Three Great Documentaries to Stream This Month

There are so many documentaries on streaming services that it can be hard to pick one. Each month, film critics choose three nonfiction movies worth watching. This month's picks take viewers to 1960s Paris, into the studio of a famous painter, and on a very personal journey with a man who is dying.

The first film is 'Le Joli Mai,' made in 1963 by directors Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme. It was filmed in Paris in May 1962, just two months after a peace deal ended the long war in Algeria. The directors walked through the city asking ordinary people a simple question: Are you happy? The film is a good follow-up to another classic called 'Chronicle of a Summer,' made by the French sociologist Edgar Morin, who recently died at age 104.

'Le Joli Mai' is like a diary of Paris in that spring. The film visits people from many different walks of life — stockbrokers, large families, workers on strike, and students from other countries. One scene shows Parisians looking at the space capsule flown by American astronaut John Glenn earlier that year. Because director Marker loved cats, there are plenty of cat appearances in the film, too.

The film also touches on serious topics. A young Algerian man talks about facing racism while looking for a job. Engineers discuss how machines might change people's ideas about work and free time — a question people still ask today. One woman even says a dictatorship would be fine if it were run by smart leaders, and the filmmakers push back by asking her to imagine being its victim.

The second film is 'A Bigger Splash,' from 1973. It follows the famous British painter David Hockney, who died this year at age 88. The movie is part documentary and part drama — Hockney and people who knew him play versions of themselves, but some scenes were clearly planned ahead of time. It shows Hockney working on what may be his most famous painting, called 'Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures).'

The film gives viewers a rare look at how Hockney created his art. He cuts up a canvas that isn't working and uses photographs taken at a friend's house in France as studies for his painting. When an art dealer tells him he has been taking too long, Hockney explains that trying things and throwing them out is what leads him to his best work. 'The one picture that took two weeks really took six months and two weeks,' he says.

The third film is 'André Is an Idiot,' released in 2026 on Netflix. It follows André Ricciardi, a funny and upbeat man from San Francisco who worked in advertising. André was diagnosed with colon cancer after getting his colonoscopy too late, and he decided to make a documentary about his own death. The film reminds viewers that doctors now recommend people get a colonoscopy starting at age 45.

André faces his illness with humor, even visiting a specialist in 'death yells' and thinking about what his last words might be. He goes on a road trip to a desert town he calls 'probably the farthest I've been from a city in my entire life.' In one touching scene, he hires actor Tommy Chong — himself a colorectal cancer survivor — to play his very private father, since his real father did not want to appear on camera.

The film gets harder to watch as André's illness gets worse. His wife says that if he ever stopped being funny about it, none of them would know how to cope. André tells his therapist that the day he can no longer make his daughter Tallula laugh will feel like crossing a line. Director Tony Benna captures both the humor and the pain of what André and his family go through.

'André Is an Idiot' is a strange, brave, and deeply personal film that is not always easy to watch — but it is very much worth it. All three of this month's picks show how documentaries can take you somewhere totally new. Whether it's Paris in the 1960s, a painter's messy studio, or one man's last adventure, nonfiction films have a way of making real life feel extraordinary.