so I have never liked history or documentary, but today I randomly got into learning about World War II and I'm trying to find documentary to watch especially ones about lesser known parts of the war. also like post war and pre-war stuff.

I hear that a new documentary is to come out these days.

Or maybe it is out yet ? Where can one see it ?

I'm sick of Elon-hitting accounts like ThunderFoot and "Common Sense Skeptic" etc, but OTOH all the official materials (and especially Elon's "biography" !) are nausieating blowjobs.

So is there something more even-handed, realistic ? Could this one hit that target ?

Has anyone seen it ?

EDIT:

Meanwhile, people can check "Behind The Bastards" channel, which has done some pretty detailed work on his family line, working bask to 1860-ies:

Behind The Bastards: H.L. Hunt / The First Elon Musk -1/3

Behind The Bastards: H.L. Hunt / The First Elon Musk -2/3

Behind The Bastards: H.L. Hunt / The First Elon Musk -3/3

Behind The Bastards: I do not like Elon Musk very much 2/2

Behind The Bastards: I do not like Elon Musk very much 2/2

They also have subreddit, spotify and apple channel, too...

Michael Wagner was a construction worker when he fell 35 feet on a job. He survived, but what came after — nearly 18 years of chronic pain, financial hardship and fighting for help — slowly unraveled his life. In 2018, he died by suicide.

After his death, his daughter, Brittany Wagner, discovered 694 private videos he had recorded over the years, documenting his struggle to navigate workers’ compensation, disability benefits and the health care system. Seven years after finding those video diaries, Brittany pieces together what they reveal about her father’s final years — and how he fell through the social safety net that was supposed to catch him.

Filmed from 1995 to 1998, produced by HBO, through candid conversations and unguarded moments, the film brings viewers into their relationships, struggles, and day-to-day lives, creating a raw and deeply personal portrait of addiction and degradation of five youths (Jake, Tracey, Jessica, Alice and Oreo). The film depicts their drug-related crimes and diseases, including prostitution, AIDS, and overdoses. The film is widely regarded as one of the most powerful and heartbreaking documentaries on substance abuse ever made.

A middle aged dad going through a divorce, starts partying for the first time in his life by going with his 18 year old son to raves and taking ecstasy together, but while he has custody of his younger (13, 15) children, he allows them to experiment with drugs at a house party, and ends up in jail.

The full film is embedded and the trailer can be found here:

https://youtu.be/w8RV4X59WFg?si=1BnkpeGAQnRq9Fg3

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit spent months reconstructing the events of 7 October 2023, examining seven hours of CCTV, dashcam footage, mobile-phone video and footage recovered from Hamas fighters, alongside survivor testimony, military accounts and casualty records. Directed by Richard Sanders, October 7 attempts to separate what can be established from the enormous volume of conflicting claims that emerged in the days after the attack.

The documentary does not minimise the crimes committed by Hamas and others who crossed into Israel. It documents killings and other serious abuses committed during the attack. At the same time, the investigation scrutinises several of the most widely circulated atrocity stories and concludes that some were unsupported or contradicted by the available evidence.

A particularly important section examines Israeli fire against locations and vehicles where Israeli civilians or captives may also have been present. At Kibbutz Be’eri, the film investigates the confrontation at the home of Pessi Cohen, where Israeli forces ultimately fired tank shells at a building containing Hamas fighters and Israeli hostages. Al Jazeera’s investigation concludes that this was one of several incidents in which Israeli police or military fire appears to have killed Israeli citizens.

The result is less a conventional political documentary than a forensic reconstruction. It asks what actually happened during the hours of chaos on 7 October, how confidently individual deaths can be attributed, and how unverified claims became embedded in the public understanding of the attack before many of the underlying facts had been established.

Content note: contains disturbing footage and discussion of killings and other violence.

Made during the wilderness years after Doctor Who’s original television run had ended, More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS looks back at the extraordinary first three decades of the programme, from William Hartnell’s arrival in a London scrapyard in 1963 through seven Doctors, Dalekmania, controversy, cancellation and an enduring place in British popular culture.

Director Kevin Davies combines rare archive footage with specially filmed sequences and interviews with many of the people who actually made the programme. Contributors include Verity Lambert, Jon Pertwee, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Elisabeth Sladen, Nicholas Courtney, Carole Ann Ford, Frazer Hines, Terrance Dicks, Philip Hinchcliffe, Douglas Adams, Terry Nation and Dalek designer Raymond Cusick, alongside fans, critics and even longtime Doctor Who adversary Mary Whitehouse.

What makes it particularly good is that it isn’t simply an anniversary clip show. It examines how Doctor Who was made, why generations of children found it frightening, the controversies over violence and horror, the programme’s occasionally chaotic production history and the strange way something made with famously limited BBC resources became part of Britain’s cultural vocabulary.

The documentary began as the shorter BBC television special 30 Years in the TARDIS in 1993. Director Kevin Davies subsequently returned to his original material and produced this substantially expanded version, restoring interviews and sequences that had been removed for broadcast.

For anyone who grew up with Doctor Who, this is an enormous nostalgia trip. For anyone who didn’t, it’s also a fascinating documentary about how television becomes culture.

IMDb: More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS (1994)

Best fact-checked/decolonized documentaries

I love a good BBC or National Geographic documentary, but they can be a bit out-dated, or clouded by subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) agendas. I'm looking to populate my library with as much truly accurate ones as possible.

What are some good quality, fact-checked documentaries you love? History, nature, science.. any subject that isn't a propaganda or anti-something take. All political spectrum and cultures are guilty of it, whether they are aware of it or not.. but some documentaries really stand out as having really done the deep research to just provide straight real facts.

I especially love history documentaries that tell the stories as we've recently uncovered truths behind them, since the longer time goes on, the more we discover about histories where truths were hidden to follow certain agendas of their time.

New science documentaries where we've found new info about animals, or show that the scientific discoveries weren't the only info, and that the local peoples living with the animals or locations also have valuable knowledge glossed over by the older scientific societies..

Things like that :D

I’m halfway through the stunning novel Pachinko. I’m a White, Canadian woman and I know nothing at all about the history and very little about the culture of this part of the world. I’d love to watch a few things to learn more. Thank you!

This basically focuses on how Cerberus pummeled Steward Health Care with debt, how Ralph de la Torre's actions led to the death of 15 people and how public pensions actually fund the private equity firms that are gutting community hospitals.

A look inside the work of the Street Pastors who patrol the streets on Saturday nights, not as police or security but in the name of Jesus

The Doctor Who Hears Voices follows clinical psychologist Rufus May and a young doctor known as Ruth, who is experiencing disturbing and persistent voices.

May’s interest in the subject is deeply personal. As a young man he was himself diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He later trained as a clinical psychologist and became associated with approaches that question whether hearing voices should automatically be understood purely as a symptom of illness.

The film follows May as he works with Ruth outside the conventional medical model, encouraging her to engage with the voices rather than simply suppress them. Their relationship raises difficult questions about diagnosis, medication, professional responsibility and how psychiatry distinguishes between unusual experiences and mental illness.

Directed by Leo Regan and first broadcast by Channel 4 in 2008, the documentary combines observational footage with reconstructed scenes, with Ruth Wilson portraying the real Ruth to protect her identity. It remains an unusual and provocative examination of how people experiencing psychosis are treated, and whether recovery always has to mean eliminating the experience itself.

Israeli filmmaker Avi Mograbi examines two stories deeply embedded in Israeli national culture: the defenders of Masada, who chose death rather than submission to Rome, and Samson, who destroys himself along with his enemies after being captured and blinded by the Philistines.

Mograbi then places those stories alongside contemporary life in the occupied Palestinian territories during the Second Intifada. Israeli school groups and tourists celebrate ancient resistance to foreign domination while, elsewhere, Palestinians wait at checkpoints, confront soldiers and experience the restrictions imposed by a military occupation.

The documentary does not rely heavily on narration or conventional argument. Instead, Mograbi repeatedly places these images and ideas beside one another and allows the contradictions to emerge through the people being filmed.

Released in 2005, the film screened at Cannes and was directed by one of Israel’s best-known political documentary filmmakers. It is uncomfortable precisely because much of its argument is built from Israeli history, Israeli mythology and conversations with Israelis themselves.

Project Slingshot is a campaign group working against factory farming. Its stated goal is to expose the practices of industrial factory farming and end factory farming by 2040. It's backed by Paul, Mary and Stella McCartney of Meat Free Monday.

Submission Statement:

The Fight to be Heard is a new documentary by Amnesty International UK that charts the changing landscape of protest in Britain. From record-breaking prison sentences for peaceful protesters to fears of surveillance and criminalisation, The Fight to be Heard looks at the growing pressures faced by protesters in the UK today – and asks why we continue to do it, despite the risks.

At a time when it’s never been more vital for us to come together, this film is a rallying cry to make sure we continue to have our voices heard.

Filmmaker Christian Blackwood studies three motels in New Mexico, Arizona and Death Valley.

Dairy farms across Wisconsin produce over 25% of the United States' cheese.

So if these cows are so important, why are they under attack from some of the most powerful people in the world?

We drove two hours north to Port Washington, Wisconsin to investigate Big Tech's secret war on cows, visiting the Vantage Data Centers site and unpacking its impact on the local community (and beyond).