15 Documentary Movies That Actually Changed the World
Magnolia Pictures
A great documentary can change minds, but only a few have truly changed the world. That sort of impact, where a tangible difference in policy or mass opinion takes place as a result of one specific documentary film, is very rare. That’s not to say that there aren’t documentary movies that are masterpieces despite not having explicitly changed the world: This year’s winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, 20 Days in Mariupol , is a truly exceptional and harrowing piece of documentary filmmaking about the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And, yet, the war continues. That’s not the films fault—it just goes to show how hard change can be.
These 15 documentary movies, though, did prompt real change. In most cases, the change was on a much smaller than grand geopolitics, but change is change, even on the individual level. Read on to learn about 15 films that actually changed the world.
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Grove Press
For two decades, it was all but impossible to watch this 1967 documentary revealing the horrifying conditions at Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a mental institution in Massachusetts. Just before it was about to premiere, the state sued to prevent it from being shown, in what was presumably an attempt to protect its reputation by hiding the abuses filmmaker Frederick Wiseman documented. This ban was eventually overturned when lawyers representing the families of some of the inmates sued, alleging that the censoring of the film prevented necessary reforms from happening earlier—though some changes did happen at Bridgewater in response to the film. In the years since conditions at mental health facilities have largely improved from the nightmarish ones seen in Titicut Follies .
Le Figaro Films/Mara Films/TV Recontre
Not many documentaries can say they’re directly responsible for a hostage crisis. French director Barbet Schroeder worked with Idi Amin to make this 1974 documentary that was ultimately more revealing than the dictator of Uganda would have liked. Schroeder actually made two versions of the film : One that Amin saw and approved of and another that was 30 minutes longer and was meant for international release. However, after Amin asked Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi to have some of his agents watch the film in London and report back to him, Amin was irate. In response, he held 100 French residents of his country hostage until Schroeder agreed to cut two and a half additional minutes from the film. The filmmaker did so, though he restored the footage once Amin fell from power.
Filmmaker Barbara Kopple headed to Kentucky to make what would become a landmark documentary documenting the struggle between striking coal workers in Harlan County, Kentucky, and the authorities, strikebreakers, and hired company thugs who tried to intimidate the laborers to back down.
The documentary won an Oscar, and it remains one of the most pro-labor films ever made, but the very act of making the movie probably had a huge impact, too. The clashes between the striking workers and hired forces were violent , and the presence of Kopple’s camera is credited with preventing even more violence or even death from occurring.
This 1996 documentary, which would be followed by sequels in 2000 and 2011, tells the story of the “West Memphis Three,” a trio of teenagers who were convicted of the grisly, sensational killings of three boys in 1993, supposedly as part of a Satanic ritual. The documentary pinpointed problems with the trial , giving momentum to a movement to free the three teenagers. When new DNA evidence and possible juror misconduct further cast doubt on their convictions, they eventually reached a deal and were released in 2011 .
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The Thin Blue Line was not the documentary that Errol Morris originally intended to make. His initial goal was to make a documentary about prosecution psychiatrist Dr. James Grigson , nicknamed “Dr. Death” because he had testified in more than 100 trials that resulted in death sentences. However, early into production, Morris met Randall Dale Adams , an inmate serving a life sentence for the 1976 shooting of a Dallas police officer. Morris didn’t think Adams had committed the crime, and he refocused the entire documentary to be about the case. In large part because of the resulting 1988 film, Adams’ conviction was overturned , and an innocent man walked free.
Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary clearly did not end America’s gun violence epidemic. However, when dealing with a deadly problem that’s deeply, tragically embedded deep into the very fiber of the country, small victories count. One of the final scenes in Bowling for Columbine has Moore and two survivors of the Columbine school shooting attempting to “return” the bullets that are still inside their bodies by going to Kmart, where they were purchased in the first place. In the film, Kmart’s Vice President of Communications tells Moore that the company will, in response, stop selling handgun ammunition, a victory that even the director seems surprised by .
McDonald’s claims that its decision to discontinue the “supersize” portion option , which came just six weeks after the release of this 2004 documentary, was unrelated to Super Size Me . In reality, Morgan Spurlock’s documentary, in which he eats only McDonald’s food for 30 straight days in an attempt to shed light on America’s obesity epidemic, had to have been a factor in the Golden Arches’ decision. Super Size Me has since received criticism for some of the claims Spurlock made, but in all likelihood, it is responsible for changing McDonald’s menu and making the public think a bit more about what they’re eating—although fast food remains hugely popular .
Al Gore’s 2006 documentary did more than perhaps any other single piece of media or work of art to raise awareness about climate change. And yet, given where we are nearly two decades later (and what the average yearly temperature is), it feels sadly accurate to say that An Inconvenient Truth didn’t single-handedly put a stop to the crisis. Still, Gore and his film deserve credit. They might not have changed the minds of politicians in a position to actually do something about climate change in the ‘00s (indeed, you could say part of An Inconvenient Truth ’s impact was causing climate change deniers to double down ), but its importance is clear .
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This 2009 documentary about the annual Taiji dolphin drive hunt didn’t put a stop to the brutal slaughter of dolphins in Japan—and, indeed, the practice of killing dolphins for meat or capturing them for sale continues. In the years since the documentary came out, the number of dolphins killed each year has seriously declined, but it’s also possible that the backlash The Cove prompted , which is considerable, may have caused some Japanese hunters to recommit to the longtime tradition .
GasLand , a 2010 documentary about the impact of fracking that infamously includes scenes of residents who lived near fracking sites being able to light their extremely contaminated tap water on fire, is credited with sparking a surge of opposition to the oil and gas production technique. A study conducted a few years after the film’s release found that the movie, which was shown at small screenings in communities that could be affected by fracking, was a primary motivator in getting residents to protest the practice and even strive for the passing of new laws limiting it.
This Oscar-winning 2010 documentary about the ‘08 financial crisis informed a lot of views about how the financial services industry and rampant corruption led to it, but more directly it also prompted Columbia University to draw up much, much stricter disclosure rules for its faculty. A professor and the dean of the business school featured in the doc had ties to Wall Street or other finance connections that they were not forthright about, and after Inside Job helped bring these conflicts to light, the university changed its policy about these conflicts of interest.
This 2012 documentary revealed just how widespread sexual assault was within the ranks of the United States armed forces and how inadequately branches had responded to reports. The Invisible War features brave testimonials from survivors about the challenges they faced in trying (and in most cases, failing) to get justice following their assaults, leading to various branches of the armed forces making concrete changes to the way they handled such cases.
The year after the film’s release, President Barack Obama passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 , which included measures aimed at preventing retaliation against survivors and required special prosecutors for such cases rather than continuing to allow commanders to adjudicate within their own units.
This 2012 film is one of the most innovative documentaries ever made and one of the best. Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer , working with an Indonesian co-director who remains anonymous for safety reasons that will become clear, wanted to tell the story of the Indonesian mass killings that took place in the mid-’60s, when hundreds of thousands of suspected Communists and alleged enemies of the New Order regime were targeted.
To do so, Oppenheimer talked with some of the men responsible for carrying out the killings, only to find that they were boastful, rather than repentant. The director then had these men reenact the mass murders in a bizarre and extremely revealing exercise that culminates in one of the most amazing true-to-life moments ever recorded. T he Act of Killing faced heavy backlash in Indonesia, but it also marked a major moment of reckoning as survivors of the mass killings began to feel empowered to talk about what happened.
The 2013 documentary Blackfish made a splash telling the story of Tilikum, a captive orca who was involved in the deaths of three people. Using this killer whale as the “main character,” the documentary exposes the dark, inhumane side of keeping such intelligent animals in captivity, especially for use in shows. The impact was immediate, as SeaWorld faced backlash for the long-standing practice, losing advertisers and facing new legislation regarding captive orcas. The marine life park announced it was stopping its live orca shows and ending its captive breeding program only a few years later.
Fogel and Rodchenkov went to the U.S. Department of Justice and the media during production of the documentary, which came out a few years later in 2017 on Netflix. Russia was banned from sending athletes to the Games in the resulting International Olympic Committee investigation, and Rodchenkov is living in hiding in the U.S.
30 Travel Movies to Help Inspire Your Next Trip
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One of the great things about movies is that they can take you places without you having to squeeze into an uncomfortable airplane seat or with all the other hassles that real-life travel entails. There are lots of great movies about people setting out to see the world , so let the big screen scratch your wanderlust by checking out these 31 films.
Some of the movies on this list are romantic, following two people as they come together in that special way that happens when you’re away from home. Others are about journeys of self-discovery, showing what can happen when you hit the road solo. Some movies are uproarious comedies that will transport you away from your troubles as you laugh along to the antics on screen. There are also movies that are less of a vacation than they are an adventure, sure to get your blood pumping. And there are some scary movies about travel—the sort that might make you think, “You know, actually, maybe let’s make this one a staycation.”
Don’t bother packing your bags. All you need to do is hit “play” to embark on any one of these 30 great travel movies.
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Romantic Travel Movies
Diane Lane stars in this charming 1996 movie as a recently divorced woman who travels to Italy in an attempt to break out of her post-divorce funk. (In her defense, her husband was cheating on her and he got to keep the house, so she’s right to be miffed.) Once in Tuscany, though, she somehow becomes the owner of a villa, and as she begins to make a new life for herself, the potential for new love emerges amidst some of the most beautiful scenery and delicious-looking wine ever put to film. It’s the type of movie that will have you looking up flights to Florence.
A destination wedding counts as travel, and the breakout comedy of 2023 was shot on location in Australia. Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney play two people who left on bad terms after a one-night stand only to have to make nice when their mutual friends get married. Anyone But You is enough to make you want to take a trip Down Under, although perhaps without all the rom-com shenanigans.
Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz play lovelorn women who swap homes so that they can get away from their respective heartbreaks over Christmastime. When Winslet’s Iris and Diaz’s Amanda get to Los Angeles and London, respectively, they find new love in Jack Black and Jude Law’s characters. The 2006 movie, from the great Nancy Meyers , works extra well as a travel movie because, thanks to the house-swapping premise, it’s a reminder that everyone’s home is somebody else’s trip.
The first of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy introduces audiences to Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Céline as they meet on a train from Budapest and decide to spend the night together wandering Vienna. Widely regarded as one of the more romantic movies ever made, Before Sunrise will also make you want to explore Vienna with someone you’ve just met—someone who maybe you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with.
Technically, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is a travel movie (because Owen Wilson’s character is visiting Paris with his fiancee, played by Rachel McAdams ) and a time travel movie (because he goes back in time to 1920s). It’s a romantic movie both because of the relationship Wilson’s Gil strikes up with Marion Cotillard’s Adriana and because of how it romanticizes Paris and nostalgia—and deftly interrogates that romanticism.
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Movies About Traveling Solo
Dev Patel stars in this 2016 film, which is based on the true story of Saroo Brierley , who was separated from his parents in India at a very young age and adopted by an Australian couple. Once he grew up, he went back to his birth country in an attempt to find his biological parents. Saroo’s trek through India and into his own forgotten past is a tear-jerking, emotional travel story, and Lion was rewarded with six Oscar nominations.
This 2014 adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail stars Reese Witherspoon as Strayed sets out to hike from Southern California to Washington State in an attempt to find herself. The tour of the West Coast’s trails is a tour-de-force for the actor as her character remakes her life one hiking boot-clad step at a time.
In 1977, Robyn Davidson set out on a nine-month journey across the unforgiving Australian Outback with her dog and four camels. She later wrote about her adventure in National Geographic and in her memoir Tracks . In 2013, her story was adapted into a film with the same name. Mia Wasikowska plays Davidson in the movie, which features stunning cinematography of the Australian desert in all its harsh beauty.
A lot of solo travel stories are tales of self-discovery where the voyager has learned something by the time they reach their destination. Into the Wild offers no such catharsis, instead telling the true story of Christopher McCandless , a man who hiked across America and eventually ended up in the Alaskan wilderness—an environment he was not prepared for. It’s a poignant, tragic counterpart to the more common celebrations of wanderlust you tend to see in pop culture.
Julia Roberts stars as Elizabeth Gilbert in this 2010 adaptation of her memoir of post-divorce travel and self-discovery. Feeling her life is aimless and without purpose, Liz elects to travel around the world, stopping in Italy, India, and Bali where she eats, prays, and well, you can probably guess.
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Travel Horror Movies
Ari Aster’s supremely disturbing folk horror movie stars Florence Pugh as a young woman who is begrudgingly invited by her not-great boyfriend and his friends to go to Sweden to observe a commune’s midsummer festival. Upon getting there, Pugh’s Dani soon learns that the Hårga are not all sunshine and flowers, and that there are dark rituals and sinister plots. It’s the type of movie that will make you think twice about a Nordic vacation, and you’ll never look at a taxidermied bear the same way.
This 2005 horror movie, from director Eli Roth , is one of the biggest examples of the so-called “torture porn” subgenre, but there’s more to Hostel than just blood and guts. (There are a lot of blood and guts, though.) The film follows some American backpackers who, while traveling in Eastern Europe, become the victims of a shadowy organization that lets the ultra-rich live out their most depraved fantasies by torturing and killing unsuspecting tourists. Let’s just say that Hostel is not exactly a great promotional tourism campaign for Slovakia—something that the country was actually pretty upset about .
This 2022 film, released by the horror-centric streaming service Shudder, follows a social media influencer who, when traveling in Thailand, meets and befriends a young woman. It’s the type of movie that lives or dies on its twists, but let’s just say that Influencer is what you would get if The Talented Mr. Ripley were set in the social media age and a full-on horror film instead of a thriller.
The Creator director Gareth Edward’s 2010 debut follows a photojournalist as he tries to escort a young woman through Mexico, which has been taken over by kaiju-sized alien monsters. There are moments of beauty and discovery along their journey, as well as high-stress moments of terror when they encounter these creatures, which Edwards brings to life on a shoestring budget—though you can’t tell that by watching.
It’s right there in the title: John Landis’ 1980 comedy horror is about an American in London, although he’s not a werewolf when he first arrives in the UK. No, that happens after he’s mauled by a strange beast in the moors of Yorkshire—and that same beast kills the friend he was backpacking with. When he recovers in London, things get gnarly in the light of a full moon.
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Comedy Movies About Traveling
If you like the misadventures of the Griswold family’s first vacation attempt, great news: There are five sequels to this 1983 Chevy Chase comedy. Before the European , Vegas , or Christmas Vacation , though, Clark Griswold tries to drive his family from Chicago to southern California. Their journey makes for some classic comedy, though it might hit a bit too close to home if you’ve had to endure a family vacation that went awry.
A lot of Wes Anderson’s movies are about travel, including his most recent film, Asteroid City , and The Grand Budapest Hotel . His ultimate travel movie, though, is 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited , which stars Owen Wilson , Adrien Brody , and Jason Schwartzman as three estranged brothers who agree to make a trip through India together in the hopes of reconnecting after their father’s death.
Lots of movies are about travel, but are they about a big adventure, the way Tim Burton’s directorial debut is? Paul Reubens stars as his Pee-wee Herman character, who hits the road in an attempt to recover his beloved bicycle, which has gone missing. Following a psychic’s totally legit vision of his bike in the basement of the Alamo, Pee-wee encounters a ghost trucker, biker gangs, and all the madness of a Hollywood backlot.
Netflix’s Oscar-nominated animated movie has a setup that’s not too dissimilar from that of National Lampoon’s Vacation . Aspiring filmmaker Katie Mitchell can’t wait to get away from her family and start film school. Her dad, voiced by Danny McBride , feels his daughter slipping away and opts to have the whole fam drive her across the country rather than take a plane to school. At the same time, an A.I. gone rogue has started a robot uprising. Oops!
In addition to featuring a hall-of-fame cameo from Matt Damon as the singer of “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” Eurotrip is a classic, if not especially intelligent, teen sex romp. It’s not the movie to watch if you want to get a feel for Europe, but it is what you put on when you want to enjoy some good, dumb laughs.
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Adventure Travel Movies
Ben Stiller directed and stars in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , an imaginative adaptation of a 1939 short story about a mild-mannered man who gets lost in his daydreams. When circumstances force Walter to embark on a trip around the world, he starts living his daydreams for real, going to Greenland and the Himalayas. Featuring a fantastic soundtrack and gorgeous cinematography of some truly beautiful, off-the-beaten-path places, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is the type of movie that might make you stop just thinking about taking a trip and actually buy a ticket.
William Friedkin , best known for directing The Exorcist , also helmed this 1977 thriller about possibly the worst road trip of all time. When four people, all on the run from their various sordid pasts, find themselves trapped in a remote oil village in Colombia, they are desperate to get out by any means necessary. The opportunity presents itself when the bosses need people to drive boxes of dynamite that are extremely unstable and could blow at any minute across miles of rainforest. There is one sequence in Sorcerer that’s some of the most unbelievably tense filmmaking you’ll likely ever see. (Note that it’s a remake of another classic film, Wages of Fear , should you want another movie that’ll keep you on edge.)
Johnny Depp stars as an average man who finds himself smack in the middle of an international criminal incident when on vacation in Europe after a woman, played by Angelina Jolie , tries to trick the authorities into thinking Depp’s the fugitive they’re looking for. Thrills, laughs, and a little romance ensue.
Charlie Hunnam plays real explorer Percy Fawcett in this adaptation of the book by the same name from author David Grann , who also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon . The film follows the British explorer in the early 1900s as he tries, time and time again, to prove the existence of a mythical city deep in the jungles of Brazil. Think of it as a somber, reflective take on a real-life Indiana Jones, one whose obsession with traveling to hostile environments in search of knowledge may prove to be his undoing.
This gripping survival drama about the infamous 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, as documented by Jon Krakauer in the book Into Thin Air, is the type of film that will probably make you consider an all-inclusive beach resort for your next vacation rather than mountain-climbing.
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Movies About Roadtrips
This biopic follows the man who would become the Che Guevara when he, as a young man in the early ‘50s, travels across South America with his friend Alberto Granado . The film, which is based on Guevara’s trip diary, is both a road movie and a coming-of-age film about an important historical figure, as we see him become radicalized by the poverty and inequality he sees on this journey.
Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan star in Ethan Coen’s romp from earlier this year, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Drive-Away Dolls “ The Big Lebowski , but just the silly parts.” Set in the late ’90s, it follows two lesbian friends who learn that the car they’ve rented has a human head and a briefcase in the trunk—and that some shadowy types really, really want whatever’s in that case back.
Burt Reynolds stars in this 1977 classic, which was the second-highest-grossing movie of its release year after the original Star Wars . He plays a legendary bootlegger who accepts a job to smuggle 400 cases of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta in under 28 hours. Along the way, he encounters a runaway bride played by Sally Field , and Sheriff Buford T. Justice, who wants to stop the Bandit. Smokey and the Bandit also features an incredible theme song, “ East Bound and Down ,” and while the lyrics describe the plot of the movie almost beat-for-beat, you’ll find that it’s a fitting song to blast on your own car stereo when you’re on the road.
Il Sorpasso , which is sometimes given the English title The Easy Life , is a masterpiece of 1960s Italian cinema. It follows a boisterous middle-aged man who decides to take a timid, bookish college student he meets under his wing for a good time out on the road—whether or not the younger man actually wants to tag along or not. Hilarious and poignant when you might not expect it, Il Sorpasso ’s well worth the watch.
This seminal adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel of the same name stars Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro as they drive to Sin City under the influence of an absurd amount of drugs. In that way, it’s the ultimate travel movie. It’s about a trip, but it’s also about a trip .
