Best South American documentary movies
Get ready to binge. We've found a collection of must-watch documentary films from South America, now streaming on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime Video, and other top services!
The Edge of Democracy (2019)
The Edge of Democracy (2019)
A cautionary tale for these times of democracy in crisis—the personal and political fuse to explore one of the most dramatic periods in Brazilian history. With unprecedented access to Presidents Dilma Rousseff and Lula da Silva, we witness their rise and fall and the tragically polarized nation that remains.
The Salt of the Earth (2014)
The Salt of the Earth (2014)
During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.
The Mole Agent (2020)
The Mole Agent (2020)
When a daughter becomes concerned about her mother's well-being in a retirement home, private investigator Romulo hires Sergio, an 83-year-old man who becomes a new resident—and a mole inside the home, who struggles to balance his assignment with becoming increasingly involved in the lives of several residents.
Isle of Flowers (1989)
Isle of Flowers (1989)
A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.
The Lost Children (2024)
Waste Land (2010)
Waste Land (2010)
An uplifting feature documentary highlighting the transformative power of art and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz takes us on an emotional journey from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, to the heights of international art stardom. Vik collaborates with the brilliant catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, true Shakespearean characters who live and work in the garbage quoting Machiavelli and showing us how to recycle ourselves.
The Eternal Memory (2023)
Emicida: AmarElo - It's All for Yesterday (2020)
Emicida: AmarElo - It's All for Yesterday (2020)
Between scenes from his concert in São Paulo's oft-inaccessible Theatro Municipal, rapper and activist Emicida celebrates the rich legacy of Black Brazilian culture.
Operation Hope - The Children Lost in the Amazon (2024)
Operation Hope - The Children Lost in the Amazon (2024)
The incredible true story of four children, who survive a plane crash deep in the dangerous Colombian Amazon. They are lost and alone for 40 days while the military and indigenous guard race against time to find them.
Racionais MC's: From the Streets of São Paulo (2022)
Racionais MC's: From the Streets of São Paulo (2022)
Armed with music and a message, influential hip-hop group Racionais MC's turned their street poetry into a powerful movement in Brazil and beyond.
Nostalgia for the Light (2010)
Nostalgia for the Light (2010)
In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.
A Life Too Short: The Isabella Nardoni Case (2023)
Karol G: Tomorrow Was Beautiful (2025)
City of God: 10 Years Later (2013)
City of God: 10 Years Later (2013)
City of God – 10 Years Later investigates what happened to the actors who took part in the award-winning film directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund. This documentary shows what City of God’s worldwide success meant to their lives. Were the actors prepared for the film’s success? Did the social background of some of them prove stronger than the opportunity that came their way?
Madonna: The Celebration Tour in Rio (2024)
Madonna: The Celebration Tour in Rio (2024)
Madonna celebrates her four-decade career in a special concert for over 1.6 million people at the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.
Pictures of Ghosts (2023)
Pictures of Ghosts (2023)
Downtown Recife’s classic movie palaces from the 20th century are mostly gone. That city area is now an archaeological site of sorts that reveals aspects of life in society which have been lost. And that’s just part of the story.
Bank Robbers: The Last Great Heist (2022)
Raul: O Início, o Fim e o Meio (2012)
Raul: O Início, o Fim e o Meio (2012)
As the world boiled in the rush of Easy Rider bikes, in the frenetic pace of Elvis Presley, in Beatniks poets, in the explosion of counterculture, a boy from Bahia gave birth to Rock in Brazil. A runaway flying saucer that abducted the hearts and minds of thousands of fans, Raul Seixas, a man who became a myth. Raul died young because he lived intensely. Rock n 'roll, free love, alternative society, drugs, black magic, military dictatorship, women and daughters. A man who wanted to live from his work and died for it. The beginning, the end and the middle are confused, because the story is not over. The film reveals through rare images of archive, meeting with relatives, conversations with artists, producers and friends, the trajectory of the legend of Rock.
Elena (2013)
Elena (2013)
Petra heads to New York in search of her older sister after a long time of being separated. They are both movie actresses and heirs of the wounds of the Brazilian dictatorship. But Petra has only a few clues: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary...
White Out, Black In (2014)
White Out, Black In (2014)
Shots fired inside a club frequented by black Brazilians in the outskirts of Brasilia leave two men wounded. A third man arrives from the future in order to investigate the incident and prove that the fault lies in the repressive society.
Playing (2007)
Playing (2007)
Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.
The Pearl Button (2015)
The Pearl Button (2015)
The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.
The Doomsday Cult of Antares de la Luz (2024)
Muchachos, la película de la gente (2023)
Muchachos, la película de la gente (2023)
The celebrations for the title of the Argentine National Team in the World Cup in Qatar 2022, through videos of Argentines around the world and unpublished material of the party in the streets.
Twenty Years Later (1984)
Twenty Years Later (1984)
Eduardo Coutinho was filming a movie with the same name in the Northeast of Brazil, in 1964, when there came the military coup. He had to interrupt the project, and came back to it in 1981, looking for the same places and people, showing what had ocurred since then, and trying to gather a family whose patriarch, a political leader fighting for rights of country people, had been murdered.
The Team (2014)
The Team (2014)
Documentary about the victorious German national football team - called "Die Mannschaft" - and their journey to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
Outcast Rockstar (2021)
Outcast Rockstar (2021)
The life and career of Brazilian singer Chorão, Charlie Brown Jr's frontman. The story of one of the most important rock stars in Brazil, from testimonies about his personal and professional life and archival footage. Beginning in the early 1990s, when his band released their first album and hit the radio stations, Chorão lived two intense decades of national and international success, full of controversial moments, until his premature death in 2013.
Mussum: Um Filme do Cacildis (2019)
Mussum: Um Filme do Cacildis (2019)
The trajectory of musician and comedian Mussum as vocalist of the group "Os Originais do Samba" and later in cinema and TV as a member of "Os Trapalhões", a group that revolutionized the way of making humor on Brazilian television.
Waiting for the Carnival (2019)
Waiting for the Carnival (2019)
A documentary film about the Brazilian town of Toritama, the self-proclaimed capital of jeans. The workers of the city’s self-managed small businesses only get one real break from their self-exploiting lives in the textile business: the annual Carnival.