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With a new year comes another round of new documentaries to savor. More than ever, the documentary has become an essential form of communication, grounding us in a moment while providing historical context and nuance.
This year’s spate of entries at Sundance, the unofficial pipeline of the genre, ensures a steady flow of films throughout the spring and beyond. Among 2025’s most promising selections are portraits of female icons, a film adaptation of a political broadside against neoliberalism, and a muckraking investigation into the world’s richest man. Here is a list of 11 for your consideration.
Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché
The 2021 limited-release documentary about punk iconoclast and Anglo-Somali riot grrrl Marianne Elliott-Said, a.k.a. Poly Styrene, has finally found its way to US streaming platforms. But the film is more than simply another entry in the women-in-punk subgenre, popularized by recent portraits of Kathleen Hanna, Suzi Q, and The Slits. Codirected and narrated by Celeste Bell, Elliot-Said’s daughter, the film centers on a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship. It also features voiceover from actress Ruth Negga, reading from the punk musician’s diaries.
How to watch: Stream on Apple TV or Prime Video.
Becoming Katharine Graham
Katharine Graham presided over The Washington Post from 1963 to 1991, a period covering both its reporting on the Pentagon Papers and its investigation into the Watergate scandal. Her astonishing life has been the subject of many books (including Graham’s own Pulitzer Prize–winning autobiography, Personal History, from 1997) and a Steven Spielberg–directed drama (2017’s The Post, starring Meryl Streep). Yet a new documentary on Graham from filmmakers George Kunhardt and Teddy Kunhardt is riveting viewing, featuring new interviews with friends, family, and former employees (including Warren Buffett, Gloria Steinem, Don Graham, Lally Weymouth, David Remnick, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein), as well as fairly shocking excerpts from the Nixon tapes.
How to watch: Stream on Prime Video.
Twiggy (March 7)
Twiggy is a portrait of the 1960s It girl and Carnaby Street androgyne Lesley Lawson, told from her own point of view. The film covers her working-class childhood and rise to stardom as the proclaimed “face of ’66,” weaving in contributions from fellow British countercultural icons Paul McCartney, Charlotte Tilbury, and Joanna Lumley, as well as subsequent generations of fashion plates like Brooke Shields, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Sienna Miller.
How to watch: In theaters
We Want the Funk! (April 8)
We Want the Funk! is a new musical documentary from Emmy winner and MacArthur Fellow Stanley Nelson, whose previous films Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution and Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool investigated the nexus between the Black experience and the American counterculture. Nelson’s latest presents an equally intellectual history of funk music, from its West African, soul, and jazz roots to its later incarnations in disco, new wave, and hip-hop. New and archival interviews from both Black and white innovators in the genre include James Brown, George Clinton, and David Bowie.
How to watch: On PBS
Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey (April 21)
Pippa Ehrlich, an Oscar winner for My Octopus Teacher, returns with another documentary about the mysteries of human-animal connection. In this film, a wildlife photographer rescues an endangered baby pangolin from South Africa’s illegal animal trade before setting out to return the creature to its natural habitat. Ehrlich’s call for wildlife conservation is strengthened by her detailed portrait of friendship across species.
How to watch: Stream on Netflix.
Planetary Defenders (release date TBA)
A documentary produced by NASA for its new streaming service, NASA+, reveals the research of a team of astronomers who scan the skies for near-Earth asteroids and comets. These planetary defenders share their thoughts as they work in one of the world’s most consequential jobs. The film also broaches the most frightening of questions: How would humanity respond if we discovered an asteroid headed for Earth?
How to watch: Stream this spring on NASA+, Roku, Apple TV, and Fire TV.
The Invisible Doctrine (release date TBA)
The Guardian journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot features in this film adaptation of the Sunday Times bestseller The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism, written by Monbiot and codirector Peter Hutchison. Monbiot takes the viewer on a century-long journey through postwar capitalism, untangling the hyperconsumerist economic doctrine that has come to dominate Western society despite its almost complete obscurity to the public. The film makes clear that neoliberalism is not only the enemy of economic equality but also the major catalyst for the environmental crisis and the potential extinction of life on earth.
How to watch: In select theaters now; available on DVD this spring
Titan (release date TBA)
Titan is director Mark Monroe’s investigation of the OceanGate Titan implosion, which killed its five-member crew during an expedition to the Titanic wreckage site in 2023. An international news story at the time and a subsequent cautionary tale, the Titan becomes, in Monroe’s film, a 21st-century counterpart to the Titanic—a symbol of the hubris that comes from the marriage of tech innovation with superwealth. At the center of the film is a portrait of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, whose heedless designs of the submersible led to his own death onboard the Titan.
How to watch: Streaming soon on Netflix
Eddie (release date TBA)
Netflix’s upcoming documentary on Eddie Murphy, no doubt timed for Saturday Night Live’s 50th season, centers on a new series of interviews with the actor-comedian. Murphy looks back over the entirety of his career, from his earliest days as a small-time Brooklyn stand-up comedian to his time as a cast member on SNL and subsequent comedic specials and movie franchises beginning in the 1980s and ’90s. The film also promises a rotating cast of costars, directors, and fellow comedians who reveal both the public and private Murphy.
How to watch: Streaming soon on Netflix
Apocalypse in the Tropics (release date TBA)
Brazilian director Petra Costa follows up on her Oscar-nominated film The Edge of Democracy, an examination of the collapses of the left-wing governments of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, with Apocalypse in the Tropics, a similar look into the role of evangelical Christianity in the rise of Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right presidency. Costa interviews eminent subjects on both sides of the ideological divide, including current president Lula, former president Bolsonaro, and evangelical minister (and Bolsonaro ally) Silas Malafaia. At its heart, the film is more than an exposé of contemporary Brazilian politics; it is also a portrait of the power of religious faith to both energize and challenge democracy.
How to watch: Streaming soon on Netflix
Musk (release date TBA)
Director Alex Gibney’s muckraking investigations of Silicon Valley, corporate power, and celebrity include exposés on Enron, Scientology, and Elizabeth Holmes. He now turns his attention to tech billionaire and current Trump aide Elon Musk. Although few details have been revealed, Gibney has promised the “definite and unvarnished examination” of the world’s richest man. (The announcement has already provoked negative commentary from Musk.) The clash of Gibney’s polemical (and provocative) style and Musk’s overwhelming personality promises one of the year s most intriguing films.
How to watch: Streaming soon on Max