5 Best Documentary Films for Your Leisure Time

Tired of all kinds of romantic movies, horror movies or action movies? Want to get a real view of other people’s life and achievement? Well, you are in the right place, because today, I would like to introduce some of the best documentary films in this post.

1. Free Solo

Free Solo is a 2018 American documentary film that profiles rock climber Alex Honnold on his quest to perform a free solo climb of El Capitan on June 2017. El Capitan is a vertical rock formation and is a popular objective for rock climbers. The film was made by National Geographic Partners. The film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 144 reviews, with an average rating of 8.21/10 on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s quite worthy to watch this film, which definitely can be thrilling when you are watching when Alex finally gets to climb this climbers’ dreaming but deadly rock foundation.

2. Up (film series)

The Up series is a series of documentary films have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. So far the documentary has had nine episodes spanning 56 years (one episode every seven years). In this film, the children were selected to represent the range of socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, with the explicit assumption that each child's social class predetermines their future.

3. Three Identical Strangers

Three Identical Strangers is 2018 documentary film. It examines a set of American triplets, born in 1961 and adopted as six-month-old infants by separate families, unaware that each child had brothers. The separations were done as part of an undisclosed scientific "nature versus nurture" twin study, to track the development of genetically identical siblings raised in differing circumstances. The film won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling.

4. Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates

Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates is a 2019 three-part documentary web television series created and directed by Davis Guggenheim. The series's premise explores the mind and motivations of Bill Gates, a former CEO of Microsoft and founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, together with his wife. The three-part series chronicles the tech visionary “as he pursues unique solutions to some of the world’s most complex problems with the same level of optimism, curiosity, and fervor that inspired his original vision for Microsoft.”

5. Taxi to the Dark Side

Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 American documentary film. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It focuses on the December 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention and interrogated at a black site at Bagram airbase. Taxi to the Dark Side examines US policy on torture and interrogation, specifically the CIA's use of torture and their research into sensory deprivation.