Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Children who endured the October 7 attacks open up with raw honesty about moments that changed their lives forever. They recall armed men breaking into their homes, terrifying hours in hiding, the nightmare of captivity, and the unbearable loss of parents torn from them in an instant. Guided by activist Montana Tucker, their stories weave together fragments of fear, grief, and resilience, showing not only what was stolen but also the strength it takes to keep going. Without sensationalism, their voices confront viewers with the reality of trauma through the eyes of the youngest survivors, leaving a lasting reminder of both human cruelty and human courage.

A searing and courageous feature-length documentary delves into one of the most painful and under examined chapters in collegiate athletics history. Through raw, emotional interviews with former student-athletes—including wrestlers and other victims—it confronts the decades of abuse inflicted by Dr. Richard Strauss at Ohio State University, and the systemic failures that allowed him to prey on vulnerable young men across nearly two decades.
The film doesn’t just recount trauma; it exposes the deep institutional complicity and silencing, featuring voices demanding truth, accountability, and justice.

In the final three episodes, the stakes couldn’t be higher. A builder’s life takes a sudden turn after a catastrophic fall through a glass window leaves his hand’s main joint brutally severed. The family of a young assault victim fights to come to terms with the deep personality changes caused by a traumatic brain injury. Meanwhile, a team of orthopedic surgeons faces one of the most delicate pelvis operations imaginable, where a single wrong move could mean irreversible nerve damage. Raw emotion, split-second decisions, and life-altering consequences unfold before your eyes.

After returning from Afghanistan with severe depression and PTSD, Harry Turner went to the Peruvian Amazon to end his life. There, he met conservationist and scientist Samantha Zwicker, and through their work together raising orphaned wildlife he is finding a reason to live.
'Wildcat' takes viewers to the remote Las Piedras River to witness how two orphaned ocelots and the solitude of the rainforest help a young man and young woman with traumatic pasts. This feature-length documentary is an intimate, character-driven story about the impact of wild places on us - and our impact on them.

Trauma is the invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds. Dr. Maté gives us a new vision: a trauma-informed society in which parents, teachers, physicians, policy-makers and legal personnel are not concerned with fixing behaviors, making diagnoses, suppressing symptoms and judging, but seek instead to understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul.
The interconnected epidemics of anxiety, chronic illness and substance abuse are, according to Dr Gabor Maté, normal. But not in the way you might think. One in five Americans are diagnosed with mental illness in any given year. Suicide is the second most common cause of death in the US for youth aged 15-24, and kills over 700,000 people a year globally and 48,300 in the USA . Drug overdose kills 81,000 in the USA annually. The autoimmunity epidemic affects 24 million people in the USA. What is going on?
“So much of what we call abnormality in this culture is actually normal responses to an abnormal culture. The abnormality does not reside in the pathology of individuals, but in the very culture that drives people into suffering and dysfunction.” — Gabor Maté

Six midwestern men all survivors of childhood sexual assault at the hands of Catholic priests and clergy come together to direct a drama therapy-inspired experiment designed to collectively work through their trauma. As part of a radically collaborative filmmaking process, they create fictional scenes based on memories, dreams and experiences, meant to explore the church rituals, culture and hierarchies that enabled silence around their abuse. In the face of a failed legal system, we watch these men reclaim the spaces that allowed their assault, revealing the possibility for catharsis and redemption through a new-found fraternity.