The 14 Best Documentaries You Can Watch On Hulu Right Now

Back in the day, it wasn't easy to see documentaries unless you lived in a major metropolitan area with an arthouse cinema, or they were of the Ken Burns variety on PBS during a pledge drive. How many major theater chains routinely make space for non-fiction films? But one of the main benefits of streaming is that there's suddenly room for so much content, and viewers have the opportunity to see not just the biggest franchise blockbusters, but lower-budget documentaries that otherwise might have been consigned to oblivion. 

If you look at the best documentary feature nominees even as recently as the early 2010s, there are maybe one or two that the average moviegoer would have seen (or even heard of), but little more than that. Over the past few years however, they're almost all available on streaming services. Hulu especially has developed a reputation for cultivating a strong lineup of documentaries, raising the profile of the genre and making it more accessible than ever before.

Have you ever wanted to go see a documentary, but only if you're guaranteed to leave apoplectic with rage? "Slay the Dragon" might just be the doc for you. Created during the unstable (well, more unstable than usual, anyway) years of the Trump administration, "Slay the Dragon" shines a light on the insidious and anti-democratic practice of gerrymandering, where districts are contorted into odd shapes that will allow an unscrupulous political party to dilute their opponents' voting power. 

In it, we discover how blatantly this practice has been abused in certain Republican-controlled states, consolidating their authority even when it doesn't necessarily match up with the majority of the voters in the region. But it also provides some source of hope as it highlights the efforts from local citizens' groups to ban gerrymandering, fighting against all odds to preserve democracy in a country where many would see it dismantled to preserve their power.

Just why are there so many donut shops in California owned by Cambodian immigrants? It might seem like a coincidence, but its actually the direct result of one man, Ted Ngoy, and his efforts to help out his fellow countrymen (as well as making a veritable donut empire on the West Coast.) He's called "The Donut King," and this is his story. After emigrating to the United States to flee the Khmer Rouge, Ngoy took a variety of jobs, including one at a donut shop. With hard work and sacrifice, he rose up the ranks, and eventually bought his own shop. 

One shop was followed by several others, and he was soon in a position to sponsor other Cambodian immigrants and lend them the capital to buy in, selling donuts under his umbrella. "The Donut King" operates partially as a biopic of Ted Ngoy, showing both the enterprising spirit and the crippling gambling addiction that would ultimately bankrupt him, but also as an exploration of the Cambodian immigrant experience.

Directed by Alex Gibney (who has made something of a career out of documentary exposes such as "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief" and "Agents of Chaos" about Russian intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections) in the midst of the pandemic, "Totally Under Control" is a staggering achievement — not only the fact that they were actually able to make this film under strict social distancing conditions, but that they were able to have such a nuanced, dynamic understanding of the pandemic so early on. In a way, that makes it all the more frustrating. 

Because "Totally Under Control," more than anything else, is a searing indictment of the Trump administration's incompetence and even malfeasance in its handling of the COVID-19 policy. And if a group of documentarians was able to get the sort of statements that are in this film on the record from public health officials just months into the pandemic, that means their ineptitude was infuriatingly obvious. It's a fascinating watch, even when it's incredibly frustrating: it is, after all, interesting to learn that it's possible to make exactly the wrong decision every step of the way when dealing with a crisis.

Every few decades, there's a satanic panic, where conservative middle America types get all squirrely about the idea of Satanists in their midst, committing ritual suicide and sacrificing goats and playing loud rock music. "Hail Satan?" offers a different perspective of the Satanic Temple, an actual functioning organization, but one more focused on preserving the separation of church and state and protesting the privileges enjoyed by the Christian Right than making pacts with Lucifer. 

Throughout the documentary, we see protests held by proclaimed Satanists to advocate for religious freedoms. But "Hail Satan?" never takes itself too seriously: It instead approaches its subject with a sense of mischievousness in line with the reputation the counterculture group enjoys. Witty, clever, and informational in a way that feels measured and open-minded, "Hail Satan?" presents an unexpectedly nuanced perspective on social justice reform and challenges to the current religious status quo that exists in modern-day America.

In most documentaries, it tends to be a little bit easier if your subject can be framed as either a hero or a villain. That's not the case in "The Queen of Versailles," a film about Jackie Siegel and her husband, who are in the middle of building one of the largest single-family residences in the United States, modelled on the Palace at Versailles, when the Great Recession hits. The business that built their fortune on a predatory timeshare scheme is suddenly endangered. 

They're the picture of ostentatious, arguably worthy of no sympathy from any quarter. But there's something about Jackie that makes it difficult not to feel something. Before she was the trophy wife of an aging businessman, as we learn from archival footage and interviews with former friends and family members, she was seemingly driven and full of life; a former model and Mrs. Florida America as well as the recipient of a Bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Because of her presence, "The Queen of Versailles" becomes more than just an object of mockery, but something deeper and much more intriguing.

Every once in a while, you hear about a pair of twins who were separated at birth and raised by two different families. Strange and fascinating, to think of two people so similar and so closely linked who are kept apart from one another. But the events of "Three Identical Strangers" are on a whole different scale. It's difficult to wrap your mind around the idea of triplets being purposefully separated at birth and distributed to three different sets of parents, each ignorant of the others' existence, and it's even harder to imagine the unethical researchers who would engineer such a situation. 

Regardless, that is the reality of the three men highlighted in "Three Identical Strangers." It begins as a quirky experience reminiscent of "The Parent Trap," where the boys are confused for one another at college, only gradually piecing together the enormity of what had been taken from them. As children, they were part of a secret "nature vs nurture" experiment, a study that would end up defining their lives. The joy of discovering lost brothers would turn to tragedy, with each brother grappling with the scars of a life kept secret from them.

In 2015, a fire broke out at the crowded Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest, Romania. Twenty-seven individuals died that night, with another 180 injured. But here's the additional devastating part on top of the initial tragedy: An additional 37 people died after being sent to the hospital, even ones who had only relatively minor burns. The reason behind this is shocking, and lies at the heart of the damning expose in "Collective." Romanian hospital administrators, in an effort to save money, allegedly encouraged disinfectants to be dangerously diluted, inadvertently creating antiseptic-resistant bacteria that would fester in and ultimately kill their patients. 

But this is just the tip of the iceberg: Abuse and neglect are shown to be heartbreakingly common in the hospital environment. "Collective" follows the idealistic new Minister of Health, Vlad Voiculescu, in his ultimately fruitless efforts to hold the perpetrators responsible and reform the entire system from the inside. It's a frustrating battle and a brutal indictment of widespread government corruption, one that is difficult to watch but utterly enthralling all the same.