoudir threatened to hire an actress to play her, did Zahra agree to play herself.

The film took eight years to finish; the filmmaker was determined to blow things up by bringing people in to interact with the dolls in their atelier three hours from Casablanca, to provide space away from their homes. The strategy is effective, as grown men are reduced to tears. One man recalls being thrown in a prison cell full of dead bodies during the 1981 Casablanca bread riots, among other horrors.

Although the co-production between Morocco, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia shared the documentary prize at Cannes, won the Un Certain Regard Best Director award, was selected as the Moroccan Oscar entry, and nominated for Best Documentary at the Indie Spirits, the film still lacks distribution. —AT

15. “Paul T. Goldman”

We’re going in the way-back machine for this blurb — or at least as far as you can go back in 2023. “Paul T. Goldman” debuted January 1 on Peacock, but we were already hooked by its trailer in late 2022.

Where do we even start in attempting to explain “Paul T. Goldman” to someone who hasn’t seen it? OK, so… it goes like this: Jason Woliner’s “true”-crime docuseries is an adaptation of Paul Finkelman’s semi-autobiographical self-published book. Who adapted the book, you might ask? Finkelman did, turning it into a screenplay and later the TV series. If only Finkelman could find the perfect leading man— oh right, he did all the acting too.

Goldman/Finkelman’s life story, including the discovery that his wife was running an international sex-trafficking ring, is almost too crazy to believe. That’s probably a good catch though, because it’s not true — not beyond being the story Paul tells himself (and others) to escape his mundane reality. Believe it or not, this zig-zagging summary only scratches the surface of one of the year’s most ambitious series. If you like cringe-watch TV, cringe-stream this one. —TM

16. “The 1619 Project”

An adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning project from The New York Times magazine sees its public face, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, lead a discussion of six different facets of Black life in America. Trying to have a nuanced, exhaustive conversation about the African American community’s relationship with capitalism or democracy is incredibly daunting, but Hannah-Jones makes it all work by leading with vulnerability. Her own life experience as a biracial woman from Iowa works well in disarming her interview subjects, often leading to conversations that end with healing tears. The “Music” episode is a particular highlight as a lot of people have interviewed legendary music producer Nile Rodgers over the years, but none have tapped so well into his singular genius. Coming from producers Roger Ross Williams and Shoshana Guy, who also worked on Netflix’s “High on the Hog,” the Emmy-nominated Hulu series is also shot just as beautifully. —MJ

17. “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie”

Oscar-winner Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”), whose Concordia studio has a first look deal at Apple TV+, pitched the studio a documentary based on Michael J. Fox’s four books that “feels like an ’80s movie.” And that is what he delivered, thanks to clever use of archive footage from Fox’s career, spanning his hit TV show “Family Ties” to the “Back to the Future” series. Editor Michael Harte artfully splices Fox’s iconic roles with seven Interrotron interviews with the star, who is struggling with Parkinson’s. The movie has scale: elaborate reenactments, plenty of hit singles, a lush Hollywood score, and a charming narrator, Fox, reading his book on tape. The movie takes the audience on a helluva ride.

What sucked Guggenheim in was the quality of Fox’s writing. The opening of the movie comes straight from the book: After a night of partying with Woody Harrelson, Fox wakes up in a haze and sees his pinky trembling. The movie shows the diminutive actor on the move from the start, convincing his conservative father at age 18 to take him to L.A. for auditions. When he landed some roles, his father left him behind to manage on his own. “Family Ties” arrived just in time. Gary David Goldberg hired Fox over the objections of NBC president Brandon Tartikoff, who said he couldn’t imagine seeing Fox’s face on a lunchbox. Years later, after the top-rated show had won five Primetime Emmys including three for Fox, the actor sent Tartikoff a signed “Family Ties” lunchbox, which the network czar kept in his office for years. —AT

18. “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence”

As a Sarah Lawrence alum, when New York Magazine broke the news about a cult that formed in 2010 in one of the dorms, I thought it was the most Sarah Lawrence thing I’d ever heard. But that magazine article was in no way preparation for “Stolen Youth,” a docuseries that harnesses its outrage to build upon the horrors perpetuated by Larry Ray. Watching survivors and witnesses share their stories (often brutal, always heartbreaking) and seeing an entire family destroyed by his manipulation and machinations is not the usual voyeuristic chill that comes from a cult documentary. There was real cruelty on display (literally, thanks to the trial that made the videos Ray recorded available to include here), and the victims’ terror and disappointment in themselves is palpable. “Stolen Youth” made the bold choice to never interview Ray; his defense is meaningless in the face of such destruction. “Stolen Youth” is never an easy watch, but it always feels like a necessary one. —MP

19. “Telemarketers”

Telemarketers are not exactly well-liked. Even before the nagging hucksters interrupting your evening dinner were replaced with robo-calls, public sentiment toward the entry-level profession wasn’t exactly sympathetic. So consider what directors Adam Bhala Lough and Sam Lipman-Stern do in HBO’s three-part documentary series, “Telemarketers,” a minor miracle. Not only does it convincingly make the case that these callers were a product of their environment — both broadly (aka predatory capitalism) and specifically (largely unmonitored offices that could get wildly out of hand) — but it creates an endearing personal portrait that’s half buddy comedy, half investigative drama.

Lipman-Stern co-stars as a former telemarketer who sets out to expose an industry-wide, insanely lucrative scam with the help of his former co-worker — and favorite on-camera star — Patrick J. Pespas. Lipman-Stern started bringing his camcorder to work decades prior, often capturing the drunk and disorderly chaos that kept phone bank employees coming back to make more calls. Just as often, he would speak directly to the camera, asking questions that would persist beyond his telemarketing career. Eventually, he’s conducting interviews outside the cubicles, as he and Pespas try to get to the bottom of a manipulative plot in which they once blindly participated. Both infuriating and satisfying, hilarious and moving, “Telemarketers” is quite a ride through territory most people would never think of stepping into. —BT

20. “32 Sounds”

Sam Green’s long career of combining documentary with live performance led to “32 Sounds.” Made for $800,000, the film debuted at the virtual edition of Sundance 2022 and ever since theaters returned, it has been playing, sometimes with live narration from Green, often with the audience wearing headphones with his voice in their heads. And for the first time, sound designer Mark Mangini (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) figured out how to do a 7:1 mix of Green’s audio so it could play on surround speakers in a theater, initially the Film Forum. Green shows you how he is recording some of the sounds, like pianist Philip Glass being upstaged by a buzzing fly, but he also fakes sounds, thanks to gifted foley artist Joanna Fang, who creates the sound of a giant evergreen falling in a snowy forest in her studio. An unaccountably moving snippet of archive sound comes from the last known species of a certain bird making the mating call for its extinct companion, and it’s heartbreaking. When Green settles into talking to an older musician who has recently lost her lifelong partner, she sits on her stoop, listening to the world around her, insects, birds, rustling trees. It makes her smile. —AT

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Moscow International Documentary Film Festival

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BRICS ministers unveil travel enhancement roadmap, highlight Moscow-Delhi cooperation

M oscow: The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group of emerging-market nations, which expanded in January, to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, unveiled a roadmap to boost travel between member countries at their inaugural tourism forum in Moscow over the weekend.

Hosted by Russia, this year's chair of BRICS, the forum featured a plenary session on "Prospects for BRICS Tourism Cooperation in New Conditions," led by Russian economic development minister Maxim Reshetnikov. The event marked the first thematic forum for BRICS, drawing over 300 leading experts, business leaders, and government representatives from member countries.

"Today, BRICS is a key platform for developing equal cooperation. The dialogue on payment systems is advancing between our countries, with new settlement mechanisms emerging," Reshetnikov said.

The BRICS group was established in 2009 and seen by analysts as a counter to the economic heft and political influence of the G7, comprising the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Speaking with Hindustan Times at the forum, Evgeny Kozlov, first deputy head of the Moscow mayor's office, outlined the government's initiatives to boost Moscow as a global tourism destination, especially in the current economic climate.

Kozlov emphasised the focus on attracting Indian tourists, saying: “We're promoting Moscow and Russia in India, participating in major tourist exhibitions, and organising roadshows and familiarisation trips for professionals. We’re planning promotion programmes in key Indian cities and aiming to increase the number of direct flights to make travel cheaper.”

He highlighted the importance of communication, adding, “We need to talk more about Moscow—how safe, comfortable, and hospitable it is. Last year, 60,000 people from India visited Moscow, and we hope to increase that by 10% to 15% this year. We also have an e-visa system with India, making it easier and cheaper to visit Russia, which only takes five days to process.”

Kozlov noted the cooperation with the Russian government, stating, “Tourism is a team effort. We work with Russia's Ministry of International Affairs and the Ministry of Economic Development to prioritise our efforts and simplify regulations, making it easier for foreigners to visit Moscow, which is Russia’s main transportation hub and gateway.”

‘ Ongoing negotiations between Moscow-Delhi will lead to a new chapter’

Highlighting the evolving partnership between India and Russia, particularly in trade, investment, and technology transfer, Kozlov said: "You know, in discussions with my colleagues at both the Moscow and federal government levels, we've seen an increase in business tourism here. There's a lot in common within BRICS, and much more we can do to bring our countries closer together. While I can't predict exact trade volume increases, I believe the numerous ongoing negotiations between Moscow and Delhi will lead to a new chapter in BRICS cooperation.”.

“With the ministry of economic development, we have a new initiative planned: the BRICS Cities Touring Club. It's a big announcement. This club aims to promote city breaks within BRICS, which are now the second most popular travel choice after seaside vacations. We see huge potential for intra-BRICS city cooperation in tourism, inviting tourists to explore the unique hospitality and culture of each city.”

“We have full support from the ministries of economic development and international affairs in Russia for this initiative. I believe BRICS capitals and other cities will embrace this idea, lead to new online and possibly offline meetings in Moscow or elsewhere this year and shape a fresh vision for tourism development among BRICS cities”.

The forum's business programme included three sessions involving the BRICS business communities. The discussions focused on innovation, sustainability, digitalisation, and cooperation, forming the basis for future collaborative efforts.

At the event, Reshetnikov also highlighted Russia's tourism growth, anticipating over 90 million tourist visits this year—a 30% increase from pre-pandemic levels. Foreign tourism to Russia has surged, with a 50% rise in foreign visitors in the first four months of 2024.

Read more news like this on HindustanTimes.com

Ukraine war latest: Belarus deploys extra air defence forces to border; 10 Ukrainian prisoners freed with Vatican's help

Ten Ukrainian civilians who had been imprisoned in Russia for years have been released after mediation from the Vatican. Overnight, five people were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian village. Listen to a Sky News podcast on Putin and North Korea while you scroll.

Sunday 30 June 2024 08:23, UK

• Five killed, including two children, in Ukrainian strike on Russian village
• Ten Ukrainians imprisoned in Russia freed after Vatican mediation
• Belarus deploys additional air defence forces to Ukraine border
• Your questions answered : Has the West been honest about Ukraine's failures?
• Listen to the Daily above and tap here to follow wherever you get your podcasts

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We're pausing our live coverage for now. 

You can scroll below to catch up on the latest developments, and we'll be back with our regular coverage tomorrow. 

Six people have been killed in a Russian attack on a small town in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, a Ukrainian official has said. 

A further eight people have been injured, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said. 

Infrastructure, a shop and residential buildings in Vilniansk have also been damaged, he added. 

The strike comes after five people were killed in the Kursk region of Russian due to a Ukrainian drone attack. 

Two young children were also injured in the strike on the village of Gorodishche, around 73 miles (118km) from the Ukrainian border, Kursk governor Alexey Smirnov said. 

Two other people were injured and were in a "serious condition" in hospital, he added. 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has met one of the men released from Russian captivity earlier today. 

The Ukrainian president met Nariman Dzhelyal who was successfully returned home after three years in captivity. 

"We will bring security to all our people and peace to Ukraine. I thank everyone who is helping. I thank Nariman for this meeting and for his strength," Mr Zelenskyy said. 

Mr Dzhelyal was detained in Crimea in 2021 while serving as the first deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People. 

During his imprisonment, he sent several letters, Mr Zelenskyy said. 

He added that in one of them he wrote: "We are fighting not only for the integrity of our territories but also for the unity of our society, our beautiful, strong nation." 

US officials told Reuters news agency late last night that the Biden administration would provide Ukraine with $150m (£118.6m) worth of weapons and ammunition, including HAWK air defence interceptors and 155 millimetre artillery munitions.

The weapons aid package is expected be unveiled on Monday, the officials said.

Ukraine has urgently requested air defence support as Russia has pounded its energy facilities in recent weeks via aerial attacks. 

The US began shipping HAWK interceptor missiles to Ukraine in 2022 as an upgrade to the shoulder-launched Stinger air defence missile systems - a smaller, shorter-range system. 

The support package will include other munitions and equipment to support Ukraine's defence needs, the officials added. 

The US has provided Ukraine with more than $50bn (£39.5bn) in military aid since 2022. 

We reported earlier on the 10 Ukrainian civilians who were released from Russian captivity earlier today after years of imprisonment (see 8.49am post). 

Watch them reunite with their loved ones in Kyiv's international airport in newly released footage.

A report by the Ukrainian military's centre for strategic communications has found that the country's forces have damaged or destroyed more than 30 Russian military aircraft in the first six months of 2024. 

Most of the strikes against the aircraft have taken place in occupied Ukraine except for a handful of strikes over the Sea of Azov and within Russia, the centre said, as reported by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). 

The centre did not specify what portion of these Ukrainian strikes were air defence interceptions of Russian aircraft in flight and what percentage were strikes against Russian aircraft at airfields. 

The ISW said they were unable to verify the report.

But it said the downing of Russian aircraft, especially critical aircraft like the A-50 and Il-22, has temporarily constrained Russian aviation activities over occupied Ukraine, but added Ukrainian forces "have yet to be able to significantly attempt to contest the air domain".

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has revealed that Russian strikes have resulted in Ukraine losing around 80% of its thermal power and one third of its hydroelectric power.

Discussing the attack in Dnipro, Mr Zelenskyy said it was a reminder to Ukraine's allies that the country needed more air defence systems. 

He said: "This is why we constantly remind all of our partners: only a sufficient amount of high quality of air defence systems, only a sufficient amount of determination from the world at large can stop Russian terror."

Kyiv has also struck back at Russia with its own attacks, which also often target energy infrastructure.

Belarus has deployed additional air defence forces to its border with Ukraine to protect "critical infrastructure facilities" due to increased Ukrainian drone activity, a Belarusian military commander has said.

Belarus, an ally of Russia, said earlier this week it had shot down a quadcopter that had illegally crossed the border from Ukraine "to collect information about the Belarusian border infrastructure". 

The situation in the airspace over the border remains tense, Andrei Severinchik, commander of the Belarusian Air Defence Forces, said. 

"We are ready to decisively use all available forces and means to protect our territory and the population of the Republic of Belarus from possible provocations in the airspace," he said. 

Belarus' defence ministry said earlier today it had information showing Ukraine had been moving more troops, weapons and military equipment to the northern Zhytomyr region, which borders Belarus. 

There was no immediate response from Ukraine. 

Russian elites and oligarchs have reportedly moved from criticising the country's war effort in Ukraine to supporting it, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has reported.

Mikhail Zygar, the founder of the Russian opposition television channel TV Rain, reported that many elites who were opposed to the war in 2022 started to support the war in 2023 because they "believe Russia is prevailing".

Mr Zygar said these people made this assessment due to Russia's slow but steady battlefield gains, a persisting Ukrainian munitions disadvantage, and perceived "waning" Western security assistance to Ukraine.

One anonymous Russian oligarch who previously criticised the war reportedly told Mr Zygar that Russia must win the war otherwise "they won't allow us to live... and Russia would collapse".

The ISW said it cannot independently verify Mr Zygar's reporting but it is consistent with the institute's assessment that this section of Russian society came to heel behind Vladimir Putin in support of the war after his government intensified crackdowns against elites in the wake of the 2022 invasion. 

As Russia announces it has captured a second village in 24 hours (see 12.26pm post), let's take a look at where Russia has advanced along the frontline with Ukraine. 

As well as pockets of advances on the border north of Kharkiv, Russia appears to have captured areas along the length of the front, from the Donetsk region right up to the western edge of Luhansk.

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