2025 was a great year for documentaries, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at the local theatre listings. At least in Toronto, where most of the POV team is based, first runs for documentaries are becoming about as rare as a four-leaf clover. Moreover, seeing a Canadian doc in a theatre might happen as infrequently as spotting Halley’s Comet. It’s a very concerning landscape for docs here, especially given the respectably doc-positive crowd we have in Canada’s largest city. Distributors these days seem pretty anemic on the documentary front even though audiences are showing up for them at festivals and at all the single-event-screenings happening in town—which is great that at least some people get to see them, but this practice isn’t sustainable.
At the same time, streamers are finally getting the memo again. Sure, consumers are over-subscribed and then have to navigate a lot of hot garbage to find quality docs. But for every Poop Cruise on Netflix, there’s a Cover-up. (Okay, maybe there’s a Cover-up for every five Poop Cruises.) And, in a way, POV’s list for the best docs of 2025 reflects the age of streaming. Only half the titles on our top ten list played in theatrical commercial release in Canada, and even then, the docs barely crack the double digits for theatrical dates when you add them together. Docs live best as discussion points with friends and colleagues, so maybe this list can inspire some holiday gatherings at home—or a theatre if you’re lucky.
This year, POV’s Marc Glassman and Pat Mullen offer a combined list for the best docs of 2025. – Pat Mullen
1. Come See Me in the Good Light (dir. Ryan White)
There’s a certain cynicism among film critics that says we’re supposed to be suspect of any film that moves us. But to take a line from the late Andrea Gibson, as they say in Come See Me in the Good Light, why write a poem that’s over somebody’s head, let alone their heart? Movies move us, and it’s simply wrong to devalue a work that deftly earns the catharsis it inspires. It takes genuine skill to nimbly craft a film that navigates such a spectrum of emotions as this doc does, guiding audiences from tears to laughter with a single cut. Moreover, there’s a beautiful union between subject and style in this intimate portrait directed by Ryan White as Gibson and partner Megan Falley invite audiences into their lives during their most vulnerable moments while Gibson undergoes treatment for terminal cancer. This is a film about what it means to savour every moment you have left. It wonderfully shares Gibson and Falley’s skill for finding poetry in the quotidian, while embracing the emotive quality of their work to create a film that makes us laugh and cry with equal measure. Come See Me in the Good Light starts with a dire prognosis, but does any film this year make you feel so alive? Read more about the film in our feature with White, Falley, and producers Jessica Hargrave and Tig Notaro. – PM
2. The Tale of Silyan (dir. Tamara Kotevska)
This poetic environmental fable finds a stirring connection between the beautiful storks of Macedonia and the hard struck farmers whose food waste fuels them. Director Tamara Kotevska (Honeyland) and cinematographer Jean Dakar strut in step with these birds while observing the human flow inspired by the worsening economic situation for farmers like Nikola, his wife Jana, and their neighbours. With a cluck-cluck here and a cluck-cluck there, The Tale of Silyan witnesses an intimate connection between the animals and the members of the working class, the film finds an effective metaphor in a folk tale of a boy who turned into a stork and desperately tried to regain his status with his family. Beautifully shot and full of great bird clucking, this doc demands the big screen! Read more in our interview with Kotevska and Dakar. – PM
3. Endless Cookie (dirs. Seth Scriver, Pete Scriver)
One of the most unusual films ever made in Canada, Endless Cookie is a strange hybrid, a truly engaging cross of animation, documentary, and storytelling that weaves its own unique spell. Made with genuine warmth and affection by half-brothers Seth and Pete Scriver, the film is utterly without pretension, but it does have scathing things to say about white Canadian racism towards Indigenous people while beautifully depicting the joys of having a large—and messy—family life. Although the Scrivers aren’t completely Indigenous, the siblings have a rough-hewn sensibility that mixes being small town hosers with Indigeneity into a mesmerizing outpouring of crude and occasional scatological humour. Adding to the attractiveness of Endless Cookie is it being an animation feature, with a bold and distinct style, which has increased the audience beyond documentary enthusiasts. Read more about the film in our interview with Seth and Pete. – Marc Glassman
4. Cover-up (dirs. Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus)
It’s wonderfully appropriate that the documentary world’s most decorated whistleblower, Laura Poitras (Citizenfour, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Risk), has made a film about the greatest living American journalist who has been exposing injustices in the United States since Watergate and the Vietnam War. Seymour “Sy” Hersh first rose to prominence in 1969 when his investigative skills exposed the previously hushed-up My Lai massacre where American soldiers killed hundreds of innocent Vietnamese villagers. He followed that up with solid reporting that showed the corrupt arrogance of power exhibited by the CIA in its surveillance of the pacifist student movement, the U.S.’s involvement in the overthrow of Allende’s legally elected Chilean regime and, via his work at the New York Times, the exposure of Nixon’s Watergate scandal. A brilliant writer and researcher, Hersh has continued exposing corruption and governmental malfeasance since that time. For the past 20 years, Poitras has been coaxing Hersh into participating in a documentary and he has proven to be a tough subject, who still doesn’t want to reveal his sources and methodology. With the aid of veteran producer Mark Obenhaus, Poitras has managed to make a hard-hitting incisive portrait of Hersh, a great American naysayer, who is still working diligently in his late eighties. –MG
5. Coexistence, My Ass! (dir. Amber Fares)
Amber Fares’ incisive collaboration with Noam Shuster Eliassi, Coexistence, My Ass is an engrossing depiction of the Iranian-Jewish stand-up comedian, who has taken on the Israeli establishment for a decade with her wit, intelligence, and great compassion. Initially a sincere advocate for peace in the Middle East who worked at the United Nations, Noam realized that her impassioned speeches for integration and pacifism were falling on deaf ears. It was only through her bitter, comic monologues that she was able to challenge public opinion. Successful as a political comedian in both the U.S. and Israel before COVID, she has fought to remain relevant and funny even after the Hamas attacks and Netanyahu’s over-the-top violent response. Noam Shuster Eliassi remains a controversial and truly engaging figure who is still fighting to have Palestinians and Israelis work together to embrace peace. Fares’ film couldn’t be more relevant today. – MG
6. Agatha’s Almanac (dir. Amalie Atkins)
A 90-year-old Manitoba woman invites us into her backyard for gardening tips, aged wisdom, and lots of duct tape in this sumptuously shot doc. Director Amalie Atkins and cinematographer Rhayne Vermette gorgeously capture Agatha Bock’s sun-kissed garden and lived-in home, as well as all the tape that holds it together. As Bock shares her tricks for staying young at heart and equally healthy in mind and body, the film provides a refreshingly old-school slice of generational wisdom. Some things are best done the old days, and duct tape truly holds the test of time. This film should too. Read more about Agatha’s Almanac in our interview with Atkins. – PM
7. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions (dir. Kahlil Joseph)
A long anticipated solo first feature by the immensely talented Kahlil Joseph, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions takes on the history and contemporary reality of Black people living in the United States. Inspired by the philosopher and radical thinker W.E.B. Du Bois’s Encyclopedia Africana, a seminal historical work completed nearly a hundred years after its inception by Henry Louis Gates and Anthony Appiah, Joseph’s film relishes in images ranging from the physically poetic figure of baseball great Willie Mays to the enthralling presence of the great Black nationalist Marcus Garvey. Far ranging in its approach, BLKNWS—a quirky acronym for Black News—embraces journalism, newspapers, and social media networks, attempting to recreate the past through YouTube videos, memes, paintings, and photography. Joseph’s film is an epic effort to come to terms with the brutal racism that begins with the slave trade and continues to this day. Using the dynamic sensibility that informed his videos with Beyoncé, Joseph’s BLKNWS is mesmerizing in form and content. – MG
8. While the Green Grass Grows: A Diary in Seven Parts (dir. Peter Mettler)
A road film that travels down nocturnal highways, churning waterfalls, rocky mountains, dank caves, languid rivers, and the bluest of oceans, Peter Mettler’s While the Green Grass Grows is a mass of delights and contradictions that is bound to impress and confound film viewers. At seven hours, his self-styled film diary in—naturally—seven parts will challenge audiences to engage in its daring content for a Wagnerian length. Those cinephiles who are up for the task will be rewarded with an engaging if digressive account of the filmmaker’s life-long quest for meaning while dealing with the demises of his parents and his own fight to remain alive. Read more about the film in our interview with Mettler. – MG
9 . You Had to Be There: How the Toronto Godspell ignited the comedy revolution, spread love & overalls, and created a community that changed the world (in a Canadian kind of way) (dir. Nick Davis)
The story of Toronto’s 1972 production of Godspell is the thing of legends. The film assembles all the surviving players to ask how this specific production let the gods’ lightning strike on the Royal Alexandra Theatre and birth the careers Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Jayne Eastwood, Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Dave Thomas, and Paul Shaffer, among others. As a documentary itself, it’s pretty brilliant as an oral history thanks to that chorus of talking heads, who tell some very funny yarns. But it’s also remarkable as a reconstruction of a landmark show that wasn’t believed to have been recorded—but all good things to those who wait until the ending. Read more about the film in our interviews with Davis and Garber and Shaffer. – PM
10. The Perfect Neighbor (dir. Geeta Gandbhir)
I somewhat feel bad for The Perfect Neighbor since it totally wowed me at Sundance as an astonishingly assembled found footage film. It reimagines the archive doc by drawing upon surveillance footage and body cams to tell the story of a Florida woman who shot her neighbour. It’s a bold indictment of the state’s “stand your ground laws.” But then Bill Morrison’s doubly impressive short doc Incident kind of one-upped it with an even denser collage from more sources. And then The Perfect Neighbor became an internet sensation when the tale of a “neighbourhood Karen” hit Netflix, and the film’s life after the festival circuit accentuated a blind spot when it comes to the obvious mental health issues of the perpetrator—who absolutely acted wrongly. (One could, however, argue the absence of that discussion amid the 9-1-1 calls actually includes the concern in the film by omission.) But if we’re praising the film for what it is, as opposed to what it’s not, it’s still an incendiary indictment of systemic failure. –PM
Pat’s honourable mentions:
Three Canadians: Ghosts of the Sea, Lilith Fair, Shamed
Three internationals: Afternoons of Solitude, Apocalypse in the Tropics, My Mom Jayne
Three films still seeking a home: The Eyes of Ghana, A Life Illuminated, Speak (and I’m saving Elvis for next year!)
Marc’s honourable mentions:
Monk in Pieces, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, The Alabama Solution, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Orwell: 2+2=5, Riefenstahl
Previous POV top 10s: best of 2024, best of 2023, best of 2022, best of 2021, and best of 2020.
The post The Best Documentaries of 2025: Come See Them, Hopefully in a Theatre appeared first on POV Magazine.