# The 37 Best Environmental Documentaries of All Time

> Some of these films rattled governments, while others quietly changed how people eat, shop and fish. Oscar winners share the field with scrappy campaign films that found their audience online.

*By YPB Team · Published October 28, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-37-best-environmental-documentaries-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **An Inconvenient Truth** — score 1000/1000
   Davis Guggenheim's Oscar-winning film of Al Gore's climate-change slideshow, which put global warming in multiplexes.
2. **Flow: For Love of Water** — score 732/1000
   Irena Salina's investigation into the privatisation and pollution of the world's fresh water.
3. **The Age of Stupid** — score 732/1000
   Franny Armstrong's drama-documentary hybrid in which a man in 2055 asks why we failed to act on climate.
4. **Sea of Shadows** — score 705/1000
   An eco-thriller documentary about the fight to save the vaquita porpoise from illegal fishing cartels.
5. **The End of the Line** — score 660/1000
   The first major feature documentary about the global collapse of fish stocks from overfishing.
6. **Who Killed the Electric Car?** — score 610/1000
   Chris Paine's account of the rise and deliberate demise of GM's EV1 electric car.
7. **Breaking Boundaries** — score 610/1000
   Attenborough and Johan Rockström explain the nine planetary boundaries that keep Earth stable.
8. **Darwin's Nightmare** — score 610/1000
   Hubert Sauper's Oscar-nominated study of the ecological and human fallout of the Nile perch in Lake Victoria.
9. **The Cove** — score 610/1000
   An Oscar-winning undercover exposé of the dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan.
10. **Koyaanisqatsi** — score 553/1000
   Godfrey Reggio's wordless, Philip Glass-scored portrait of a world thrown out of balance by industry.
11. **Anthropocene: The Human Epoch** — score 553/1000
   Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky film humanity's planet-altering footprint.
12. **Ice on Fire** — score 553/1000
   A Leonardo DiCaprio-produced HBO documentary focused on carbon-drawdown solutions.
13. **Kiss the Ground** — score 553/1000
   Narrated by Woody Harrelson, it argues that regenerative farming and healthy soil can help reverse climate change.
14. **The Biggest Little Farm** — score 553/1000
   A couple spends eight years turning depleted land outside Los Angeles into a biodiverse farm.
15. **The 11th Hour** — score 488/1000
   Leonardo DiCaprio narrates scientists and thinkers on the state of the planet's ecosystems.
16. **Tomorrow** — score 488/1000
   Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent's César-winning tour of grassroots solutions to the ecological crisis (Demain).
17. **Chasing Ice** — score 488/1000
   James Balog's time-lapse cameras capture glaciers retreating at astonishing speed.
18. **Manufactured Landscapes** — score 488/1000
   Jennifer Baichwal follows photographer Edward Burtynsky through the industrial landscapes of China.
19. **Mission Blue** — score 488/1000
   A portrait of oceanographer Sylvia Earle and her campaign to create protected 'hope spots' in the sea.
20. **An Inconvenient Sequel** — score 413/1000
   Al Gore's follow-up, tracking his campaign through the Paris climate negotiations.
21. **Honeyland** — score 413/1000
   A Macedonian wild-beekeeper's sustainable way of life is upended by careless neighbours; a double Oscar nominee.
22. **Chasing Coral** — score 413/1000
   Divers and photographers document the mass bleaching of the world's coral reefs.
23. **Virunga** — score 413/1000
   Rangers defend Congo's Virunga National Park and its mountain gorillas against war and oil exploration.
24. **A Plastic Ocean** — score 413/1000
   Journalist Craig Leeson and diver Tanya Streeter track plastic pollution through the world's seas.
25. **Racing Extinction** — score 413/1000
   Louie Psihoyos follows activists exposing the wildlife trade and the sixth mass extinction.
26. **Merchants of Doubt** — score 325/1000
   Robert Kenner reveals the PR playbook used to cast doubt on climate science.
27. **A Life on Our Planet** — score 325/1000
   David Attenborough's witness statement on the biodiversity loss he has seen over his lifetime.
28. **Before the Flood** — score 325/1000
   Leonardo DiCaprio travels the world as a UN Messenger of Peace to see climate change up close.
29. **2040** — score 325/1000
   Damon Gameau imagines the world his daughter could inherit if today's climate solutions were scaled up.
30. **Gasland** — score 325/1000
   Josh Fox's Oscar-nominated investigation of fracking and its effects on water supplies.
31. **The True Cost** — score 222/1000
   Andrew Morgan exposes the human and environmental toll of fast fashion.
32. **This Changes Everything** — score 222/1000
   Avi Lewis adapts Naomi Klein's book linking climate change to the economic system.
33. **Food, Inc.** — score 222/1000
   Robert Kenner's look at industrial agriculture and the environmental and health costs of cheap food.
34. **Cowspiracy** — score 222/1000
   Kip Andersen investigates animal agriculture's role in deforestation, water use and emissions.
35. **Albatross** — score 222/1000
   Chris Jordan's film about albatross chicks on Midway Atoll dying from ingested plastic.
36. **Seaspiracy** — score 0/1000
   A Netflix hit that turns its lens on the damage industrial fishing does to the oceans.
37. **Trashed** — score 0/1000
   Jeremy Irons follows the global trail of waste and its threat to food chains and health.

Tags: movies, nature, documentary, environment, climate change