What Documentary Movies to watch on Tubi
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Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s
A documentary concerning the violent Italian 'poliziotteschi' cinematic movement of the 1970s which, at first glance, seem to be rip-offs of American crime films like DIRTY HARRY or THE GODFATHER, but which really address Italian issues like the Sicilian Mafia and red terrorism. Perhaps even more interesting than the films themselves were the rushed methods of production (stars performing their own stunts, stealing shots, no live sound) and the bleed-over between real-life crime and movie crime.

- 2012
Russell Brand from Addiction to Recovery
After the death of his friend Amy Winehouse from an overdose, Russel Brand looks back on his own years of addiction and wants to show that not all addicts turn out the same way.

- 2012
Saving Lincoln
The almost entirely true story of Abraham Lincoln and his self-appointed bodyguard, U.S. Marshal Ward Hill Lamon - a banjo-playing Southerner who foiled repeated attempts on the President's life, and kept him functioning during the darkest hours of the Civil War.

- Metascore21
- 2013
The Grand Bizarre
Take your seat, grab your popcorn and witness the most daring skiers on the planet performing death-defying feats including Bobby Brown’s ground-breaking triple cork 1440 and Simon Dumont’s one of a kind cubed halfpipe.

- 2011
B.B. King: The Life of Riley
The untold true American story of an orphan boy from the heart of the Mississippi Delta who rose to music stardom around the world and inspired a generation of fans against all odds.

- 2012
Wall Writers
Narrated by John Waters, Wall Writers is a documentary about graffiti in its innocence. Through unprecedented access to TAKI183, CORNBREAD, and other legendary writers, Wall Writers features photographs and archival footage from the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when underprivileged city kids refused to remain in the shadows.

- 2016
I Heart Monster Movies
This is a documentary filmed over 1 1/2 years between 2010-2012 about what it means to be a horror fan. Several celebrity interviews including Sid Haig, Tom Savini, Doug Bradley, Bill Moseley, Dee Wallace, and many others regarding their work in horror films and their experiences with fans

- 2012
After Tiller
After the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas in 2009, there are a limited number of doctors left in the country who provide third-trimester abortions for women. AFTER TILLER moves between the rapidly unfolding stories of these doctors, all of whom were close colleagues of Dr. Tiller, and are fighting to keep this service available in the wake of his death. These four people have become the new number-one targets of the pro-life movement, yet continue to risk their lives every day to do work that many believe is murder, but which they believe is profoundly important for their patients' lives. AFTER TILLER shows them confronting harassment from protesters, challenges in their personal lives, and a series of tough ethical decisions.

- Metascore74
- 2013
American Winter
Documentary feature film that follows the personal stories of families struggling in the aftermath of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Filmed over the course of one winter in one American city, the film presents an intimate snapshot of the state of the nation's economy as it is playing out in millions of American families, and highlights the human consequences of the decline of the middle class and the fracturing of the American Dream.

- 2013
The People of the Kattawapiskak River
This documentary exposes the housing crisis faced by 1,700 Cree in Northern Ontario, a situation that led Attawapiskat's band chief, Theresa Spence, to ask the Canadian Red Cross for help. With the Idle No More movement making front page headlines, this film provides background and context for one aspect of the growing crisis.

- 2012
Bending Steel
Bending Steel follows Chris Schoeck, an endearing yet unassuming man as he trains to become a professional oldetime strongman. While preparing to perform amazing and unique feats of strength publicly, Chris also struggles to overcome crippling fears and inhibitions. For the first time in his life he is compelled to confront social awkwardness, unsupportive parents, and an overwhelming fear of failure. What unfolds is one man's remarkable journey to find his place in the world.

- 2013
Lenny Cooke
Professional sports is known as a true meritocracy, a field in which the cream really does rise to the top, as there's simply too much money at stake to operate in any other fashion. In uncommon instances, however, inefficiencies can occur and gifted players may fall through the cracks. Such is the story of Lenny Cooke. In 2001, Cooke was the number-one ranked high school basketball player in America, with future NBA greats LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony listed beneath him. Yet after declaring himself eligible for the 2002 NBA draft, Cooke, shockingly, ended up going undrafted, and became a journeyman playing in little-known leagues across the world. Today he lives in southern Virginia, a should-have-been-great who simply did not quite make it. The first documentary feature from American independent film scene fixtures Josh & Benny Safdie (Daddy Longlegs, The Pleasure of Being Robbed), LENNY COOKE explores the fascinating question of how, exactly, Cooke's seemingly assured future could go so awry.

- Metascore71
- 2013
Undressing Israel: Gay Men in the Promised Land
When many people think of Israel, it is often in terms of modern war or ancient religion. But there is much more to the Jewish state than missiles and prayers. In his debut as a documentary filmmaker, adult-film entrepreneur and political columnist Michael Lucas examines a side of Israel that is too often overlooked: its thriving gay community. Undressing Israel features interviews with a diverse range of local men, including a gay member of Israel's parliament, a trainer who served openly in the army, a young Arab-Israeli journalist, and a pair of dads raising their kids. Lucas also visits Tel Aviv's vibrant nightlife scene and a same-sex wedding in this guided tour to a country that emerged as a pioneer for gay integration and equality.

- 2012
Forgetting Dad
One week after a seemingly harmless car accident, a 45-year-old man suffers total amnesia. Christening himself the "New Richard," he embarks upon a new life with a new wife far away from his family. Sixteen years later, his oldest son returns with a camera to investigate why his father's memory never returned.

- 2008
American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art
American Artifact chronicles the rise of American rock poster art since it's birth in the'60s. Award-winning director, Merle Becker crosses the country interviewing the rock poster artists from the different eras to discover that America is currently in the midst of a 21st century "rock poster art movement", where thousands of artists around the country are doing silk screened rock poster art inspired by their local scene, the music of our time, and the spirit of our era.

- 2009
Belonging
- 2004
Skiing Everest
“Skiing Everest” is the first documentary about the small elite fraternity of high-Altitude skiers who climb the highest peaks in the world in pure Alpine Style, carrying their skis and declining to use supplemental oxygen.

- 2009
The Ultimate Wave Tahiti
THE ULTIMATE WAVE TAHITI plunges audiences into the stunning beauty of an island paradise on a quest to find the perfect wave-riding experience. Nine-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater and Tahitian surfer Raimana Van Bastolaer and a group of friends seek out the best waves breaking on the reef at Tahiti's famed surf site Teahupo'o. As their quest unfolds, the audience is plunged beneath the surface of things, to explore the hidden forces at work shaping ocean waves and the islands that lie in their path. Amidst playful surfing action, we navigate the cosmos and an ocean storm in a search for the source and nature of a wave's energy. Exploring mountainous Tahiti, we are thrust into the turbulent volcanic past of the island and its neighbors and discover the seagoing, wave-riding roots of the islanders themselves -- a culture still rich in the music, dance and lore of the sea. Beneath the ocean, swimming with our surfers, we explore the stunning, fragile beauty of the reef habitat -- a turbulent, wave-shaping interface that envelops the island and nurtures the ocean's multitudes in motion -- fish, dolphins, sharks and whales. When the truly big surf arrives at Teahupo'o, surfing play becomes surfing survival as the riders artfully tackle some of the heaviest surf on the planet -- spectacularly captured for the giant screen for the first time.

- 2010
Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
Songwriter Stephin Merritt is known as "the Cole Porter of his generation" for his memorable melodies, lovelorn lyrics and wry musical stylings. Shot over a period of 10 years, "Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields" explores his friendship with his longtime bandmate and manager Claudia Gonson. Through his recording and songwriting process, the film traces a 20-year career that has yielded one of the most engaging bodies of work in the contemporary American songbook.

- Metascore66
- 2010
Human Terrain
'Human Terrain' is two stories in one. The first exposes the U.S. effort to enlist the best and the brightest of American universities in a struggle for the hearts and minds of its enemies. Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military adopts a controversial new program, 'Human Terrain Systems', to make cultural awareness a key element of its counterinsurgency strategy. Designed to embed social scientists with combat troops, the program swiftly comes under attack by academic critics who consider it misguided and unethical to gather intelligence and target potential enemies for the military. Gaining rare access to war-games in the Mojave Desert and training exercises at Quantico and Fort Leavenworth, 'Human Terrain' takes the viewer into the heart of the war machine and the shadowy collaboration between American academics and the armed services. The other story is about a brilliant young scholar who leaves the university to join a Human Terrain team. After working as a humanitarian activist and winning a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford, Michael Bhatia returned to Brown University to conduct research on military cultural awareness. A year later, he left to embed as a Human Terrain member with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan. On May 7, 2008, en route to mediate an inter-tribal dispute, his Humvee hit a roadside bomb and Bhatia was killed along with two other soldiers. Asking what happens when war becomes academic and academics go to war, the two stories merge in tragedy.

- 2010
The Edge
The action takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War in the Siberian hinterland, among Russians and Germans with damaged personal stories and a strange transformation: the victors seem to be crawling into the skins of the defeated, and vice versa. Ignat, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life image of the Soviet victorious warrior who, in fact, proves to be shell-shocked, sick and broken, although not completely destroyed. Trains become fetish for the heroes of the film, and speed becomes a mania; they virtually become one with their steam engines, while the machines take on human names. The heroes set up an almost fatal race in the Siberian forest, risking their own lives and those of others.

- 2010
Morgan the Bushranger
About Dan Morgan; he was the most dangerous outlaw in Australian history and the subject of a Hollywood movie, "Mad Dog Morgan." This story was taken from personal accounts of the police and victim's the lived to tell their story.
- 2018
This Ain't Normal
A jolting exposé on the tribulations of five gang-related youths growing up in inner-city Boston amid America’s ongoing gang crisis. As they navigate the crime-ridden neighborhoods of the city, social workers step in to provide different avenues of opportunity and offer the affirmation lacking in the violence and poverty in their lives.

- 2018
Bodysnatchers of New York
Highly cinematic documentary charting a macabre mystery that unfolds as the lives of a handful of starkly different, seemingly unconnected characters are intimately drawn together by a shocking crime involving over a thousand mutilated corpses in a tale of twenty-first century body snatching in the city of New York. Much was written about this notorious crime but little understood about the hidden, yet legal, tissue transplant industry that spawned it...until now. With exclusive access inside maximum-security prison to the man the NYPD labeled "Public Enemy No.1" this film charts how a former surgeon went from saving lives to ripping them apart.

- 2010