Browse documentary movie and series in Australia
Dive into the world of documentary movie and series in Australia. From timeless classics to trending hits, explore an exciting collection of titles that define the documentary genre.
Explore critically acclaimed blockbusters, hidden gems, and trending new releases that showcase the diversity and creativity of documentary storytelling. Use our filters to find top-rated titles, recent hits, or beloved classics tailored to your taste.
With Popcorn Time, uncover your next favorite movie or TV show and enjoy the best of documentary entertainment. Start browsing now and bring documentary into your watchlist today!
Movie
Stories from those who were there. A unique insight into what it was really like to be there. Interviews with the pilots , cut with archive footage paint the picture from one of History's greatest ever Air Battles.
Battle of Britain Empty Skies (2020 )
Movie
Chinatown Fair opened as a penny arcade on Mott Street in 1944. Over the decades, the dimly lit gathering place, known for its tic-tac-toe playing chicken, became an institution, surviving turf wars between rival gangs, changing tastes and the explosive growth of home gaming systems like Xbox and Playstation that shuttered most other arcades in the city. But as the neighborhood gentrified, this haven for a diverse, unlikely community faced its strongest challenge, inspiring its biggest devotees to next-level greatness.
The Lost Arcade (2015 )
- Free
TV Show
The most spectacular vehicles in the world are milestones of engineering that have changed land, water, and air transport for good. Each episode features a different class of vehicle, from the breathtakingly fast to the impressively powerful.
Ultimate Vehicles (2018 )
- Free
Movie
The dramatic story of an unimaginable wildfire that swept across the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910.
The Big Burn (2015 )
TV Show
It begins at Minnesota's Lake Itasca and ends in the Gulf of Mexico. From top to bottom, the mighty Mississippi River is a 2,300-mile marvel and America's lifeline to the world. Follow the river as it carves its path from the northern headwaters to the nation's heartland to the southern bayou. Discover how the Mississippi operates as an engine of commerce, and see how its creatures thrive in and above its rushing waters and along its lush, green banks.
America's Mississippi (2018 )
- Free
Movie
The life and work of Robert Frank—as a photographer and a filmmaker—are so intertwined that they're one in the same, and the vast amount of territory he's covered, from The Americans in 1958 up to the present, is intimately registered in his now-formidable body of artistic gestures. From the early '90s on, Frank has been making his films and videos with the brilliant editor Laura Israel, who has helped him to keep things homemade and preserve the illuminating spark of first contact between camera and people/places. Don't Blink is Israel's like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90.
Don't Blink - Robert Frank (2015 )
Movie
The incredible story of one of the most radical ideas of the entire second world war. Operation Market Garden was the plan that caused over 10,000 paratroops to be whittled down to just 2000. (Amazon Prime)
Field of Operations: The Battle of Arnhem (2020 )
Movie
Forty years after its people were promised freedom by departing Spanish rulers, Western Sahara remains Africa's last colony. This film chronicles the everyday violence experienced by Sahrawis living under Moroccan occupation and voices the aspirations of a desert people for whom the era of colonialist never ended.
Life Is Waiting: Referendum and Resistance in Western Sahara (2015 )
TV Show
A deep dive into the underbelly of the Prohibition era, which was characterized as much by jazz, illegal booze and female liberation as it was by gangsters and brutality.
Drinks, Crime and Prohibition (2018 )
Movie
On April 1, 1945, the United States military launched its invasion of the main island of Okinawa, the start of a battle that was to last 12 weeks and claim the lives of some 240,000 people. This film depicts the Battle through the eyes of Japanese and American soldiers who fought each other on the same battlefield, along with Okinawa civilians who were swept up in the fighting. The film also depicts the history of discrimination and oppression forced upon Okinawa by the American and Japanese governments. Carrying up to the current controversy over the construction of a new base at Henoko, the film explores the root causes of the widespread disillusionment and anger expressed by many Okinawans. This ambitious documentary was directed by the American John Junkerman, long-term resident of Japan and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker. Okinawa: The Afterburn is a heartfelt plea for peace and an expression of deep respect for the unyielding spirit of the Okinawa people.
Okinawa: The Afterburn (2015 )
- Free
TV Show
Distinguished interpreters from all walks of life gather to explore and debate 12 unforgettable American poems. Athletes, poets, musicians, and citizens of all ages join host Elisa New to experience and share the power of poetry.
Poetry in America (2018 )
- Free
Movie
A review of the wild New York City nightlife of the 90s. The cast of characters who made up the infamous Club Kids speak candidly about that era, culminating with Alig's release from incarceration.
Glory Daze: The Life and Times of Michael Alig (2015 )
Animals Decoded (2018 )
Movie
The life and work of German political philosopher of Jewish descent Hannah Arendt (1906-75), who caused a stir when she coined a subversive concept, the banality of evil, in her 1963 book on the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann (1906-62), held in Israel in 1961, which she covered for the New Yorker magazine.
Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt (2015 )
Movie
JOE FRANK - SOMEWHERE OUT THERE is a feature length film that explores the life of award-winning audio artist Joe Frank whose career on radio and on-line has spanned four decades. Frank's highly produced radio shows can be described as innovative, abstract, underground, autobiographical, surreal, funny, disturbing, and thought provoking meditations on the human condition.
Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There (2019 )
TV Show
This series explores the spectacular wildlife of the enchanting island of Sri Lanka - a world of extremes. From the steamy jungles of the south to the parched dry zone of the east this small island is a mosaic of habitats and micro climates.
Island of the Monsoon (2018 )
- Free
Movie
The story behind the rise and fall of New York's 42nd Street. The cinemas, the films, the people, the crime and the rebirth of the block as "New 42nd Street" - this is the document of the world's most notorious movie strip.
42nd Street Memories: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Notorious Street (2015 )
- Free
Movie
From off the grid to under the grow lights, Mary Jane: A Musical Potumentary follows the story of a back to the land pot farmer coming to terms with raising her son and her income in a black market economy.
Mary Jane: A Musical Potumentary (2016 )
Movie
A documentary chronicling the impact and day to day operations of the journal The Nation.
Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation (2015 )
- Free
Movie
In 1935, 17-year-old aspiring actress Marsha Hunt was discovered in Hollywood. She signed with Paramount Pictures and went on to a flourishing career at MGM. She made 54 films in 17 years before a series of unfortunate events led to her being unfairly blacklisted. After the blacklist, she championed humanitarian causes, forging a career as one of Hollywood's first celebrity activists. She was the FIRST Angelina Jolie. As far back as 1955, Eleanor Roosevelt was a mentor of hers as they both worked tirelessly to support the work that the United Nations Association was accomplishing in this country. At age 96, Marsha continues to fight for causes she believes in. This film is a call to action for activists of all ages.
Marsha Hunt's Sweet Adversity (2015 )
Movie
Famously known as the live music capital of the world, Melbourne has achieved iconic status. Countless local artists have launched their careers on the storied stages of the city’s inner north, even while gentrification threatens the scene’s viability and other issues, including sexism, continue to undercut it.
Now Sound: Melbourne's Listening (2018 )
- Free
Movie
Leeds born filmmaker David Nicholas Wilkinson's thirty three year quest to prove that the worlds film industry started in Leeds, Yorkshire, England in 1888.
The First Film (2015 )
Movie
The issue of young Muslims traveling from Europe to countries such as Syria and Somalia to fight with Islamic rebels is a highly topical one, making this story of a Danish-Somalian boy even more relevant. His back turned to the camera as he looks out over a nondescript housing development in Copenhagen, “The Shadow” describes how he fell victim to recruiters from the militant Somalian rebel group al-Shabaab. He outlines the conditions that make boys such as him susceptible to the lure of the “holy war,” explaining that, “Nothing in my life made any sense.” So eloquent is he in his account that one might think it was scripted, but what happened to him is as real as the scenes from a suicide attack by one of his former friends.
Warriors from the North (2015 )
- Free
Movie
The life and career of legendary blues musician Paul Butterfield, including some of the most pivotal moments of his life.
Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story (2017 )
Movie
The film documents the rise and fall of the Wufeng Lin family in Wufeng, Taiwan over the turbulent years of Taiwan under the administrations of the Qing dynasty, Japan, and Republic of China.
Attabu 2 (2015 )
- Free
Movie
A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty. If you give yourself over to it, it will crack you wide open.
The Royal Road (2015 )
Movie
30 thousand Hasidim journey to Uman in Ukraine to celebrate the Jewish New Year at the gravesite of Rebbe Nachmann. A Ukrainian far-right group erects a cross at the site of Hasidic prayers and builds a monument to Cossacks who slaughtered thousands of Jews and Poles in 1768.
The Dybbuk: A Tale of Wandering Souls (2015 )
Movie
Barn Burner is a first-hand account of the rise of Lancaster, Pennsylvania's metal scene. Featuring acts like Texas and July and the Grammy-nominated August Burns Red, it tells the story of how Amish Country became a hotbed of heavy music.
Barn Burner: The Rise of the Lancaster County Metal Scene (2018 )
- Free
Movie
It is August 1951 and an entire French village goes crazy. People are screaming in the streets and throwing themselves out of windows. 300 people are affected and 7 end up dead. Wild theories start circulating to explain the tragedy. 60 years later declassified documents from the United States reveal that the CIA conducted experiments on unsuspecting citizens.
CIA Covert Experiments (2015 )
- Free
Movie
'Black and Cuba' follows street-smart students, who are outcasts at an elite Ivy League university, as they band together and adventure to Cuba to see if revolution is truly possible. While filming their poignant encounters with AfroCuban youth, breathtaking sites and moving hip-hop performances, the travelers confront realities behind myths of color-blindness and social mobility. This edgy and artful documentary of their journey uncovers renewed hope for equality and human rights. 'Black and Cuba' is the feature film directorial debut of international human rights advocate and scholar Robin J. Hayes, PhD.
Black and Cuba (2015 )
Movie
A survey of Hans Holbein's career from his beginnings as a religious painter to his work for Henry VIII and beyond. The program also includes a close analysis of "The Ambassadors".
Holbein: Eye of the Tudors (2015 )
Movie
Archaeological sleuth Kathleen Martinez's explorations take her to a forgotten temple complex known as Taposiris Magna, 25 miles west of Alexandria, Egypt. Is it the site of Cleopatra's lost tomb?
Cleopatra's Lost Tomb (2015 )