11 Best Nature Documentaries on Netflix, Hulu, and More (2025) Leave a comment
The perfect nature documentaries are the last word journey, minus the medicine. I am speaking concerning the form of movies that make you’re feeling such as you’re sweating within the savanna, freezing within the Arctic, or staring into the eyes of a predator. The perfect documentaries do not feed you fairly footage and pleased endings—they provide the deep, darkish corners of the wild, the place survival is an detached battle. Those that make you query all the pieces you thought you knew concerning the circle of life and what it means to be actually alive.
This is a information to the most effective of the most effective nature documentaries. These prime picks are a reminder that the planet is not a backdrop for our story, however a dwelling, respiration entity that strikes ahead whether or not we select to concentrate or not.
Want one thing to observe your film on? Take a look at our guides to the Finest Streaming Units, Finest TVs, and Finest Soundbars.
Energy up with limitless entry to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting that is too essential to disregard for simply $2.50 $1 per 30 days for 1 yr. Consists of limitless digital entry and unique subscriber-only content material. Subscribe In the present day.
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
To name Koyaanisqatsi a nature documentary may really feel like a stretch, however no different nonfiction movie presents a extra clear-eyed critique of the connection between human beings, the programs we have created, and the setting that sustains us. The title is a Hopi phrase that interprets to “life in chaos,” and it just about tells you what is inside: lengthy, attractive photographs of the pure world juxtaposed with quick, hypnotic photographs of people going about their every day grind. We see individuals commuting via metropolis facilities, manufacturing unit employees assembling automobiles, suburban mothers grocery purchasing, heavy machines mining minerals, and fighter planes blowing stuff up. Issues speed up into time-lapse and crawl into sluggish movement. All of that is accompanied by a throbbing, repetitive, and mind-blanking rating by Philip Glass that is heavy on brass, synthesizers, and basso profundo chanting. Perhaps most notable is the truth that Koyaanisqatsi got here out in 1982, and but its unstated observations about how we exploit the setting within the title of commerce and progress are much more prescient at the moment. —Michael Calore
Baraka (1992)
This movie might be thought of a religious sequel to Koyaanisqatsi. Baraka‘s director, Ron Fricke, was the cinematographer on Koyaanisqatsi, and each movies use an identical assemble—plenty of sluggish movement and time-lapse photographs of life on Earth, a nonnarrative construction freed from dialog, and a memorable rating—to touch upon the steadiness between people, nature, and the world economic system. It is a grim movie at instances, exhibiting stark footage of commercial rampage and the way society’s most weak residents battle, and infrequently fail, to fulfill their fundamental wants. However curiously, it is also uplifting when taken as a complete. The movie visits dozens of sacred cultural and religious websites all over the world, exhibiting songs, dances, and spiritual ceremonies that may certainly comprise some new experiences for nearly everybody who watches. There are dazzling photographs of places and animals that I’ve by no means seen in every other documentary. Baraka is a crash course on this planet’s cultural and ecological variety that will provide you with a way of simply how huge our planet is, and simply how small it may really feel. —Michael Calore
March of the Penguins (2005)
March of the Penguins casts emperor penguins as romantic monogamists (they’re not), devoted dad and mom (form of), and conquerors of a frozen hellscape (undoubtedly). The reality is colder than the Antarctic tundra. Survival right here is brutal and delightful. Shot over a yr across the French base of Dumont d’Urville in Adélie Land, the blockbuster movie follows hundreds of penguins on their annual migration to breed, the place dad and mom tag-team a death-defying relay of egg warming and meals foraging. By no means has waddling appeared so noble. Did I point out it is narrated by Morgan Freeman?
Grizzly Man (2005)
Grizzly Man is just not a lot a wildlife documentary as it’s a tragic love story between humanity and the wilderness. Timothy Treadwell, an newbie environmentalist, spent 13 summers filming himself amongst Alaskan grizzly bears, naming them, petting them, typically hand-feeding them, till considered one of them killed him and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, in 2003. Werner Herzog stitches collectively Treadwell’s 100-plus hours of footage along with his sobering narration. Treadwell believed the wild might love him again; Herzog sees solely how small we’re in its jaws.
Planet Earth I-III (2006-2023)
It looks like everybody has seen Planet Earth, however we’d be remiss to not embrace this TV sequence in our listing of favorites. I rewatch it yearly. From its inception in 2006, when it was a giant deal that it was shot in excessive definition, to the usage of drones and deep-sea submersibles whereas filming Planet Earth III in 2023, Planet Earth has beautiful and intimate footage and, in fact, the long-lasting narrator Sir David Attenborough.
