# The 14 Best Survival Documentaries of All Time

> Ropeless climbs, doomed expeditions, and impossible rescues captured as they unfolded — real stakes, no script. Which story grips you hardest?

*By YPB Team · Published September 5, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-14-best-survival-documentaries-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Free Solo** — score 1000/1000
   The Oscar-winning 2018 film following Alex Honnold's ropeless climb of El Capitan's 3,000-foot face.
2. **The Endurance: Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition** — score 731/1000
   The 2000 documentary retelling Ernest Shackleton's legendary survival after his ship was crushed by pack ice.
3. **The Rescue** — score 700/1000
   The 2021 account of the daring cave-diving operation to save a Thai youth soccer team trapped underground.
4. **Touching the Void** — score 500/1000
   The gripping 2003 reenactment of two climbers' catastrophe and impossible survival in the Peruvian Andes.
5. **14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible** — score 500/1000
   The 2021 film tracking Nirmal Purja's record-shattering quest to climb all fourteen 8,000-meter peaks.
6. **Meru** — score 500/1000
   The 2015 chronicle of three elite alpinists attempting the treacherous Shark's Fin route in the Himalayas.
7. **The Summit** — score 500/1000
   The 2012 investigation of the 2008 K2 disaster in which eleven climbers died on the world's deadliest peak.
8. **Sherpa** — score 409/1000
   The 2015 film capturing the deadly 2014 Everest avalanche and the Sherpas who risk everything on the mountain.
9. **The Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest** — score 409/1000
   The 2010 film exploring George Mallory's fatal 1924 Everest attempt and a modern climber's tribute.
10. **Deep Water** — score 409/1000
   The 2006 film reconstructing Donald Crowhurst's doomed attempt to sail solo and nonstop around the world.
11. **Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors** — score 300/1000
   The 2007 documentary in which survivors recount 72 days in the Andes after their plane crashed in 1972.
12. **The Alpinist** — score 167/1000
   The 2021 portrait of enigmatic soloist Marc-André Leclerc and his boundary-pushing mountain ascents.
13. **The Dawn Wall** — score 167/1000
   The 2017 film following Tommy Caldwell's obsessive free-climb of Yosemite's fearsome Dawn Wall.
14. **Beyond the Edge** — score 167/1000
   The 2013 recreation of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's perilous first ascent of Mount Everest.

Tags: adventure, survival, documentaries, climbing