Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

It's a natural history epic. It's a compelling detective story. It's a scientific adventure at its best. It took Dr Fred Urquhart almost 40 years to discover the monarch butterflies' secret hideaway and prove the most incredible migration on Earth. Following the year-long annual migration cycle of the butterflies, the award-winning production team filmed hundreds of millions of monarchs in their remote overwintering sanctuaries in Mexico in 2011 and again in 2012 and also along their migratory routes from Canada, across the U.S. and into Mexico. The film immerses you in the astounding migration experience as two generations of the butterflies migrate north and then a Super Generation miraculously finds its way from Canada to a few isolated mountaintops in Mexico.

Deep beneath the Indian Ocean, a team of explorers embarks on a bold scientific mission to capture one of nature’s rarest survivors — the coelacanth, a fish unchanged for 400 million years. Narrated by David Attenborough, the film follows NHK’s deep-sea crew aboard the OceanX vessel as they attempt the world’s first 72-hour observation of this living fossil. Using cutting-edge submersibles, they descend into an ancient realm where time itself seems frozen.
As the cameras reveal the coelacanth’s slow, graceful movements, scientists uncover vital clues about evolution’s greatest leap — the moment life crawled from sea to land. Blending adventure, technology, and breathtaking natural history, this deep-ocean odyssey illuminates how a single fish still holds the key to understanding our own beginnings.

This documentary celebrates the life of John Candy, a comedy legend whose warmth and humor defined a generation and who died of a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 43. Through rare footage and honest interviews with family, friends, and fellow stars, it reveals the man behind the laughter — talented, humble, and deeply human. From his early days in television to his rise as one of Hollywood’s most beloved comedic actors, his story shows how joy and vulnerability shaped a career that continues to inspire.
With reflections from Bill Murray, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, and Dan Aykroyd, the film captures Candy’s lasting legacy as both a comic genius and a kind soul whose influence still endures decades after his passing.

In the last four episodes, Eugene Levy’s journey turns into a celebration of contrast and courage. In the Maldives, he tries to find his sea legs at a luxurious private island resort that promises anything, anytime, anywhere. In South Africa, he experiences a powerful encounter with an elephant that changes the way he sees connection and empathy. In Portugal, he delights in rich Iberian cuisine, uncovering the soul of local traditions. Finally, in Tokyo, he steps into the ring as a sumo referee, embracing the balance between discipline, culture, and humor in a city bursting with life.

From ephemeral home video clips to voice messages never before heard, this film weaves together the intimate, fragile, and incandescent life of a musician who defied convention—and whose flame was extinguished far too soon. We are drawn into a world where every whispered lyric, every undone recording, and every memory shared by those who loved him becomes a portal. We hear his own voice recounting his doubts. We see raw behind-the-scenes moments, fragile family relationships, and the creative tensions that accompany genius.
Through interviews with his mother, former lovers, bandmates, and collaborators, the story casts a luminous, unsettling light on the weight of legacy, the burden of expectations, and the search for identity in the shadow of a father whose name he both carried and sought to transcend. This is not just a chronicle of dates and albums—but a pulse, an echo, a lament and a celebration. It asks: when someone leaves too early, how do we piece together what remains? And what does it mean to live forever through music?

In the heart of southern France, the Mandrin Cave has drawn archaeologists for over three decades, its soils preserving an extraordinary archive of human life stretching back tens of thousands of years. Within its layers lie traces of fire, tools, and bones that tell the story of survival in a harsh prehistoric world. In 2015, the remarkable discovery of a Neanderthal individual—nicknamed Thorin—revealed that these ancient humans once lived side by side with the first Homo sapiens to arrive in the region.
Following an international team of scientists, the investigation uncovers fragile relics of the Palaeolithic era that are rewriting our understanding of how two human species encountered one another. With every excavation, new details emerge about resilience, adaptation, and coexistence, offering a powerful re-examination of what it meant to be human 50,000 years ago. This is not only the story of the Neanderthals’ fate, but also of the deep roots of our own identity.