Best South American documentary movies

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.

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.

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.

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.

After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.

Augusto and Paulina have been together for 25 years. Eight years ago, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Both fear the day he no longer recognizes her.

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.

Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.

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.

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 deep dive into the hidden industry of digital cleaning, which rids the Internet of unwanted violence, porn and political content.

When a 5-year-old girl falls from her father's apartment, her mother embarks on a quest for justice — and is put under the national spotlight.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Through candid interviews, the perpetrators of Argentina's most notorious bank heist detail how — and why — they carried out the radical 2006 operation.

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...

Karol G pulls back the curtain on her rise to stardom while navigating a sold-out stadium tour, creating new music and releasing a new album.

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.

A star goalkeeper threatens a woman who is pregnant with his child. Her pleas for help go unanswered in the shadow of his fame — then tragedy strikes.

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.

Almost 10 years after being charged with a heinous crime, former members of a Chilean cult share their haunting experiences.

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 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.

Documentary about the victorious German national football team - called "Die Mannschaft" - and their journey to the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

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.

"Master" is the name of a 12-story apartment building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro's neighborhood for nightlife. Over the course of four weeks in 2001, Eduardo Coutinho's film crew rented one of the 276 apartments and used it as home base to make a film about the building's residents. We get to know the building manager, who succeeded in turning the troubled residence into a family complex within just a few years. Using interviews and a few stolen moments in the corridors of the building, Coutinho explores this world. Most of the building's residents come from the lower middle class and are just getting by, but that's just about the only thing they have in common - so many people, so many stories, sometimes told in a self-confident tone, sometimes with averted eyes. The fact that a film crew is interested in their stories puzzles some of them. Hope, fear, dreams, memories, love and loneliness all appear from behind the doors of this average apartment building.

Madonna celebrates her four-decade career in a special concert for over 1.6 million people at the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro.

This film is for those who really miss Paulo Gustavo! 'SON OF A MOTHER' shows the delightful complicity between the actor and Dona Déa, his inspiration to create Dona Hermínia. With never-before-seen footage, the film follows the funny and exciting backstage of the artist's last tour. Get ready to laugh, cry and remember why Paulo Gustavo is unforgettable.

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.

A documentary on the life of Uruguayan politician and former guerrilla fighter José Mujica.

In this film, Laerte conjugates the body in the feminine, and scrutinizes concepts and prejudices. Not in search of an identity, but in search of un-identities. Laerte creates and sends creatures to face reality in the fictional world of comic strips as a vanguard of the self. And, on the streets, the one who becomes the fiction of a real character. Laerte, of all the bodies, and of none, complicates all binaries. In following Laerte, this documentary chooses to clothe the nudity beyond the skin we inhabit.

Vini Jr. has it all: talent, resilience and boldness. Follow his dancing, unpredictable feet on his inspiring journey to becoming a global soccer star.

The impeachment and removal from office of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 was triggered by a corruption scandal involving, among others, her then vice-president Michel Temer. Director Maria Augusta Ramos follows the trial against Rousseff from the point of view of her defence team. This is a courtroom drama that unfolds slowly: the appearances of the various parties gradually turn the proceedings into something akin to theatre. Inside the courtroom, grand emotions are played to full effect whilst, on the other side of the doors, lobbyists and supporters pace the corridors. Meanwhile, outside, in front of Brasília’s modernist government buildings, demonstrators are chanting like a Greek chorus. Only the main character, Rousseff herself, remains professional and aloof.

Featuring contributions from legendary team-mates and opponents, friends and family, this is the definitive story of Ronaldo, encompassing his meteoric rise, his spectacular fall (including one of football’s biggest mysteries) and the World Cup’s greatest ever redemption story.

The Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people have seen their population dwindle and their culture threatened since coming into contact with non-Native Brazilians. Though promised dominion over their own rainforest territory, they have faced illegal incursions from environmentally destructive logging and mining, and, most recently, land-grabbing invasions spurred on by right-wing politicians like President Jair Bolsonaro. With deforestation escalating as a result, the stakes have become global.

A deeply moving story about love, loss and literature, this documentary follows the days of José Saramago, the Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, and his wife, Pilar del Río. The film shows their whirlwind life of international travel, his passion for completing his masterpiece "The Elephant's Journey", and how their love quietly sustains them throughout.

In '90s Argentina, the murder of a high school student sparks widespread protests. Retold by her loved ones, this documentary shows their fight for justice.

It narrates the epic title obtained by the Argentine National Team in the World Cup Qatar 2022 with testimonies of the protagonists, told from the intimacy and in first person.

The infamous anti-hero Marcelo Nascimento da Rocha is one of the greatest Brazilian con artists ever that has lured several persons with his schemes. The director and writer Mariana Caltabiano proposes to write his biography and to make a documentary about his life, and she is also lured by the swindler that discloses his rise and fall.

Award-winning journalist Daniela Arbex examines the horrors of the Colônia psychiatric hospital, where more than 60,000 people were killed over decades.

The chronicle of the political tension in Chile in 1973 and of the violent counter revolution against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.

Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this groundbreaking new documentary uncovers the UN sanctioned war on drugs, charting its origins and its devastating impact on countries like the USA, Colombia and Russia. Featuring prominent statesmen including Presidents Clinton and Carter, the film follows The Global Commission on Drug Policy on a mission to break the political taboo and expose the biggest failure of global policy in the last 50 years

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.

From humble origins to soccer legend, this documentary captures the rise of Colombia’s René Higuita, from iconic career to personal controversies.

A portrait of transgender musician and artist Linn da Quebrada, who uses her body and performances as weapons to fight sexism, homophobia, and racism.

The second edition of Todo Mundo no Rio, internationally known as Mayhem on the Beach, marked a historic moment on Copacabana Beach. After thirteen years away from the country, Lady Gaga returned to Brazil with a free concert promoting her eighth studio album, Mayhem (2025). With a record-breaking crowd of 2.5 million people, the show became the biggest performance of her career and cemented her as the female artist with the largest audience in history.

Two sets of identical twins switched at birth in Colombia explore their complex history and new identities in this captivating documentary.

The 500-day manhunt for Colombia's Pablo Escobar is detailed through interviews and archival images in this crime documentary.

A wonderful country full of amazing creatures in America called Colombia, seen as never before, accompanied by incredible shots, make it a must-see place for adventurers and wildlife lovers this natural paradise.

One of the greatest neuroscience breakthroughs is having discovered that babies are far more than a genetic load. The development of all human beings lies on the combination of genetics, the quality of the relationships and the environment they are set on. The Beginning of Life invites everyone to reflect: are we taking good care of this unique moment, which defines both the present and future of humankind?

The murder of photographer José Luis Cabezas in the summer of 1997 deeply shakes Argentina, and ends up revealing a mafia scheme in which the political and economic powers appear to be involved.

Produced by Brasil Paralelo, this documentary presents an alternative view of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship and the events leading up to it. The crew traveled to Eastern Europe to search for the documents of the intelligence service of extinguished Czechoslovakia and interviewed contemporary thinkers, politicians, and internet personalities to show their perspective on these events.

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.

We live in a new age. We are always rushing, rushing for no reason, rushing for nothing. As though time had sped up. Everything implies speed, urgency. But ultimately, why does time seem so short? This film is about the director’s conflict about time and the lack of it in today’s world; she reflects on civilization and the future of existence.

The Cambridge Squatter tells the story of refugees, recently arrived in Brazil who, together with a group of low-income workers, occupy an old abandoned building in downtown São Paulo. Daily dramas, comical situations and different views on the world commingle with the threat of impending eviction.

After the coup d'État of the Democratic government of Allende, the embassy of Italy in Santiago played a major role in helping the opposers of the regime, and extradited many of them to Italy.

Eight iconic performers of the first generation of Brazilian transvestite artists go on stage to celebrate their 50th career jubilee. The film depicts the human, personal dimension behind these icons, deconstructing gender stereotypes.

Chronicles the events immediately surrounding the CIA- supported coup itself.

This documentary follows the rise and fall of Generation Zoe, a spiritual coaching network hiding the most unusual scam in Argentina's history.

In less than ten months, the music band Mamonas Assassinas went from being completely unknown to becoming one of the biggest phenomena in Brazilian music. Irreverent, intelligent, sarcastic and creative, the band took over Brazil and sold two million albums in just six months. Never-before-seen footage and interviews from family, friends, producers, and musicians tell the band’s story, their challenges, their rise to fame, and the tragic aeroplane accident that killed all its members in 1996.

Participants recall a series of festivals held on a farm in Brazil during the '70s and '80s that evolved into liberating celebrations of music.

In powerful images, alternating between documentary observation and staged sequences, and dense soundscapes, Luiz Bolognesi documents the Indigenous community of the Yanomami and depicts their threatened natural environment in the Amazon rainforest.

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.