Open your eyes. Go on a journey. Expand your consciousness. Challenge your beliefs and views. Provoke change. These 21 insightful and powerful documentaries might just change your life into new ways of thinking, eating, and looking after your body, or maybe inspire someone close to you.
We believe documentaries are one of the most effective formats for entertaining self-education. What better time than now to engross yourself in all these amazing titles.
After you've cooked yourself a nice meal from our fave comfort food recipes, settle in with some nooch coated popcorn and binge-watch while getting woke.
Make sure to share this article with any friends who might benefit from this list. A ripple of change can start with one share.
#1 The Game Changers
You might've been living under a rock if this crazy hyped doco hasn't crossed your radar yet! Directed by Oscar award-winning Louie Psihoyos, and produced by an all-star gang, this one will take you on a journey about everything you need to know about meat, protein and strength.
“The Game Changers tells the story of James Wilks — elite Special Forces trainer and The Ultimate Fighter winner — as he travels the world on a quest to uncover the optimal diet for human performance.
Showcasing elite athletes, special ops soldiers, visionary scientists, cultural icons, and everyday heroes, what James discovers permanently changes his understanding of food and his definition of true strength,” reads the film’s description.
Get ready to have all myths dispersed and your mind blown. We challenge to guarantee that you won’t look at your plate the same after this one.
Watch trailer here.
#2 Cowspiracy
When I’m talking to someone interested in taking on a vegan diet, this is always my first go-to recommendation. I mean seriously, this one even turned my ex from a carnivore to a full vegan overnight! Taking an angle that doesn’t focus too much on the hard-to-watch gory side of animal cruelty, this documentary highlights more on the environmental argument, making it a relevant watch for anyone who gives a sh#% about our planet.
A truly eye-opening and educational must-watch, “this shocking yet humorous documentary reveals the absolutely devastating environmental impact large-scale factory farming has on our planet, and offers a path to global sustainability for a growing population,” states the film’s description.
Watch trailer here.
#3 Earthlings
OK, we’re not gonna lie or sugar coat it… this one is notoriously the hardest one to watch, and you’ve probably heard that. But, sometimes the hardest things to face are also the most important to see, in order to really open your eyes to a harsh truth and give you the motivation to remember what we need to change.
Get ready to see in all the gory details, society's treatment of animals. Highlighting, with the use of hidden cameras, a real intimate look inside the walls of research labs, puppy mills, pet stores, factory farms, and so much more. All the footage they would’ve never wanted you to see, it’s all laid out here. A true test to watch to the end, but if you can make it through, you will be made so much more aware of the suffering we unnecessarily cause the beings on this planet, and hopefully, come out with a newfound motivation to fight for this cause.
Watch full film here.
#4 Blackfish
The one SeaWorld never ever wanted you to see. It was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary, and it just might make you cry.
The documentary concerns the captivity of Tilikum, an orca involved in the deaths of three people, the consequences of keeping orcas in captivity within the sea-park industry, man's relationship to nature, and how little has been learned about these highly intelligent mammals.
Watch trailer here.
#5 Dominion
Dominion is a feature-length Australian documentary exploring the morality and validity of our dominion over the animal kingdom. Filmmakers use hidden cameras and aerial drones to investigate the dark side of animal agriculture.
“Presenting an uncompromising, damning exploration of the various ways animals are used and abused by humans, particularly in the meat, dairy, egg, clothing and entertainment industries,” reads the film’s description.
Watch trailer here.
#6 Eating Animals
How much do you know about the food that's on your plate? Based on the bestselling book by Jonathan Safran Foer and narrated by co-producer Natalie Portman, Eating Animals is an urgent, eye-opening look at the environmental, economic, and public health consequences of factory farming.
Tracing the history of food production in the United States, the film charts how farming has gone from local and sustainable to a corporate Frankenstein monster that offers cheap eggs, meat, and dairy at a steep cost: the exploitation of animals; the risky use of antibiotics and hormones; and the pollution of our air, soil, and water. Spotlighting farmers who have pushed back against industrial agriculture with more humane practices, Eating Animals offers attainable, commonsense solutions to a growing crisis while making the case that ethical farming is not only an animal rights issue but one that affects every aspect of our lives.
“Eating Animals' thoughtful analysis and exploration of corporate farming is impressive, given the scope of the topic” - words from Rotten Tomatoes.
Watch trailer here.
#7 Forks Over Knives
Researchers explore the possibility that people changing their diets from animal-based to plant-based can help eliminate or control diseases like cancer and diabetes. This one is a great one to watch if you want to hear purely form a health perspective, why and how a low-fat, whole-food, plant-based diet can be a great way to avoid or reverse several chronic diseases.
"What An Inconvenient Truth did for global warming, Lee Fulkerson's persuasive documentary does for a vegan diet,” said The Boston Globe.
Watch trailer here.
#8 Food, Inc.
Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner examines how mammoth corporations have taken over all aspects of the food chain in the United States, from the farms where our food is grown to the chain restaurants and supermarkets where it's sold. Narrated by author and activist Eric Schlosser, the film features interviews with average Americans about their dietary habits, commentary from food experts like Michael Pollan and unsettling footage shot inside large-scale animal processing plants.
Examining corporate farming in America, concluding that agribusiness produces food that is unhealthy, in a way that is environmentally harmful and abusive of both animals and employees.
Watch trailer here.
#9 Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home
An award-winning story of transformation and healing, Peaceable Kingdom explores the awakening conscience of several people who grew up in traditional farming culture and who have now come to question the basic assumptions of their way of life, and turned vegan.
Presented through a woven tapestry of memories, music, and breathtaking accounts of life-altering moments, the film provides insight into the farmers' sometimes amazing connections with the animals under their care, while also making clear the complex web of social, psychological and economic forces that have led them to their present dilemma.
With strikingly honest interviews and rare footage demonstrating the emotional lives and intense family bonds of animals most often viewed as living commodities, this groundbreaking documentary shatters stereotypical notions of farmers, farm life, and perhaps most surprisingly, farm animals themselves.
Watch trailer here.
#10 Speciesism: The Movie
You'll never look at animals the same way again. Especially humans.
Modern farms are struggling to keep a secret. Most of the animals used for food in the United States are raised in giant, bizarre “factory farms,” hidden deep in remote areas of the countryside. Speciesism: The Movie director Mark Devries set out to investigate. The documentary takes viewers on a sometimes funny, sometimes frightening adventure, crawling through the bushes that hide these factories, flying in airplanes above their toxic “manure lagoons,” and coming face-to-face with their owners.
Watch trailer here.
#11 The Ghosts in our Machine
A cinematic feature-length documentary that illuminates the lives of individual animals living within the machine of our modern world.
Through the heart and photographic lens of animal rights photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur, audiences become intimately familiar with a cast of non-human animals. From undercover investigations to joyful rescue missions, in North America and in Europe, each photograph and story is a window into global animal industries: Food, Fashion, Entertainment and Research. The Ghosts In Our Machine charts McArthur’s efforts to bring wider attention to a topic that most of humankind strives hard to avoid.
Are non-human animals property to be owned and used, or are they sentient beings deserving of rights?
Watch trailer here.
#12 Lucent
Commonly referred to as "the Australian Earthlings", Lucent is a feature-length documentary which explores the darker side of Australia's pig farming industry through a combination of hand-held and hidden camera footage, highlighting the day-to-day cruelty accepted by the industry as standard practice.
Watch trailer here.
#13 Food Matters
Food Matters examines how the food we eat can help or hurt our health, from the experts’ perspectives. Nutritionists, naturopaths, doctors, and journalists weigh in on such topics as organic food, food safety, raw foodism, and nutritional therapy.
Watch trailer here.
#14 Vegucated
“Vegucated is a guerrilla-style documentary that follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers who agree to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks and learn what it's all about. They have no idea that so much more than steak is at stake and that the planet's fate may fall on their plates. Lured by tales of weight lost and health regained, they begin to uncover hidden sides of animal agriculture that make them wonder whether solutions offered in films like Food, Inc. go far enough.
Before long, they find themselves risking everything to expose an industry they supported just weeks before. But can their convictions carry them through when times get tough? What about on family vacations fraught with skeptical step-dads, carnivorous cousins, and breakfast buffets?
Part sociological experiment and part adventure comedy, Vegucated showcases the rapid and at times comedic evolution of three people who are trying their darnedest to change in a culture that seems dead set against it.” — Marisa Miller Wolfson, IMDb
Watch trailer here.
#15 Live and Let Live
Six people who have switched to veganism, including former butchers and factory farmers, share their stories to examine the relationship between animals and people. Examining our relationship with animals, the history of veganism and the ethical, environmental and health reasons that move people to go vegan.
Watch trailer here.
#16 A Plastic Ocean
A Plastic Ocean begins when journalist Craig Leeson, searching for the elusive blue whale, discovers plastic waste in what should be a pristine ocean. In this adventure documentary, Craig teams up with free diver Tanya Streeter and an international team of scientists and researchers, and they travel to twenty locations around the world over the next four years to explore the fragile state of our oceans, uncover alarming truths about plastic pollution, and reveal working solutions that can be put into immediate effect.
Watch trailer here.
#17 What The Health
From the same maker of our #2 Cowspiracy, filmmaker Kip Andersen uncovers the secret to preventing and even reversing chronic diseases. Critiquing the health impact of meat and dairy products consumption, and questioning the practices of the leading health and pharmaceutical organizations. What the nation's leading health organisations don't want people to know about it.
Watch trailer here.
#18 Maximum Tolerated Dose
Maximum Tolerated Dose is the first feature-length documentary by Decipher Films. The film charts the lives of both humans and non-humans who have experienced animal testing first-hand, with hauntingly honest testimony of scientists and lab technicians who's ethics demanded they choose a different path, as well as the simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking stories of animals who have seen both sides of the cage. Maximum Tolerated Dose aims to re-ignite the debate about animal testing by bringing these rarely-heard perspectives to the fore.
Watch trailer here.
#19 A Prayer For Compassion
A Prayer for Compassion is a feature length documentary that strives to inspire and encourage those already on a religious or spiritual path, to expand their circle of compassion to embrace all life, regardless of species, and make choices in alignment with this value.
The film follows Thomas Jackson on a quest across America, that ultimately takes him to Morocco for the UN Climate Conference and throughout the Indian subcontinent to ask the question, “Can compassion grow to include all beings? and Can people who identify as religious or spiritual come to embrace the call to include all human and nonhuman beings in our circle of respect and caring and love?”
Watch trailer here.
#20 Called To Rescue
How the union of chance encounters, inner callings, and the unconditional love shared by animals is changing the course of countless lives and possibly...our planetary evolution.
Animal lovers of all ages will be inspired by this heart warming message that is certain to live on long after the film. This feature length film is a story of love, dedication and joy. Called to Rescue is an inspiring glimpse into life on fifteen farm animal sanctuaries throughout the US. The animals simply by being themselves are changing lives, lifestyle and beliefs. No graphic images.
Watch trailer here.
#21 73 Cows
Just 15 minutes long, this documentary short is the story of Jay Wilde, a beef farmer who battles with his conscience every time he takes his cows to slaughter. Feeling trapped within an industry he no longer believes in, Jay knows he must make a change and do what no other farmer from the UK has ever done before.
Watch full documentary here.
