100 best documentaries of all time, according to critics Abby Monteil, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail 100 best documentaries of all time, according to critics At their best, documentaries shine a light on captivating, important true stories that would often go unnoticed otherwise. By doing so, the filmmakers can help spark greater conversations about political, historical, and social phenomena after viewers have seen them. To highlight the best of nonfiction filmmaking, Stacker set out to discover the 100 best documentaries ever released, according to film critics. In order to do so, the site compiled data on all feature-length documentaries with at least four critical reviews through the review aggregation website Metacritic. Stacker then ranked those 100 films according to their Metascores as of Jan. 25, 2021, with ties broken internally by Metacritic.