Hey everyone! I’m currently starting my bachelor's thesis on contemporary Chinese documentary cinema.

I recently watched Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (2015) and was completely blown away by its visual language. I’m looking to expand my research with other films, ideally from independent, lesser-known, or underground filmmakers covering themes like industrialization, labor, social transformation, or environmental impact in China.

Which essential Chinese documentaries or directors should I dive into next? Hidden /underrated directors are more than welcome !

r/China r/documentary r/film r/documentaryfilmmaking r/chinesefilms

This documentary contains original footage captured by Allied forces immediately following the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. These films were recorded to document the atrocities of the Nazi regime and to preserve them for future generations, ensuring that these crimes can never be denied.
Content Warning: This film contains extremely graphic, disturbing, and brutal historical footage of Holocaust atrocities. Please watch with caution and take care of your well-being.

https://youtu.be/h9_AUgE9128?is=yaWBvUNl76k4bs-4

Warriors. Wanderers. Poets. Gods. They ruled the frozen north long before anyone wrote their names down, shaped the cosmos out of a giant's corpse, chained a wolf they knew would eventually swallow the sun, and built an entire cosmology around the fact that it all ends. Not as a warning, just as a given.

That's the part that pulled me in the most while putting this together. Most pantheons hedge, an afterlife, a reward, some version of things working out. Norse mythology just doesn't. Valhalla isn't a finish line, it's a training camp for a battle everyone already knows they lose.

Mapped out the full lineage, the primal forces before creation, the Aesir and Vanir, the giants they're constantly at war with and related to, all the way through to Ragnarok itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stiOlhC4IR0

Curious how people here read the fatalism at the core of it, cultural realism from a hard environment, or something closer to an actual theology of doom?

Hey guys my boyfriend and I made a documentary about Covid’s effect of the Bristol rave scene. Check it out! https://youtu.be/a2UusKdu78M?si=CtsAXq5Mv1IVroXp

I have seen the following

• American Nightmare
• The Girl in the Picture
• The Influencer
• The Crash
• Sweet Bobby
• Abducted in Plain Sight
• Death of the Pastor’s Wife
• Unknown Number: The High School Catfish
• Evil Influencer
• Evil Genius

Just finished it and OMG, I’m SOBBING. Shirley, She is literally a devil.
Andrew and Zackery were absolutely precious, and my heart aches for the grandparents. They have hearts of gold. ❤️ I genuinely want to drive to California right now just to hug those angels.

This was such a beautifully made documentary—so engaging, emotional, and somehow heartwarmingly informative at the same time. The quality was AMAZING, and the whole thing had this nostalgic feel that took me back to an older time. I LOVVVVVEEEEEDDDDD it.

What really got me was how genuine everyone felt. The relatives, the friends, the people in their lives—they all seemed so REAL and genuinely present in each other’s lives. There was something so refreshing
and beautiful about that.

My heart feels warm and sad at the same time.
This documentary is definitely in my top 3. I genuinely don’t think I’ll ever forget this film.

So I watched a documentary last night that really freaked me out. It was abt a man from the future , he gets arrested for stealing food, and claims he is from the year 3036 where money doesn't exist..

Idk I'm going down the rabbit hole w this one.

Are We Living in a Simulation ?

My new short documentary explores one of the strangest questions about our reality.

🎬 I recently started OtterStu mysteries, history, legends & interesting theories.

I’m still at the beginning, so any feedback is really appreciated!
I hope you don`t mind me sharing it here . I don`t want to disturb the community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfpNB9kxPGI

In the summer of 1914, a single act of violence set off a chain reaction no government could stop.

This is Part 1 of our 72 Hours Before the World Changed Forever | The Great War (World War 1) series — the assassination, the alliances, and the ultimatum that pushed Europe to the edge.

This one's about Vipeholm, a hospital in Sweden that ran a sugar study on disabled patients from 1945 to 1955. Started as a legitimate vitamin trial, then in 1947 got switched to deliberately testing sugar instead, including a specially engineered sticky toffee designed to cling to teeth as long as possible, fed to patients between meals specifically because that's when it would do the most damage. Some patients went from healthy teeth to severe decay by the end.

What makes this one different from most of what I've covered is the science itself wasn't wrong or later disproven. It genuinely established the link between sugar frequency and cavities, and that research still shapes dental advice worldwide today. There's even a Swedish tradition, kids only getting candy once a week, that traces directly back to this study.

The scandal that actually blew up publicly at the time wasn't even about the patients though. It was about the sugar industry, who partly funded the study, allegedly delaying publication of the results for years once they realized how bad it would look for them. The ethics of experimenting on disabled people without consent didn't really get seriously discussed until decades later.

Tried to structure it so the twist lands around the middle instead of the ending, curious if that worked or if it undercuts the build up. Link's is here Full Video if anyone wants to check it out.

I remembered this video from a couple of years ago. I wanted to link to it because I think it explains why "Socialist" candidates are winning elections and why up until 2016 and 2020 when Bernie showed it was possible, but bowed out to the Democrat insiders namely Obama. My point was that most Baby Boomers like myself get their news from FOX on the right and MSNBC on the left where Socialist is a dirty word and under 50's get it from "Breaking Points" or similar Internet site. Here is a link to the documentary on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNTsTOcRO-k

13 Days of Fear (Cold War) — Part 2: The Brink

Beneath a naval blockade, a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear torpedo was seconds from firing. Three officers had to agree. Two said yes.
This is Part 2 of the Cuban Missile Crisis — the shootdown, the standoff, and the vote that almost went wrong.

🎬 Watch the full 13-day story on our channel.

Before the first pharaoh, before the first pyramid, before Egypt was even Egypt, someone was already here. His image is carved into temple walls that have stood for thousands of years. His name appears in the oldest sacred texts ever written. And according to ancient tradition, he didn't originate in Egypt at all, the story traces him back to a civilization the Greeks later called Atlantis, something people have spent thousands of years trying to prove ever existed.

The naming pattern is what pulled me into this one. Egypt worshipped him as the god of writing, wisdom, and judgment. Greece elevated him into Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice Greatest. Islamic scholarship identifies him with the prophet Idris. Hebrew tradition calls him Enoch, lifted to heaven before death could touch him. And that's just the names that made it into the documentary, the deeper I went, the more traditions I found carrying some version of the same figure under a different mask.

One being, buried under layers of religion and reinterpretation across the entire ancient world, all somehow describing the same knowledge and the same story.

His name was Thoth. And what he left behind has never fully been found.

Full documentary here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZM6vaDd-F8

Curious how many other names/traditions people here can point to that I might have missed, this one felt bigger than four the further I dug.

Hi everyone !!! I hope I m not disturbing the community with this Post .

I recently started OtterStu, a YouTube channel about mysteries, history, legends and interesting theories.

New documentary every week !

I’m still at the beginning, so any feedback is really appreciated!

Thank you very much !!

https://youtube.com/@otterstu?si=S2vyqZLuOO-rD98o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvejg6324hQ&feature=youtu.be

In 1945, American investigators uncovered evidence

of war crimes so extreme they made Nazi experiments

look small. Unit 731 was Japan's secret biological

warfare program — responsible for the deaths of

hundreds of thousands of civilians across China.

When the war ended, the men responsible were never

prosecuted. Instead, General MacArthur granted them

full immunity in exchange for their research data.

This documentary covers the history of Unit 731,

the cover-up, and the deal America made that allowed

war criminals to return to normal lives.

This documentary is an extremely fascinating piece on werewolves. The impact of werewolves is far beyond movies and Halloween. I think this documentary shows how superstitions and the natural world truly coincided. Here is the link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HCHZjU7Hi0w&list=PLYbocufkwRFCu67e6ra-w7E0Y7RGoF6Wu&index=67&pp=iAQB&ra=m

I definitely recommend this YouTube channel for hearing the primary sources of people living during different historical events. Since the primary sources are read during the videos, it’s good for an audible learning experience. The videos differ such as the oldest descriptions of the pyramids, or Tenochtitlan. Here is the link to the channel below: https://m.youtube.com/@VoicesofthePast/videos?ra=m

Hey everyone! I recently posted about the In Search of History documentaries. Here is a link to all the episodes on youtube: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYbocufkwRFCu67e6ra-w7E0Y7RGoF6Wu&ra=m

I hope you find one that piques your interest!

Can long-form history work when it is deliberately made for sleep?

I’ve been experimenting with a slightly unusual format and I’m curious what history viewers think of the idea itself.

The aim is to keep the history properly researched and worth listening to, but present it very differently from a normal documentary: slow narration, very dark visuals, no music, and only quiet fire and wind ambience.

The part I’m still trying to judge is where the balance should sit.

If you slow historical storytelling down enough to make it genuinely relaxing, does it start losing too much of what makes history engaging? Or can the subject matter still carry an hour-long episode without the usual fast editing, dramatic music and constant visual changes?

I’d especially be interested in what history viewers think about the pacing and whether the format still feels substantial rather than just background noise.

This is one of the episodes if anyone wants context for what I mean:

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCSFR9Oiner4ZRtPjp0rrHkA

I’m much more interested in opinions on the format than in getting clicks — I’m still figuring out where the line is between “history that happens to be relaxing” and “sleep content with some history in it.”