Across movies and TV series, the best documentaries of 2025 are a disparate bunch bound by shared value and gleaming purpose.

The true crime genre continues to evolve, as evidenced by the wealth of documentaries on offer in 2025. From The Perfect Neighbor to Unknown Number: The High School Catfish, we’ve ranked the 15 best titles released this year.

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Winning the top IDA award pushes NatGeo’s moving portrait of a failing farm community, “The Tale of Silyan,” from the filmmakers behind North Macedonia’s twice-nominated documentary “Honeyland,” ahead in the Oscar race.

As Taylor Swift's new documentary series The End of an Era makes its streaming debut on Disney+, reviews for the first couple of episodes are in - and the star has landed a positive score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Pulitzer prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is usually the one asking the questions. Now, the tables are turned, and the 88-year-old is the subject of the interview in the Netflix documentary Cover-Up, out Dec. 26.

This is the opposite of “watch it all this month and cancel”; it’s a slow-burn archive you can tap whenever curiosity spikes.

If you rushed to area stores for Black Friday deals Nov. 27, 1981, tune in — your feathered hairstyle or long sideburns may appear on a NewsNation celebration of Christmas in the 1980s.

From a true-crime takedown to the danger of talking truth to power — a look back at our favorite docs of the year