Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Fifty years ago there were close to half-a-million lions in Africa. Today there are around 20,000. To make matters worse, lions, unlike elephants, which are far more numerous, have virtually no protection under government mandate or through international accords. This is the jumping-off point for a disturbing, well-researched and beautifully made cri de coeur from husband and wife team Dereck and Beverly Joubert, award-winning filmmakers from Botswana who have been Explorers-in-Residence at National Geographic for more than four years. Pointing to poaching as a primary threat while noting the lion's pride of place on the list for eco-tourists-an industry that brings in 200 billion dollars per year worldwide-the Jouberts build a solid case for both the moral duty we have to protect lions (as well as other threatened "big cats," tigers among them) and the economic sense such protection would make. And when one takes into account the fact that big cats are at the very top of the food chain-and that their elimination would wreak havoc on all species below them, causing a complete ecosystem collapse-the need takes on a supreme urgency.

Citizenfour received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2015 Oscars. The film was directed by Laura Poitras concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal." In January 2013, Laura Poitras received an encrypted e-mail from a stranger who called himself Citizen Four. In it, he offered her inside information about illegal wiretapping practices of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Poitras had already been working for several years on a film about monitoring programs in the US, the result of the September 11 attacks. In June 2013, accompanied by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill, she went to Hong Kong with her camera for the first meeting with the stranger, who identified himself as Edward Snowden. Several other meetings followed. The recordings gained from the meetings form the basis of the film.

Follow actor William Shatner through interviews with the other actors who have portrayed starship Enterprise captains in five other incarnations of the Star Trek franchise. Shatner's subjects discuss their lives and careers before, during and after their tenure with Star Trek. With the use of conversations and archival footage, they explore the pressures, stigmas and sacrifices that accompanied their roles and their larger careers. During the process of the film and with help from the other Captains, Sir Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew, Scott Bakula and Chris Pine, Shatner overcomes his disdain and learns to embrace his best known character, Captain James T. Kirk.

This new feature-length biographical film tells the extraordinary and dramatic story of the planet's most famous living scientist, told for the first time in his own words and by those closest to him. Made with unique access to his private life, this is an intimate and moving journey into Stephen Hawking's past and present. Interviewees include Stephen Hawking's sister Mary, his ex-wife Jane, carers and students, as well as colleagues such as Roger Penrose, plus Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Jim Carrey, and Sir Richard Branson This inspirational portrait of an iconic figure relates Hawking's incredible personal journey from boyhood underachiever to scientific genius and multi-million-selling author. And it charts how he overcame being diagnosed with motor neurone disease - and being given just two years to live - to make amazing scientific discoveries and become a symbol of triumph over adversity. Born exactly 300 years after the death of Galileo, Hawking grew up in a family some regarded as eccentric. Always asking questions, he was nicknamed 'Einstein' at school. Hawking blossomed at Oxford, although he only spent an hour a day studying. He noticed that he was becoming clumsy and fell over for no apparent reason. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, but nevertheless started a family and embarked on his academic career, finding himself at the heart of a searing scientific debate about the origins of the universe. And as he lost the use of his body, Hawking had to find new ways to think. He went on to write the huge bestseller A Brief History of Time, and the film reveals the high and lows of his resulting fame and fortune.

Until World War II, Latino immigration to the United States was overwhelmingly Mexican-American. Now three new waves bring large-scale immigration from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. As the Puerto Rican government implements a historic overhaul over a million Puerto Ricans are encouraged to leave for the US mainland, to alleviate the economic pressure. A young Juanita Sanabria arrives in New York, works hard in the garment district, but encounters hostility and discrimination. Ethnic tensions explode in youth gang warfare depicted in films like West Side Story, etching the stereotype of the knife wielding Puerto Rican in the American consciousness.

Comedian Ben Miller returns to his roots as a physicist to try to answer a deceptively simple question: what is one degree of temperature? His quest takes him to the frontiers of current science as he meets researchers working on the hottest and coldest temperatures in the universe, and to a lab where he experiences some of the strangest effects of quantum physics - a place where super-cooled liquids simply pass through solid glass. Plus, Ben installs his very own Met office weather station at home. Ben's investigations in this personal and passionate film highlight the importance of measurement and accuracy in the 21st century.