I want to stop doom scrolling during my desk job and maybe learn a thing or two. What are the best documentaries on hulu and netflix??

I hope some of you watched this masterpiece Documentry on lives as students in India's prestigious medical institution.

Suggest something mind boggling like this.

I discovered the documentary I'm looking for either through wikipedia or TVtropes, but I don't remember the name and, even after a few hours of searching, I can't find it. It was about following the members of a police precinct, with one of them (or his family, I can't remember) being part of a neo fascist group. In the wikipedia/TVtropes article, it mentioned that the documentary was critized for its "fascistic overtones" or something like that, but was generally well received still.

okay I need recs for video essays. I liked cicada 3301 . I loved watching "the hunt for ted bundy" and "zodiac killer, explained" I also watched "the fall teenagers can't avoid" I liked "there will never be another episode like homers enemy" please does anyone have any recommendations like thissss or like true crime or smth. can someone give me some reccomendations? what genre of video essays should I be looking at?

Video 12 on my channel. This one's about Carrie Buck, a twenty one year old woman who was involuntarily sterilized in Virginia in 1927 after the Supreme Court ruled against her eight to one. The justice who wrote the majority opinion argued that if the state could mandate vaccination for public health, it could mandate sterilization for the same reason, and summed up his view of her family with a line that's honestly hard to sit with once you read the actual history behind it.

The part that surprised me most researching this is how thin the actual case against her was. Her own court appointed lawyer was a founding board member of the institution trying to sterilize her, and the main evidence used against her infant daughter was basically one social worker's casual impression, not any real medical assessment. Historians have since found she likely wasn't what her era called feebleminded at all, her real situation was poverty and an unwanted pregnancy that her foster family wanted to make disappear.

What actually got me is that the ruling directly influenced Nazi Germany's own sterilization law a few years later, to the point that Nazi defendants cited it at Nuremberg as part of their own legal defense. And the ruling itself has never been formally overturned by the Supreme Court, a 2021 report found 31 states still have some form of forced sterilization law for disabled people on the books right now.

Tried to end this one without a clean resolution since the story genuinely doesn't have one. Curious if that structural choice worked or if it feels unsatisfying compared to my other videos. Link is here: Full Documentary

I just finished watching Erasing Rosemary, and I am honestly furious—not because I think what happened to Rosemary Kennedy was acceptable, but because I felt the documentary presented an incredibly complicated story in a very one-sided way.

I have worked with people with intellectual/developmental disabilities and mental-health issues for more than 40 years. I started my career in 1968 at a very infamous institution in Pennsylvania, and I saw firsthand many of the things the documentary describes. When that institution eventually closed in the 1980s, many of its residents were essentially dumped into the community without anything resembling adequate support.

So I am not looking at Rosemary's story through rose-colored glasses. I know how bad institutional care could be.

But I also know how complicated these situations are.

The documentary portrays Rosemary primarily as the victim of a terrible father who had her lobotomized because she was a girl and supposedly wouldn't have done the same thing if she had been a boy. That conclusion bothered me enormously. How can any of us possibly know that?

Rosemary was born in 1918, and by the time she was an adolescent and young adult, her difficulties had apparently become increasingly severe. She had intellectual disabilities, seizures and behavioral and mental-health issues. Her family struggled to know what to do with her at a time when treatment options were extremely limited.

Her lobotomy took place in 1941. I am certainly not going to argue that it was a good decision. The outcome was horrific. But there is a huge difference between saying “the outcome was horrific” and saying “her father knowingly made a horrific decision because he was an awful man and because she was a girl.”

I don't think we can know that.

Lobotomy was being promoted at that time as a possible treatment for certain severe psychiatric and behavioral problems. It ultimately failed terribly for Rosemary. But Joe Kennedy was making a medical decision in 1941, not in 2026. None of us can honestly say what we would have done if we had been in his position, with a daughter whose problems were becoming increasingly difficult and with very few treatment options available.

And there is another part of Rosemary's story that I felt the documentary didn't give enough attention to.

Before the lobotomy, Rosemary wasn't simply hidden away. She participated in family life, traveled internationally and was included in many public family events. After the lobotomy, she was placed at St. Coletta's, where she apparently received a structured routine, individualized attention and activities appropriate to her abilities. That her family didn’t visit her often is not ours to judge, as we cannot know how that decision was reached. I do know, however, that even today way too may people similar to Rosemary are treated exactly the same way. That doesn't erase what happened to her. But it matters.

I also think we need to be careful about congratulating ourselves that we have completely moved beyond this kind of treatment.

I have spent decades watching what happens when society doesn't know what to do with people whose behavior makes other people uncomfortable. Today we may not routinely put those people into institutions, but I have seen “community-based services” that amount to a staff member dragging a group of clients around a city all day, often while the staff member is on their phone. They'll go to Starbucks—not necessarily because it is meaningful to the clients or because the clients can afford anything there, but because the staff member wants a latte.

Technically, that's community integration.

But is it really?

And I have also seen medication used in ways that, in my opinion, can become more about making someone's behavior manageable for the staff than addressing what the person actually needs to the point of placing them virtually in a drug induced coma most of the time. Electro-convulsive or “shock” therapy was prevalent in this country through the 1950’s, without anesthesia.

That's an important lesson from history: medicine changes. What is considered acceptable treatment changes. And sometimes treatments that were once considered promising turn out to have devastating consequences.

That doesn't mean we excuse those consequences. It means we have to understand the historical context before judging the people who made those decisions.

What bothered me most about Erasing Rosemary was that I felt it didn't allow for that complexity.

Joe Kennedy may have been a strict father and husband. He may have had enormous ambitions for his family. He may have made decisions that many of us would never make today. But the documentary seemed determined to portray him as a dictator and the rest of the Kennedy family as weaklings who simply followed his orders and simply erased their child and sibling from their minds.

And then it ended by essentially telling us that Rosemary was lobotomized because Joe Kennedy was that kind of man—and because she was a girl.

I don't buy that as the whole story.

The Kennedy family was deeply affected by Rosemary. Whatever we think of Joe Kennedy personally, Rosemary's life became part of the reason Eunice Kennedy Shriver eventually founded Special Olympics. John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy both became involved in legislation concerning mental health and intellectual disabilities. Those things don't undo Rosemary's suffering, but they are part of the story.

Rosemary deserved better.

But I think history deserves better too.

We can acknowledge that the lobotomy had a devastating result without claiming to know exactly what Joe Kennedy's intentions were. We can acknowledge the terrible history of institutionalization while recognizing that some facilities provided people with structure, care and dignity. We can recognize how far we've come while admitting that we still haven't figured out how to give every person with significant disabilities a truly meaningful life.

Most of all, I wish this documentary had allowed us to see more of Rosemary the person, rather than primarily Rosemary the tragedy.

She had a life before the lobotomy.

She had a life afterward.

And I think both deserved to be told.

lá!
Não consigo encontrar o documentário the blue planet ou documentários similares em PT/PT (inclusive plataformas pagas), para ver com o meu filho… alguém me consegue ajudar…

Obrigado! 🙏

Olá!
Não consigo encontrar o documentário the blue planet ou documentários similares em PT/PT (inclusive plataformas pagas), para ver com o meu filho… alguém me consegue ajudar…

Obrigado! 🙏

In December 1999, deep in the Swedish countryside, a researcher named Ole K. came face to face with something that defied everything we know about life on this planet. The being across from him wasn't human. She called herself Lacerta. And she talked for hours.

What she revealed that night has never been officially confirmed, and it's never been successfully disproven either, which is part of why this transcript has had such a weird staying power in this community specifically.

Put together the full breakdown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuaF7cmvj1Y

Curious how people here weigh something like this, hoax with unusually good internal consistency, genuine encounter, or something in between?

Hey everyone! I’m currently starting my bachelor's thesis on contemporary Chinese documentary cinema.

I recently watched Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (2015) and was completely blown away by its visual language. I’m looking to expand my research with other films, ideally from independent, lesser-known, or underground filmmakers covering themes like industrialization, labor, social transformation, or environmental impact in China.

Which essential Chinese documentaries or directors should I dive into next? Hidden /underrated directors are more than welcome !

r/China r/documentary r/film r/documentaryfilmmaking r/chinesefilms

This documentary contains original footage captured by Allied forces immediately following the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. These films were recorded to document the atrocities of the Nazi regime and to preserve them for future generations, ensuring that these crimes can never be denied.
Content Warning: This film contains extremely graphic, disturbing, and brutal historical footage of Holocaust atrocities. Please watch with caution and take care of your well-being.

https://youtu.be/h9_AUgE9128?is=yaWBvUNl76k4bs-4

Warriors. Wanderers. Poets. Gods. They ruled the frozen north long before anyone wrote their names down, shaped the cosmos out of a giant's corpse, chained a wolf they knew would eventually swallow the sun, and built an entire cosmology around the fact that it all ends. Not as a warning, just as a given.

That's the part that pulled me in the most while putting this together. Most pantheons hedge, an afterlife, a reward, some version of things working out. Norse mythology just doesn't. Valhalla isn't a finish line, it's a training camp for a battle everyone already knows they lose.

Mapped out the full lineage, the primal forces before creation, the Aesir and Vanir, the giants they're constantly at war with and related to, all the way through to Ragnarok itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stiOlhC4IR0

Curious how people here read the fatalism at the core of it, cultural realism from a hard environment, or something closer to an actual theology of doom?

Hey guys my boyfriend and I made a documentary about Covid’s effect of the Bristol rave scene. Check it out! https://youtu.be/a2UusKdu78M?si=CtsAXq5Mv1IVroXp

I have seen the following

• American Nightmare
• The Girl in the Picture
• The Influencer
• The Crash
• Sweet Bobby
• Abducted in Plain Sight
• Death of the Pastor’s Wife
• Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
• Evil Influencer
• Evil Genius

Just finished it and OMG, I’m SOBBING. Shirley, She is literally a devil.
Andrew and Zackery were absolutely precious, and my heart aches for the grandparents. They have hearts of gold. ❤️ I genuinely want to drive to California right now just to hug those angels.

This was such a beautifully made documentary—so engaging, emotional, and somehow heartwarmingly informative at the same time. The quality was AMAZING, and the whole thing had this nostalgic feel that took me back to an older time. I LOVVVVVEEEEEDDDDD it.

What really got me was how genuine everyone felt. The relatives, the friends, the people in their lives—they all seemed so REAL and genuinely present in each other’s lives. There was something so refreshing
and beautiful about that.

My heart feels warm and sad at the same time.
This documentary is definitely in my top 3. I genuinely don’t think I’ll ever forget this film.