Documentaries & storytelling Videos Recommended on Hacker News (202)
Documentaries & storytelling is one of the 150 topics Hacker News readers organize their video recommendations around. These 202 videos each earned real recommendations in real HN threads between 2009 and 2026 — 517 recommendations in total — and they're ranked by how many separate months the community kept coming back to them, not by view count.
Documentaries and narratives: short documentaries, investigative features, quirky true stories, sports history storytelling, Jon Bois, oral histories, strange events and mysteries.
Why HN keeps sending people here — on The Century of the Self (Full Adam Curtis Documentary): “For the first time in my life I feel like I understood the “why” of how things work in American society.” — an HN commenter, 2022.
Features
Evergreen only
3 mo on HNHow the US Postal Service reads terrible handwriting
3 mo on HN50 Years Ago, This Was a Wasteland. He Changed Everything | Short Film Showcase
2 mo on HNPOLYBIUS - The Video Game That Doesn't Exist
3 mo on HNPandora's Box, E1: The Engineers' Plot
3 mo on HNPrinces of the Yen | The Hidden Power of Central Banks
3 mo on HNNoam Chomsky - Manufacturing Consent
3 mo on HNInside Africa's Food Forest Mega-Project
3 mo on HNModern Times Streetwise - part 1/4 - 1996 BBC Documentary how become a London cabbie.
2 mo on HNThe Greatest Shot In Television
2 mo on HN“I’m Not a Robot” (2025 Academy Award Winner) | The New Yorker Screening Room
2 mo on HNThe Cannonball Run Countach: Supercar Legend | Full Documentary
2 mo on HNAlways/Never: The Quest for Safety, Control, and Survivability - Part 1
2 mo on HNBrian Springer - Spin
2 mo on HNFeynman: Take the world from another point of view (1/4)
2 mo on HNSecret Life Of Machines 104 The Washing Machine
2 mo on HNThe Fantastic Case of the Missing Tesla
2 mo on HNRiot On Documentary (2002)
2 mo on HNI Saved a PNG Image To A Bird
2 mo on HNDavid Carr vs. Some Guys from VICE
2 mo on HNInto Eternity - Official trailer
2 mo on HNThe People's Republic of The Future
2 mo on HNEverything is a Remix Part 3 (Original Series, 2011)
2 mo on HNURBEX | Abandoned Soviet Space Shuttles (Buran) in Baikonur
2 mo on HNWell There's Your Problem | Episode 28: Goiânia Incident
2 mo on HNInternet of food: Arduino-based, urban aquaponics in Oakland
2 mo on HNFred Dibnah How to climb a chimney overhang at 50+
2 mo on HNFour Horsemen - Feature Documentary - Official Version
2 mo on HNMajor Brian Shul, USAF (Ret.) SR-71 Blackbird 'Speed Check'
2 mo on HNIt's Quieter in the Twilight | Trailer | SF48
2 mo on HNFred Dibnah laddering a chimney (Part 1)
2 mo on HNTractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly
2 mo on HNPart One: The Evergreen Equity Council
2 mo on HNRegreening the desert with John D. Liu | VPRO Documentary | 2012
2 mo on HNSecret Billionaire: The Chuck Feeney Story
2 mo on HNInside Job (2010 Full Documentary Movie)
2 mo on HN