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
An examination of the infamous thirty-year-old cold case of Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch, the first missing child to appear on a milk carton. The film focuses on Johnny’s mother, Noreen Gosch, and her relentless quest to find the truth about what happened to her son. Along the way there have been mysterious sightings, bizarre revelations, and a confrontation with a person who claims to have helped abduct Johnny.
Who Took Johnny (2014 )
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A portrait of Argentine director Gastón Solnicki's family over the course of the second half of the 20th century, Papirosen follows four generations still troubled by a war that’s never spoken of. The film juxtaposes different periods with their native image formats, along with landscapes, characters and international political events, as it focuses on a singular decade of a nouveau riche Argentine Jewish family, and the new generation’s introduction into familiar traumas and vitality.
Papirosen (2014 )
Movie
Documentary that follows the men and women whose job it was to pack up Britain's Camp Bastion base in Afghanistan.
The Billion Pound Base: Dismantling Camp Bastion (2014 )
- Free
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'Code of Silence' is an award winning one-hour observational documentary that follows the parallel journeys of a fervently Orthodox Jewish father and his now-secular son, after the son breaks the code of silence in Melbourne's Chabad-Lubavitch community going public with his story about being sexually abused as a student. Manny Waks demands the perpetrators be brought to justice, as well as the rabbis, whom he claims covered it up. His father Zephaniah, who claims he has been virtually excommunicated for informing secular authorities, demands his name be publicly cleared. But what price will the father and son pay for blowing the whistle on the leaders of this powerful Jewish sect? This is a deeply personal journey filled with intimate, emotionally charged and candid behind-the-scenes moments of two people waging the fight of their lives.
Code of Silence (2014 )
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A journey through the professional life of innovative film director Richard Linklater: 21 years creating films, carving his signature in pop culture; an analysis of his style and motivations, through the funny and moving testimonies of close friends and collaborators, actors and other filmmakers.
21 Years: Richard Linklater (2014 )
Movie
Meet an eclectic group of people who have dedicated their lives to answering the question: what should books become in the digital age? From the esoteric world of book artists to the digital library of the Internet Archive, the film spins a tale of the enduring vitality of the book.
The Book Makers (2020 )
- Free
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A peep behind the scenes of the golden era of Hollywood to discover exactly how and why Katharine Hepburn became one of the most famous actresses in the glamorous world of cinema.
Katharine Hepburn: The Great Kate (2014 )
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Filmmaker Robert May chronicles the case of a once-respected judge who received kickbacks for sending juvenile offenders to prison, even for minor crimes.
Kids for Cash (2014 )
- Free
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Billionaire activist George Soros is one of the most influential and controversial figures of our time. He is maligned by ideologues on both the left and the right for daring to tackle the world’s problems. With unprecedented access to the man and his inner circle, director Jesse Dylan follows Soros and pulls back the curtain on his personal history, private wealth, and public activism.
Soros (2019 )
- Free
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SISU follows a ten person cycling team from a small community in Maine on a journey to compete in a 1,358KM race around the perimeter of Iceland. The one hour documentary combines an observational filmmaking style with elements of a travelogue and engagement of action sport. Set just after the summer solstice, the team faces rapidly changing road and weather conditions as they push forward against the 72 hour time limit. The film explores the motivations of amateur athletes pursuing a massive physical challenge and considers the role adventure plays in contemporary life.
Sisu (2020 )
- Free
Movie
Iconoclastic historian Andrew Bacevich delivers an anti-colonial critique of US foreign policy in the Middle East, informed by his long career in the Army. While other historians analyze changing presidential administrations, Bacevich sees one long Oil War. There are scant differences between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the sacrifice of soldiers’ lives. His radical analysis has won bipartisan followers and even an invitation to speak with President Obama. Bacevich describes what that meeting reveals about America’s need to break free from its past.
The Oil War (2020 )
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Almost one hundred years ago, the project to reduce the world to mathematical physics failed suddenly and completely: “One of the best-kept secrets of science,” physicist Nick Herbert writes, “is that physicists have lost their grip on reality.” The world, we are now told, emerges spontaneously, out of “nothing,” and constitutes a “multiverse,” where “anything that can happen will happen, and it will happen an infinite number of times.” Legendary reclusive genius Wolfgang Smith demonstrates on shockingly obvious grounds the dead end at which physics has arrived, and how we can “return, at last, to the real world.” The End of Quantum Reality introduces this extraordinary man to a contemporary audience which has, perhaps, never encountered a true philos-sophia, one as intimately at ease with the rigors of quantum physics as with the greatest schools of human wisdom.
The End of Quantum Reality (2020 )
- Free
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An in-depth profile of the life and career of Willy T. Ribbs - the controversial Black driver who shattered the color barrier of professional auto-racing and became the first Black qualifier in the storied history of the Indy 500.
Uppity: The Willy T. Ribbs Story (2020 )
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The definitive inside story of the alt-right, following Richard Spencer, Lauren Southern, and Mike Cernovich as they ride a wave of racist ideas to viral fame. Even as the movement breaks into the mainstream, it fractures, leaving its leaders to grapple with backlash, infighting, and self-doubt.
White Noise (2020 )
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It is the world’s most mysterious manuscript. A book, written by an unknown author, illustrated with pictures that are as bizarre as they are puzzling — and written in a language that even the best cryptographers have been unable to decode. No wonder that this script even has a part in Dan Brown’s latest bestseller “The Lost Symbol”.
Das Voynich-Manuskript - Die geheimnisvollste Handschrift der Welt (2014 )
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“88” is a landmark documentary that will explore the remarkable events leading up to January 26th 1988 and its aftermath. Following on from the 1982 Commonwealth Games Protest it was decided that 1988 was the ideal chance to make a stand. With convoys travelling from every corner of Australia to protest against the “celebration of a nation”, the march was an affirmation of survival and a reminder that white Australia had a black history. The protest instigated public debate about the concept of Australian history, the position of Aboriginal people in contemporary society and self determination. The events of 1988 changed white and black Australia forever leading to the establishment of the numerous peak Indigenous organisations, fostered a new generation of leaders, shifted attitudes towards the way we celebrate Australia Day but more importantly in marked a turning point in our approach to Australia’s history.
88 (2014 )
- Free
TV Show
A deep dive into everything we love about horror — from fresh looks at classics to unearthing scores of hidden gems, this series has something for every fright film enthusiast.
Horror's Greatest (2024 )
Movie
Millions of American Evangelicals are praying for the State of Israel. This film traces this unusual relationship, from rural Kentucky to the halls of government in Washington, through the moving of the American Embassy in Jerusalem and to the annexation plan of the West Bank.
'Til Kingdom Come (2020 )
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PUMP is a documentary that tells the story of America’s addiction to oil, from its corporate conspiracy beginnings to its current monopoly today, and explains clearly and simply how we can end it — and finally win choice at the pump. Today, oil is our only option for transportation-fuel at the pump. Our exclusive use of it has drained our wallets, increased air pollution and sent our sons and daughters to war in faraway lands. PUMP shows how, through the use of a variety of replacement fuels, we will be able to fill up our cars — cheaper, cleaner and American made — and in the process create more jobs for a stronger, healthier economy. Narrated by Jason Bateman and featuring notable experts such as John Hofmeister former President of Shell Oil, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, PUMP will forever change the way you think about your car — and the fuel that powers it.
Pump (2014 )
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Brock: Over the Top is a feature length documentary that not only chronicles the extraordinary life of Australia’s greatest racing car driver, Peter Brock, but peels away the surface to reveal the profoundly human story behind the legend. This film is a cinematic, thrilling yet intimately personal portrait of a life lived on the racing track and in the public eye. Using a treasure trove of rare archival material coupled with candid interviews with the key characters in Peter Brock’s life including his family, his partners, and closest colleagues, this film tells the epic story of Brock's early obsession with cars, his hard won ascension to the top, his incredible record-breaking victories at Bathurst, his various professional and personal controversies, and his ultimate, tragic death on the race track.
Brock: Over the Top (2020 )
- Free
Movie
Five hundred years after his birth, the life and career of the Italian Renaissance's last great painter is explored.
Tintoretto: A Rebel in Venice (2019 )
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Movie
Bodybuilder and entrepreneur Anthony Hughes, also known as Dr. Tony Huge, is a man on a mission to further human evolution through performance enhancing drugs that are labeled as dangerous and illegal in the United States. Unsatisfied with the limitations of certified studies, Tony performs underground experiments, often on himself, in an effort to change the way the world looks at steroids and other PEDs. His methods have been labeled as dangerous and criminal by the mass populous and the government. 'Enhanced 2 The Max' chronicles Tony's attempt to vindicate himself and his methods as he conducts a new set of experiments on five volunteer subjects. The goal? To put on over 20 pounds of lean muscle in thirty days. Will his tests prove him a genius? Or a mad scientist?
Enhanced 2 the Max (2020 )
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From PBS - Focusing on the most important strip of Omaha beach that day - the exit at Vierville-sur-Mer - D-DAY 360 strips D-Day back to its raw data to reveal how the odds of victory, in the greatest gamble of World War II, swung on what happened over a five-hour period on a five mile stretch of French coastline. Data gathered though forensic laser scanning, 3D computer modeling, and eye-witness accounts bring the battlefield to life as never before.
D-Day 360 (2014 )
- Free
TV Show
An authentic, raw and revealing look at Gypsy’s new life on the outside.
Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up (2024 )
Movie
A journey following the path of snowboarders Red Gerard, Sage Kotsenburg, and Ben Ferguson as they travel the globe in search of the best mountain scapes and snow conditions to ride. It was the path of Olympic Gold medals and contest venues that banded together the cast of Joy, and the chase of bigger mountains and deeper snow that propelled them into this film project. From airs, to slashes, and riding lines, the crew’s prowess and board control in the back country is in harmony to their superlative riding in the contest arena. From the North Island of Japan, to the Heart of British Columbia the crew finds the true joy in snowboarding. Appearances from Danny Davis, Brock Crouch, Hailey Langland, Gabe Ferguson, & Nik Baden.
Joy (2019 )
- Free
Movie
Lake Mungo is an ancient Pleistocene lake-bed in south-western New South Wales, and is one of the world’s richest archaeological sites. Message from Mungo focuses on the interface over the last 40 years between the scientists on one hand, and, on the other, the Indigenous communities who identify with the land and with the human remains revealed at the site. This interface has often been deeply troubled and contentious, but within the conflict and its gradual resolution lies a moving story of the progressive empowerment of the traditional custodians of the area.
Message from Mungo (2014 )
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A look at the record number of first-time female candidates who ran, won and upended politics in the historic 2018 midterm elections; featuring three candidates in Texas, Indiana and Illinois who each were looking to flip their red district to blue.
Surge (2020 )
- Free
Movie
A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.
National Gallery (2014 )
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Three life models pose naked for an artist. They are Kate Dunne, Dylan Jon Matthews, and Izabella Linuza. We see them pose naked as the artist draws and paints them. They tell us about how they got into life modeling, what it feels like to stand naked in front of strangers, body image, and sexual issues. We explore the ancient and mysterious relationship between the artist and the life model. At the end, Dylan draws Kate and Izabella naked. Then Kate and Izabella draw Dylan naked. We demonstrate the similarities and differences between the male gaze and the female gaze.
Naked (2019 )
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Since the birth of the male review in the late 1970s, the greatest male strippers in the world can all be traced back to one club... La Bare Dallas. La Bare gives you a behind the curtains look at the lives, loves, laughs, and loss of the current crop of dancers as well as the man that’s been going strong for over three decades since the club’s inception, Randy “Master Blaster” Ricks.
La Bare (2014 )
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Sundance-and-Emmy-Award-winning filmmaker Judy Irving (with her first film since the widely acclaimed and loved “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill”) follows a wayward California brown pelican from her “arrest” on the Golden Gate Bridge into care at a wildlife rehabilitation facility, and from there explores pelicans’ nesting grounds, Pacific coast migration, and survival challenges of these ancient birds, sometimes referred to as the flying dinosaurs. The film is about wildness, and asks the following questions: how close can we get to a wild animal without taming or harming it? Why do we need wildness in our lives, and how can we protect it? PELICAN DREAMS, stars “Gigi” (for Golden Gate) and Morro (a backyard pelican with an injured wing).
Pelican Dreams (2014 )
- Free
Movie
Engadin: Switzerland's Wilderness This documentary follows a spectacular pioneering story of nature preservation. Engadin was created 100 years ago and the wildlife left without human interference to re-populate the Alps first nature reserve. Now ibex, lynx and wolves are thriving in this pristine area.
Engadin: Switzerland's Wilderness (2014 )