30 Best Documentaries On Amazon Prime [December 2023]

Whether they're in-depth portraits of underrepresented areas of society or detailed accounts of bizarre crimes, documentaries are an indispensable form of entertainment and education. We love them because they can keep us on the edges of our seats like thrillers, warm our hearts like family dramas, and make us laugh like comedies — all while helping us learn something.

While it's perhaps not as well-known as a certain other streaming giant for its library of original documentaries, Amazon Prime Video has a lot to offer in the genre. With these pieces, you can look inside the lives of everyone from famous actors to largely anonymous booksellers and, believe it or not, murder victims. No matter what you're into, Amazon's streaming service has a documentary for you.

Updated on November 30, 2023: There are dozens of compelling documentary films and series available on Prime Video, and that library is constantly being updated. This list reflects the best documentaries you can currently catch on Prime, so be sure to check back each month for new additions to the streaming service!

The year 2020 quickly became infamous for all manner of cataclysmic reasons, from the coronavirus pandemic (and the empty grocery shelves, lockdowns, and stock market woes that came with it) to the U.S. government releasing videos of UFOs.

Amidst all the chaos, it's important not to forget that one of the year's biggest disasters came right up front. 2020 opened with large swathes of an entire continent (millions of acres, all told) on fire. "Burning" tells the story of this rampant destruction, occurring as a result of climate change, that Australians dubbed the "Black Summer."

• Director: Eva Orner
• Year: 2021
• Runtime: 86 minutes
• Rating: Not Rated
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Comic strips still run in hundreds of daily and Sunday newspapers around the world. However, over the last 100 years, only a handful have made a deep and profound impact on readers and popular culture alike, demonstrating that three or so hand-drawn panels of sequential art can be just as powerful and moving as a piece of literature as a novel or poem. 

"Calvin and Hobbes," which ran from 1985 to 1995, is one of those comics — the wordy, cerebral adventures of precocious, troublemaking 6-year-old Calvin and his best friend, a stuffed tiger that comes to life (probably only in his imagination), with whom he has deep conversations about the universe and human nature. Creator Bill Watterson is an extremely private person, and "Dear Mr. Watterson" finds fan Joel Allen Schroeder attempting to get inside of the head and inspirations of the author, all while talking to other artists and creative types who wax poetic about the comic strip's status and importance.

• Director: Joel Allen Schroeder
• Year: 2013
• Runtime: 89 minutes
• Rating: TV-PG
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 62%

Even if you struggle to put together a matching outfit every morning, you'll still get something out of the documentary "Dior and I." (Though if you are into fashion, you'll absolutely love it.) The piece is beautifully put together and features cameos by numerous Hollywood stars, but what really makes it engaging is its indulgent look into a niche world that many people never get access to. And there are even some stakes involved as Raf Simons works to pull together his first collection at the Dior fashion house.

• Director: Frédéric Tcheng
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 90 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%

"Jasper Mall" details the last days of an empire, depicting the sleepy, melancholy, and messy final moments of what was once one of many robust and bustling shopping malls. This retail colossus in Jasper, Alabama, used to be a central community gathering spot and a place where most anything could be purchased. But those days, like the old-fashioned retail model, are long gone, and the mall has fallen into a state of dilapidated disrepair, with only a few bored and jaded shopkeepers keeping the lights on for a few more weeks. The film is told mainly through the eyes of Mike, the mall's enigmatic housekeeper, security guard, caretaker, and champion, who still puts in a ton of work as his livelihood literally crumbles around him.

• Directors: Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb
• Year: 2020
• Runtime: 85 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

"The Imposter" is the perfect mix of documentary elements: archival TV footage, a peppering of reenactments, and most importantly, interviews with both sides of an elaborate true-crime-style scam. It's quite dramatic for a documentary, told with true narrative cohesion and profound sensitivity to its subject matter.

And that subject matter seems almost too insane to be true: Frédéric Bourdin, while impersonating a missing child (whom he looked nothing like), somehow managed to trick not only several government agencies in the United States and Spain, but members of the child's own family. Getting to know this odd character is one of the most compelling parts of the film, as his childlike charisma clashes with his lack of remorse for taking advantage of a grieving family.

• Director: Bart Layton
• Year: 2012
• Runtime: 99 minutes
• Rating: R
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%

It's a documentary about the big impact of something small — LEGO bricks. Heartwarming and even profound, "A LEGO Brickumentary" is not the story of LEGO itself so much as it is the story of the tremendous, overwhelming positive effect LEGO has had on the world. Tens of millions of kids have grown up playing with the Danish-made toy for generations, building whatever they want, brick by brick, or just following the pictogram instructions. This documentary shows just how universal of an experience it is for kids and adults to play with LEGO and make creations, art, and even solutions to problems that are wholly their own. Filmmakers pepper the movie with interviews with real people about their love of LEGO and why it's much an important and personal subject.

• Director: Daniel Junge and Kief Davidson
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 92 minutes
• Rating: G
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 54%

Warning: Graphic content in this slide. Which you might have guessed if you associated the name of the documentary "Lorena" with Lorena Bobbitt. Unsurprisingly, the story of a wife who cut off her husband's penis while he was sleeping has sort of been lost in the hurricane of tabloid sensation and off-color humor that immediately sprang up around the scandal when it happened.

"Lorena" offers us a truer, more intimate look at the humans behind the legend — yes, both of them. Lorena claimed she was retaliating against domestic violence and sexual assault. John also details his memory of the events leading up to the incident. Executive produced by Jordan Peele, "Lorena" is both a moral inquiry and a wild ride.

• Director: Joshua Rofé
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 4 hours & 14 minutes (4 episodes)
• Rating: TV-MA
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%

Before he was famous, American rapper Kid Cudi was, as this documentary calls him, a man named Scott. That man would become one of the biggest influences on hip hop of the 2010s. Fans of the genre have much to thank him for, especially having the courage to overcome personal and professional struggles and his willingness to address difficult topics like mental illness in his music. This engrossing film chronicles his journey with enthusiasm and skill.

• Director: Robert Alexander
• Year: 2021
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Rating: Not Rated
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

In April of 1994, Nas released his debut album, "Illmatic." Twenty years later almost to the day, "Nas: Time Is Illmatic" premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and offered a detailed account of the events that led up to the album's release. From his parents' influence to his memories of youth, Nas takes us through the experiences and emotions that went into his landmark achievement.

• Director: One9
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 74 minutes
• Rating: TV-14
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

On the face of it, "No No: A Dockumentary" looks like a sports treatment — and sports fans will certainly enjoy it for those elements. But its depiction of addiction and fame, buoyed by colorful images and a '70s soundtrack, will delight viewers of any background. Dock Ellis' life and baseball career, including the no-hitter he pitched while on LSD, are just plain interesting, whether you're an avid sports fan or not.

• Director: Jeff Radice
• Year: 2014
• Runtime: 100 minutes
• Rating: Not Rated
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Indigenous musicians have had an undeniable impact on the evolution of music in America, but they're not a group we often hear about in that context. "Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World" highlights some of these unsung heroes. It begins this necessary effort by arguing, as Al Hoff of the Pittsburgh City Paper puts it, that "Western forms of music incorporated the rhythm and vocal stylings of traditional Native American music." If this explicit connection and degree of influence surprises viewers, that's all the more evidence for how necessary a documentary "Rumble" is.

• Directors: Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana
• Year: 2017
• Runtime: 103 minutes
• Rating: Not Rated
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

"Sunshine Hotel," the first documentary by filmmaker and photojournalist Michael Dominic, is less about the building located at 245 Bowery in Manhattan, and more about the lives of the people who inhabited it.

The titular establishment was a "flophouse," a single room occupancy residence designed for low-cost lodging. As the Sunshine Hotel's formerly notorious neighborhood became increasingly gentrified, Michael Dominic created one of the last links to its colorful history and the unforgettable people who called it home.

• Director: Michael Dominic
• Year: 2001
• Runtime: 98 minutes
• Rating: Not Rated
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93% (Audience Score)

In a moment of desperation, a husband and wife committed an armed bank robbery. But the American justice system left no room for their side of the story when it sentenced Rob G. Rich to spend a large chunk of his life in prison. Since then, his wife Fox Rich, who served three and a half years, has been campaigning for his release. She helps tell their story — that of their family and their struggle for justice — in the poignant documentary "Time."

• Director: Garrett Bradley
• Year: 2020
• Runtime: 81 minutes
• Rating: PG-13
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

For more than six decades, Sir David Attenborough has produced and narrated on-the-scene nature documentaries, passionately describing the daily lives and habits of animals all over the world. "Wild Isles," produced with the BBC, is likely the last series the 96-year-old educator and naturalist will make. After going around the globe and back, he's now taking a look at the unique and special wildlife native to his homeland of Britain. Broken down into five contemplative and unflinching episodes, each installment showcases the nature of a different biome of the British Isles, including the ocean, woodlands, and grasslands.

• Directors: Nick Gates and Lily Moffatt
• Year: 2023
• Runtime: 6 episodes
• Rating: TV-G
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

In the mid-2010s, sightings of particularly ghoulish-looking clowns unnerved various pockets of the U.S., especially Florida. The source of many creepy clown appearances, it would seem, was a veteran party entertainer publicly known only as his terrifying alter ego, Wrinkles the Clown. This darkly funny documentary tracks the day-to-day life of Wrinkles, small business owner and freelance entertainer-for-hire, as he takes a few hundred bucks per gig to creatively and intrusively scare people — mostly ill-behaved children. This is both a demented form of community service and a way to keep the lost art of clowning alive.

• Directors: Michael Beach Nichols
• Year: 2019
• Runtime: 78 minutes
• Rating: NR
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 71%