Documentary films

Sir David Attenborough is TV's longest-running nature host with credits than span 70 years. A new BBC America special follows his path, from a nature-obsessed kid to a world-renowned broadcaster.

Deidre Fishel's new PBS documentary Women in Blue, on the Independent Lens series, focuses on four women who worked for the Minneapolis Police Department. It begins 3 years ago and ends with the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.

The documentarian, who died Jan. 7, spent decades following the lives of a group of British citizens, updating their stories with a new episode every seven years. Originally broadcast in 2013.

Kirsten Johnson's new Netflix documentary, Dick Johnson Is Dead, tells the story of moving her dad out of his home in Seattle and into her apartment in New York. It also enacts her father's death from imagined accidents, like getting hit in the head by a falling air conditioner or tripping on a crack in the sidewalk.

Johnson has worked as a cinematographer for over 50 documentaries, and has directed seven movies, including Cameraperson and the short film The Above. She says her father laughed when she pitched the idea to him.

Freedom Summer, now streaming on PBS, focuses on the 1964 movement to get Black people to vote in Mississippi. Director Stanley Nelson and organizer Charles Cobb discussed the film in 2014.

Filmmaker Yoruba Richen's documentary, The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, tells the story of the manual that helped African-Americans find safe places to stay, eat, shop and do business on the road.

Sandi Tan was 19 when she wrote and starred in a film directed by her 40-year-old mentor. Then her mentor disappeared with the film footage. Twenty years later, Tan chronicles the mystery in Shirkers.

Jonathan Olshefski spent 10 years filming Christopher Rainey and his family, who run a recording studio in a working-class African-American section of North Philadelphia. Then their daughter was shot.

The new documentary about Cary Grant is a fascinating look at the contrast between Grant's personal unhappiness, and onscreen persona.

A new documentary focuses on a group of emergency volunteers in Syria's largest city known as the White Helmets. Critic David Edelstein says Last Men In Aleppo is a powerful and affecting work.