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Best Documentary Movies With Your Parents From The 2010S Based On A True Story

These documentary picks were hand-selected for watching with your parents, not pulled from a popularity chart. Every pick is chosen for emotional and situational fit, not streaming popularity or critic scores.

The best documentary movies with your parents from the 2010s based on a true story. Includes Cobain: Montage of Heck, Amy, Going Clear: Scientology and the P...

Watching a film with your parents is one of those things that's harder to arrange than it should be, and more worthwhile than you expect when it actually happens.

In retrospect, the 2010s were a decade of quiet excellence - films doing serious work without demanding credit for it.

The best documentaries don't just inform - they change how you see something you thought you already understood.

Cobain: Montage of Heck movie poster
1
2015 · ★★★½☆ 7.6/10

Hailed as one of the most innovative and intimate documentaries of all time, experience Kurt Cobain like never before in the only ever fully authorized portrait of the famed music icon. Academy Award nominated filmmaker Brett Morgen expertly blends Cobain's personal archive of art, music, never seen before movies, animation and revelatory interviews from his family and closest friends.

Amy movie poster
2
2015 · ★★★½☆ 7.6/10

A documentary on the life of Amy Winehouse, the immensely talented yet doomed songstress. We see her from her teen years, where she already showed her singing abilities, to her finding success and then her downward spiral into alcoholism and drugs.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief movie poster
3
2015 · ★★★½☆ 7.6/10

GOING CLEAR intimately profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology, shining a light on how they attract true believers and the things they do in the name of religion.

Exit Through the Gift Shop movie poster
4
2010 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond movie poster
5
2017 · ★★★½☆ 7.5/10

Offbeat documentarian Chris Smith provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Jim Carrey adopted the persona of idiosyncratic comedian Andy Kaufman on the set of Man on the Moon.

The documentaries that stay with you are the ones that refuse to simplify. They show you the mess of a real situation and trust you to sit with it.

Gaga: Five Foot Two movie poster
6
2017 · ★★★½☆ 7.4/10

Follow pop provocateur Lady Gaga as she releases a new album, preps for her Super Bowl halftime show, and confronts physical and emotional struggles.

The Imposter movie poster
7
2012 · ★★★½☆ 7.3/10

In 1994, a 13-year-old boy disappeared without a trace from his home in San Antonio, Texas. Three-and-a-half years later, he is found alive in a village in southern Spain with a horrifying story of kidnap and torture. His family is overjoyed to bring him home. But all is not quite as it seems.

Three Identical Strangers movie poster
8
2018 · ★★★½☆ 7.3/10

New York, 1980. Three complete strangers accidentally discover that they're identical triplets, separated at birth. The 19-year-olds' joyous reunion catapults them to international fame, but also unlocks an extraordinary and disturbing secret that goes beyond their own lives - and could transform our understanding of human nature forever.

Where to Invade Next movie poster
9
2015 · ★★★½☆ 7.2/10

To understand firsthand what the United States of America can learn from other nations, Michael Moore playfully "invades" some to see what they have to offer.

American Factory movie poster
10
2019 · ★★★½☆ 7.2/10

In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

True stories carry a different weight. Knowing it happened - knowing real people made these choices - changes how you watch.

A great documentary is one you find yourself thinking about weeks later. These qualify.

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