If, like me, you’re a big documentary fan, you’re probably wondering what new docs Netflix will be broadcasting in the next few months.
Our list of the best Netflix documentaries is full of true crime, biographies and recounting of harrowing mysteries, and the list could get a lot bigger because Netflix has some fantastic-looking series and movies coming over the summer.
To give you something to get excited about, I’ve looked around at what Netflix has coming up over the summer (roughly until the end of June) to give you a glimpse into some of the gripping docs it’s releasing. There’s certainly a few that I’m interested in, and I’ve cut the full list down from 15 to 10 to make it bite-sized.
Many of these documentary movies are coming as part of one season, which Netflix has branded Trainwreck. This series, which sees a new movie a week for two months, dives into widely-reported headline stories to get the full scoop. However there are more docs that I’ve included.
At the end of the article there’s also an honorable mentions list, for docs which don’t have a confirmed release date beyond ‘2025’ but are also worth paying attention to.
If any of these documentaries appeal to you, then scroll to the bottom of the entry and you’ll find a link to Netflix’s landing page for it. Here you can click ‘Remind Me’ and Netflix will notify you when the doc is out, in case you forget.
Upcoming Netflix documentaries
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders: Monday, May 26
I’m starting this list with a true crime docuseries but don’t worry, they’re not all this close to Netflix’s wheelhouse.
Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders is a three-parter which explores a 40-year-old tragedy from Chicago.
In 1982, seven people died after consuming over-the-counter pain relief pill Tylenol, and it quickly emerged that some of the capsules had been laced with poisonous chemical cyanide. Cue a massive criminal investigation as people tried to work out who was behind the poisoning and why they did it.
Cold Case will fill us all in on the case and it includes testimonies and evidence that hasn’t been included in retellings of the case before.
F1: The Academy: Wednesday, May 28
For years Netflix has been releasing Drive to Survive which is credited with massively popularizing Formula 1, and its new docuseries F1: The Academy takes an interesting spin on it.
This series focuses on 15 women in the F1 Academy, a training ground for future Formula 1 racers. They’ll have to work hard to prove themselves as academy leader Susie Wolff tries to expand the representation of women in F1.
So F1: The Academy takes all the racing drama of Drive to Survive but instils it with an extra layer, using it to explore the role and presence (or lack thereof) of women in motor sports.
The Astroworld Tragedy: Tuesday, June 10
The first of the Trainwreck documentary movies looks at a recent tragedy of the Astroworld Festival crowd crush from 2021. This took place during a Travis Scott set at the festival which he himself created, which saw crowd surges result in a series of deaths.
The Astroworld Tragedy will speak to survivors and first responders to understand what happened and, more importantly, why it transpired.
I won’t go into too much more detail for fear of spoiling the documentary itself but with several similar events having happened over the last decade, it’s a sobering reminder of how risky mass events can be.
With later Trainwreck films being a little more lighthearted (for the most part), this will be an affecting start to the season.
Cocaine Air: Smugglers at 30,000ft: Wednesday, June 11
While “Cocaine Air” sounds like an unreliable but quick airline, it’s actually a new documentary series from Netflix about drug dealers.
The story centers around the 2013 arrest of four French people at an airport in the Dominican Republic who had in their possession 700kg of cocaine. According to a dollars-per-gram chart I found from the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, that would be worth well over $100 million at the time.
However, none of these prospective smugglers admits to knowing anything about the coke and none of them fit the bill as drug traffickers. So what’s really going on?
We’ll have to watch the series to find out.
Mayor of Mayhem: Tuesday, June 17
In the 2020s, scandalous politicians is an everyday thing, but Mayor of Mayhem looks at a story that, in 2010 at least, was a rare occurrence.
Mayor of Mayhem looks at the politician Rob Ford who in 2010 was voted as mayor of Toronto. An unexpected and quickly-dismissed candidate, Ford surprised everyone by winning the covetous position.
What surprised people more was the four years of back-to-back controversies, many of which Ford himself admitted to, which saw a power coup from the city council when he refused to resign.
It’s a story that could easily rest on the laurels of its wild subject and add no further reading but director Shianne Brown also worked on Erased: WW2’s Heroes of Color and Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution so I’ve high hopes for where it could go.
Poop Cruise: Tuesday, June 24
This documentary sounds pretty disgusting, for reasons you can probably fathom from the name itself, but we’re all going to have to take the plunge.
In 2013 a ship called the Carnival Sunrise set sail on a routine four-day trip from Texas to Cozumel which turned ugly after a fire in an engine room caused the boat to lose power and propulsion.
One of the systems to lose power was toilet flushes so as well as all the issues with rescuing the boat and its inhabitants, raw sewage began backing up into the decks.
Get all the sordid details when the latest Trainwreck installment arrives.
The Cult of American Apparel: Tuesday, July 1
You don’t hear much from American Apparel any more, but for a while it was one of the hottest clothing brands around.
In The Cult of American Apparel, Netflix wants to tell the rise and fall of this fashion icon (which is, I should point out, still around and very popular).
The doc will look at how the brand got big but how its business was rife with mismanagement, hampered by accusations of sexual harassment and a toxic workplace.
The sordid history of American Apparel is well documented on the company’s Wikipedia page, amongst other places, but hopefully Netflix will find an interesting way to present it.
Apocalypse in the Tropics: Monday, July 14
Apocalypse in the Tropics has already done the film festival rounds (and I’m excited to see it at a fest in a few weeks) and while it wasn’t made by Netflix, it’s due to be released exclusively on it in July.
In Apocalypse in the Tropics we’ll travel to Brazil to understand the rise of Evangelical Christians amongst the political class of the country.
Everyone from televangelists to presidents to infamous figureheads get interviewed in this 2-hour movie which also explores the key beliefs and forecasts of Evangelicals.
The movie comes from the director of another Netflix doc The Edge of Democracy which was nominated for an Oscar in 2020 so it’s bound to be good, and it looks sure to hit some harder topics than most of the other entries on this list.
P.I. Moms: Tuesday, July 29
More so than other Trainwreck docs, P.I. Moms seems to really justify the title as it tells the story of a real trainwreck.
This tells the story that’s been covered everywhere, from a This American Life episode to Dr. Phil, though I’d somehow missed it. It’s about a San Francisco detective agency which became successful through the 2000s due to its hiring of a load of “soccer moms” as they’re referred to (though this description downplays that at least one was a former cop).
This kind of individual proves incredibly apt for the kind of private investigations they needed to carry out, but when a Lifetime Channel documentary was commissioned to explore the agency, it all went wrong. Investigations start going bizarrely wrong and allegations of a drug ring within the agency abound.
Storm Area 51: Tuesday, July 29
This is my most anticipated doc based on how fixated I was for a while on the whole “storm Area 51” phenomena, and it’s the last of the Trainwreck stories.
Storm Area 51 is about the infamous Facebook event from 2019 which jokingly invited people to “storm Area 51” to find what was hidden there as “they can’t stop all of us”. Quickly nearly four million people RSVP’d for the event which threatened to turn the joke into reality, provoking a response from various government and military bodies who all struggle to contend with the viral post.
Stories that delve into the nuances and wildness of internet culture are always fascinating and Netflix has a few now, and I’m hoping Storm Area 51 doesn’t just play this for laughs but goes a real introspective look at the intersection between internet culture and the real myths we tell ourselves.
This isn’t the first documentary to examine the “storm Area 51” event and Netflix has now had six years in order to really get to grips with what took place. It comes from the director of Surviving Black Hawk Down which was pretty good so I have high hopes.
Honorable mentions: upcoming docs with no release date
I wanted this list to include a few upcoming documentaries that I eventually axed for one reason: they don’t have a confirmed release date on Netflix. But they’re still worth knowing about and
- Titan: The Oceangate Disaster: a documentary about the Titan submersible implosion that, for a few weeks in 2023, everyone was talking about.
- EDDIE: a biographical documentary about legendary actor Eddie Murphy.
- The Perfect Neighbor: a conflict between two Floridian neighbors turns bloody in this true crime doc that’s currently scheduled for film festivals.
- Katrina: Come Hell and High Water: Spike Lee produced this three-part docuseries which comes at the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans. It’s slated for an August release.