India's Most Powerful Documentaries To Watch

For most of its history, Indian cinema has lived in the shadow of spectacle — Bollywood musicals, the big stars, the industry that churns out more films a year than anywhere else.

But somewhere on the fringes, far from the glitter of Bollywood, non-fiction filmmakers are quietly working with scraps and an almost non-existent funding to bring us stories from all over the country. Indian documentaries — once relegated to niche screenings and academic circles — are now storming international festivals, Oscars in tow, reshaping how the world sees us and how we see ourselves.

From the gentle intimacy of The Elephant Whisperers to the unsettling truths of House of Secrets, from political chronicles to environmental fables, Indian nonfiction isn’t just one thing. It’s sprawling, contradictory, chaotic — much like India itself. In these, India isn’t flattened into cliches, but are torn wide open. They dig. They bruise. They move.

They remind us that truth, when told with craft, can be just as cinematic as fiction.

Indian Documentaries

Here are some of the most remarkable documentaries to come out of India in recent years.

An Insignificant Man (2016)

Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla’s An Insignificant Man captures the electric birth of the Aam Aadmi Party, following Arvind Kejriwal from activist to politician. The film unfolds like a political thriller, with all the chaos and suspense of a heist movie. Watching Kejriwal wrestle with ideals and power is both exhilarating and, in hindsight, oddly melancholic — a reminder that revolutions age, and so do revolutionaries.

Writing With Fire (2021)

This Oscar-nominated gem spotlights Khabar Lahariya, India’s only women-led Dalit newsroom. These women report on caste-violence, land grabs, and corruption – often at personal risk. The genius of Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh lies in how they frame journalism not as heroics, but as persistence. You really feel the weight of journalism in a country where truth-telling is often dangerous.

While We Watched (2022)

Vinay Shukla returns with a stark portrait of Ravish Kumar, one of India’s last voices of independent news. Although Ravish, the last voice of prime-time journalism, is at the centre of the film, the documentary is largely about the death of trust in these institutions and the loneliness of standing against the tide. The newsroom scenes feel like horror.

All That Breathes (2022)

Set in Delhi’s smog-choked skies, Shaunak Sen’s film follows two brothers who rescue injured black kites. On the surface it’s about birds; underneath, it’s about survival, faith, and the fragile ties between humans and nature in a city collapsing under its own weight. By focusing on birds falling out of the sky, Sen says everything about the humans who made that sky unlivable.

The Elephant Whisperers (2022)

A Tamil couple caring for an orphaned elephant might sound like the makings of a fable, and in a way, it is. But Kartiki Gonsalves’s Oscar-winning short is grounded in a tender reality — of community, devotion, and the possibility of harmony between man and animal. It’s as much about love as it is about conservation.

The Hunt For Veerappan (2023)

Netflix turned the decades-long manhunt for the sandalwood smuggler into a propulsive four-part series. What is shown here is the portrait of a man who became myth, and the state machinery that often looked as lawless as the outlaw it pursued.

House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths (2021)

Few cases have unsettled India like the Burari tragedy — 11 members of one family found dead in eerie, ritualistic fashion. This docuseries doesn’t sensationalise; it unpacks the web of faith, mental health, and blind obedience that led there. Chilling because it hits so close to home.

Born Into Brothels (2004)

Set in Kolkata’s red-light district, this Oscar-winning film hands cameras to the children of sex workers. What they capture is heartbreaking and breathtaking in equal measure. It’s one of the rare films that doesn’t just observe poverty; it lets its subjects speak, frame by frame.

Bad Boy Billionaires: India (2020)

This Netflix series profiles Mallya, Modi, Roy, and Raju — men who embodied the glitz of India’s boom years, then fell spectacularly. What makes the series work isn’t schadenfreude, but the slow recognition that their greed was systemic, and their downfall only the tip of a rotten iceberg.