10 Off-the-Radar Documentaries I Loved in 2025
I never expected to make this list an annual thing, but here I am doing exactly that. Blame the filmmakers. They’ve made so many slyly awesome films over the last 65 some years that I’ll probably be back again next year.
As always, the rules: This list captures ten surprisingly great films that live—or in some cases hide—on the second-tier streamers. You won’t find these films on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, or Apple TV. That doesn’t make them any lesser; if anything, it only makes them more precious. These films are not timely or trendy or celebrity-driven. In some cases they are simply old and forgotten. All of them are great.
Let’s go!
Junior (2013): Easily the most endearing film on this list. Eddie Belasco is a 75-year-old theater director in San Francisco who hugs, mugs and argues with his nearly 100-year-old mother, Josephine. Together they are documentary magic. But between the laughs we see the reality: these are the final pages of a love story. Eddie is in denial of his own physical decline and spends his days fretting over a mother he’s emotionally unprepared to lose. Director: Jenna Rosher.
In the Bathtub of the World (2001): Caveh Zahedi is one of the more relentlessly original voices you’ll encounter in documentary. He’s not just okay making friends squirm in the eye of his camera, he seems to thrive on it. In Bathtub, Zahedi resolves to create a video diary of the year 2001. The result is an artful progenitor of YouTube. Zahedi, like Nelson Sullivan before him, shows us the future we didn’t see coming. Warning: A girlfriend may have been emotionally traumatized in the making of this film. Director: Caveh Zahedi.
Dear Audrey (2023): Certain films exist in a magical realm where nothing happens but everything is deeply and brilliantly experienced. Dear Audrey is such a film. This could’ve been simply another well-intentioned film about a family coping with terminal illness. Instead, Dear Audrey deftly weaves past and present in a story about memory, regrets, acceptance and love. Director: Jeremiah Hayes.
News from Home (1976): The early structuralist documentaries of the 1960s were often more focused experimentation than coherence. French filmmaker Chantal Akerman elevated the form in this meditation on her self-imposed exile in early ‘70s New York City. The film moves glacially by today’s standards; this is the opposite of an Instagram reel. But if you surrender to News’ rhythms, the experience is hypnotic. I dare you not to hit reverse at least once during Akerman’s extended shot of a teeming New York street, filmed from a moving car. Director: Chantal Akerman.
An Impossible Project (2020): Ostensibly a film about one man’s mission to save Polaroid’s technology from extinction. If that’s all it were, this would be a compelling enough film. But there are so many layers of the story to explore. For one: the fragility of modern technology. Society will never forget how to milk a cow, but proprietary technologies are but one bankruptcy away from fading into an Atlantis-like rumor—as we see as inventor Florian Kaps struggles to recreate the Polaroid recipe. Director: David Bohnett.
Jack Has a Plan (2023): Director Bradley Berman shows his hand in the very first scene. Jack Tuller is a fifty-something musician contemplating the final hours of his own life. Films of this genre are typically laden with a sense of heaviness and doom, but here Jack has resolved to write his exit before the decline begins. This allows Berman to explore the final chapter of a man actively living—and relishing—the life he is preparing to leave. Director: Bradley Berman.
The Bad Kids (2016): Tucked away deep in the California desert, there is a “continuation school” named Black Rock. This is a school for kids who have stumbled badly on the path to high school graduation. They face the typical challenges: poverty, family dysfunction, behavioral issues. But no kid is too troubled for Vonda Viland, the Black Rock principal who is fiercely dedicated to getting every last kid over the finish line. This film may make you cry at unexpected moments; it did me. Directors: Louis Pepe, Keith Fulton.
Koyaanisqatsi (1982): This sprawling epic would’ve been a big deal in its day. But that day was 44 years ago, and today it plays more like a cry from the past. In 1982, Koyaanisqatsi was a warning. It’s a Hopi word that roughly translates to “life out of balance.” Today, the warning hits differently: that humans don’t heed warnings. Wherever we’re going as a species, we will not be tapping the brakes (or even covering them). Heavy messages aside, Koyaanisqatsi is a mesmerizing cinematic achievement. It deploys original footage, archival reels, speed ramping, and soaring music to lay modernity bare. Director: Godfrey Reggio.
Sam Klemke’s Time Machine (2015): Echoing Caveh Zahedi above, there were YouTubers long before there was a YouTube—or even an internet. In Sam Klemke’s Time Machine we see an ambitious, nerdy young Sam Klemke grow up, grow old, grow strange, find love, lose love, turn gray—all the while talking directly to his camcorder (and even a Super 8 camera early on) as the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s roll on. Director: Matthew Bate.
The Last Race (2018): A film deserving of its own genre, so novel is its approach. Riverhead Raceway is the last remaining racetrack on Long Island, and its owners, now in their 80s, have decided to sell. Will Riverhead survive? Michael Dweck captures the story with the detailed eye of a still photographer (his actual day job). He zooms through the dust and chaos to find in auto racing its own visual poetry. The Last Race has the soul of a city symphony and the heart of a vérité film. Director: Michael Dweck.