# The 30 Best Historical Documentaries of All Time

> Nine-hour testimonies share this list with tight archival essays, and a few of them were kept off television for years. Argue over which one actually changed how we remember the past.

*By YPB Team · Published October 24, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-30-best-historical-documentaries-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **When We Were Kings** — score 1000/1000
   The Oscar-winning 1996 account of the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire.
2. **The Civil War** — score 914/1000
   Ken Burns' 1990 PBS series that turned still photographs and letters into one of the most-watched documentaries ever.
3. **13th** — score 914/1000
   Ava DuVernay's 2016 film tracing the line from the 13th Amendment to mass incarceration.
4. **Five Came Back** — score 879/1000
   The 2017 Netflix series on five Hollywood directors who filmed the Second World War for the U.S. government.
5. **Night and Fog** — score 831/1000
   Alain Resnais' 1956 short that confronts the abandoned Nazi camps a decade after liberation.
6. **Shoah** — score 779/1000
   Claude Lanzmann's nine-hour 1985 Holocaust documentary built entirely from witness testimony, without archival footage.
7. **Jazz** — score 779/1000
   Ken Burns' 2001 ten-part history of the music from New Orleans to the present.
8. **Hearts and Minds** — score 740/1000
   Peter Davis' Oscar-winning 1974 indictment of the Vietnam War released while the fighting continued.
9. **The Atomic Cafe** — score 719/1000
   The 1982 compilation of Cold War propaganda and civil-defence films, presented without narration.
10. **Let the Fire Burn** — score 652/1000
   The 2013 all-archival account of the 1985 Philadelphia police bombing of the MOVE house.
11. **Apollo 11** — score 576/1000
   The 2019 film that rebuilds the Moon landing from newly discovered 70mm footage with no narration.
12. **I Am Not Your Negro** — score 576/1000
   Raoul Peck's 2016 essay film built from James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript on Evers, Malcolm X and King.
13. **Harlan County, USA** — score 576/1000
   Barbara Kopple's Oscar-winning 1976 record of a Kentucky coal miners' strike and the violence around it.
14. **For All Mankind** — score 487/1000
   Al Reinert's 1989 assembly of NASA's Apollo footage into a single composite journey to the Moon.
15. **Waltz with Bashir** — score 487/1000
   Ari Folman's animated 2008 documentary reconstructing his lost memories of the 1982 Lebanon War.
16. **The Vietnam War** — score 487/1000
   Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 2017 ten-part series told from American and Vietnamese perspectives.
17. **The Fog of War** — score 487/1000
   Errol Morris' Oscar-winning 2003 interview film in which Robert McNamara reckons with Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
18. **The Last Days** — score 487/1000
   The Oscar-winning 1998 Shoah Foundation film following five Hungarian Holocaust survivors.
19. **Eyes on the Prize** — score 487/1000
   The 1987 PBS series chronicling the American civil rights movement from the 1950s through the 1980s.
20. **They Shall Not Grow Old** — score 384/1000
   Peter Jackson's 2018 restoration that colourised and voiced First World War footage from the trenches.
21. **The Battle of Chile** — score 384/1000
   Patricio Guzmán's three-part 1975-79 record of the final months before the 1973 coup, smuggled out of the country.
22. **The Act of Killing** — score 384/1000
   Joshua Oppenheimer's 2012 film in which Indonesian death-squad leaders re-enact their 1965 killings as movie scenes.
23. **Summer of Soul** — score 384/1000
   Questlove's Oscar-winning 2021 film resurrecting the forgotten footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.
24. **The War** — score 384/1000
   Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 2007 series on the Second World War told through four American towns.
25. **O.J.: Made in America** — score 262/1000
   Ezra Edelman's Oscar-winning 2016 eight-hour study of race, celebrity and Los Angeles through the O.J. Simpson story.
26. **The Times of Harvey Milk** — score 262/1000
   The Oscar-winning 1984 portrait of the first openly gay elected official in California and his assassination.
27. **The Look of Silence** — score 262/1000
   Joshua Oppenheimer's 2014 companion to The Act of Killing, seen through a survivor's brother confronting the perpetrators.
28. **The World at War** — score 0/1000
   The 1973 British 26-part series on the Second World War, narrated by Laurence Olivier with interviews from both sides.
29. **The Sorrow and the Pity** — score 0/1000
   Marcel Ophuls' 1969 chronicle of collaboration and resistance in one French town under Nazi occupation.
30. **Hotel Terminus** — score 0/1000
   Marcel Ophuls' Oscar-winning 1988 investigation into Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie and those who shielded him.

Tags: movies, documentaries