The 50 best environmental films and documentaries

By the Compost Ready editors · Updated 12 October 2026

Documentaries that changed the debate, animated classics that shaped a generation and a few feature films that deserve a second look. Our list mixes all three, with the facts you need to pick tonight's film.

We watched, rewatched and argued. The result is a list of 50 films: 35 documentaries and 15 feature and animated films, released between 1984 and 2021. Watching all of them back to back would take about 81 hours. Lets be honest, nobody will, so the ranking is meant to help you decide where to start.

The order is our own. We looked at what other critics and film lists rate highly, but ranked the films by a simpler test: how well does each one help you understand an environmental problem, and does it stay with you afterwards? Films that inspire action rank a little higher than ones that only shock.

How we chose and what the facts mean

• Released is the year of the first public release or festival premiere.
• Runtime is the main release version, rounded to whole minutes.
• Year, runtime and directors come from each film's English Wikipedia entry, cross-checked with Wikidata.
• The photos are not stills or posters from the films, which are protected by copyright. They are freely licensed photos of each film's subject from Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image.
• Nobody paid to be on this list. Where a film's claims have been seriously disputed, we say so.

The list at a glance

1. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet (2020, 83 min)
2. An Inconvenient Truth (2006, 97 min)
3. WALL-E (2008, 98 min)
4. Chasing Ice (2012, 75 min)
5. Princess Mononoke (1997, 133 min)
6. Before the Flood (2016, 96 min)
7. Erin Brockovich (2000, 131 min)
8. Chasing Coral (2017, 93 min)
9. Honeyland (2019, 87 min)
10. Dark Waters (2019, 126 min)
11. My Octopus Teacher (2020, 85 min)
12. The True Cost (2015, 93 min)
13. Food, Inc. (2008, 94 min)
14. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984, 117 min)
15. Home (2009, 90 min)
16. Seaspiracy (2021, 89 min)
17. Tomorrow (Demain) (2015, 118 min)
18. Plastic China (2016, 81 min)
19. Don't Look Up (2021, 138 min)
20. Waste Land (2010, 99 min)
21. The Biggest Little Farm (2018, 92 min)
22. Okja (2017, 120 min)
23. Virunga (2014, 100 min)
24. Trashed (2012, 97 min)
25. Woman at War (2018, 101 min)
26. The Cove (2009, 87 min)
27. 2040 (2019, 92 min)
28. Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story (2014, 75 min)
29. First Reformed (2017, 114 min)
30. Bag It (2010, 74 min)
31. Earth (2007, 99 min)
32. I Am Greta (2020, 97 min)
33. The Story of Stuff (2007, 20 min)
34. Blackfish (2013, 83 min)
35. The Salt of the Earth (2014, 110 min)
36. Mission Blue (2014, 95 min)
37. The Day After Tomorrow (2004, 123 min)
38. Racing Extinction (2015, 94 min)
39. Fantastic Fungi (2019, 80 min)
40. Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet (2021, 73 min)
41. Avatar (2009, 162 min)
42. Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014, 91 min)
43. Thank You for the Rain (2017, 87 min)
44. Gasland (2010, 104 min)
45. The Lorax (2012, 86 min)
46. Oceans (2009, 104 min)
47. The 11th Hour (2007, 92 min)
48. Promised Land (2012, 106 min)
49. The Age of Stupid (2009, 89 min)
50. FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992, 76 min)

1 to 10: start here

1. 

   1. David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2020
   • Runtime: 83 min
   • Directed by: Alastair Fothergill, Jonnie Hughes, Keith Scholey
   • Country: United Kingdom

   Attenborough calls it his witness statement. He starts in the empty streets of Pripyat near Chernobyl, walks back through seventy years of filming wildlife, and shows how quickly the wild parts of the planet shrank in one lifetime. What lifts it above a lament is the last third, which is about what can still be done, from rewilding to protecting fish stocks.

2. 

   2. An Inconvenient Truth

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2006
   • Runtime: 97 min
   • Directed by: Davis Guggenheim
   • Country: United States

   Al Gore with a slideshow should not have been a box office event, but it was. The film turned his climate lecture into a mainstream conversation and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Some projections have dated, and the film is worth watching partly as a snapshot of where the debate stood in 2006.

3. 

   3. WALL-E

   • Animated film
   • Released: 2008
   • Runtime: 98 min
   • Directed by: Andrew Stanton
   • Country: United States

   A small robot spends his days compacting rubbish on an Earth that humans have abandoned, while people drift through space on a cruise ship, waited on by machines. Pixar tells most of the first act without dialogue. It is a love story first, but few films have made the idea of a planet buried in its own waste so easy to grasp for children.

4. 

   4. Chasing Ice

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2012
   • Runtime: 75 min
   • Directed by: Jeff Orlowski
   • Country: United States

   Photographer James Balog bolts time-lapse cameras to rocks in Greenland, Iceland and Alaska and waits years for the results. The footage of glaciers retreating is more persuasive than any graph. The film is also honest about the cost: broken cameras, failed winters and a photographer whose knees are giving out.

5. 

   5. Princess Mononoke

   • Animated film
   • Released: 1997
   • Runtime: 133 min
   • Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
   • Country: Japan

   Miyazaki refuses to give us villains. The ironworks that cut down the forest also shelter outcasts and lepers, and the forest gods are as ruthless as the humans. That moral complexity is why the film still feels modern. A young prince caught between the two sides tries to make peace, and only partly succeeds.

6. 

   6. Before the Flood

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2016
   • Runtime: 96 min
   • Directed by: Fisher Stevens
   • Country: United States

   Leonardo DiCaprio travels from melting Arctic ice to burning Indonesian forests to talk to scientists, politicians and the people affected. He admits his own large carbon footprint early on, which takes the edge off the celebrity factor. The section on palm oil and deforestation is the strongest part.

7. 

   7. Erin Brockovich

   • Feature film
   • Released: 2000
   • Runtime: 131 min
   • Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
   • Country: United States

   Based on the real case of a legal clerk who uncovered how a utility company had contaminated the groundwater of a Californian town with hexavalent chromium. Julia Roberts won the Oscar for Best Actress. It is a courtroom film without much courtroom, driven by stubborn door-to-door work, and it remains one of the best films about environmental justice.

8. 

   8. Chasing Coral

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2017
   • Runtime: 93 min
   • Directed by: Jeff Orlowski
   • Country: United States

   The team behind Chasing Ice goes underwater to film coral bleaching as it happens. Building a camera that can record a reef day after day turns out to be harder than anyone expected, and the technical struggle gives the film a gripping middle. The scenes of a reef turning white, then grey, are hard to forget.

9. 

   9. Honeyland

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2019
   • Runtime: 87 min
   • Directed by: Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov
   • Country: North Macedonia

   Hatidže keeps wild bees in a remote Macedonian village and lives by one rule: take half the honey, leave half for the bees. When a noisy family moves in next door and starts harvesting greedily, the balance collapses. There is no narration and no expert, just a quiet parable about sustainability that earned two Oscar nominations.

10. 

    10. Dark Waters

    • Feature film
    • Released: 2019
    • Runtime: 126 min
    • Directed by: Todd Haynes
    • Country: United States

    Mark Ruffalo plays Robert Bilott, a corporate lawyer who spends decades fighting DuPont over PFOA, a "forever chemical" that contaminated water in West Virginia. Anyone curious why the EU now restricts PFAS in food packaging should start here. Slow, grey and angry in the best sense.

11 to 25: essential viewing

1. 

   11. My Octopus Teacher

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2020
   • Runtime: 85 min
   • Directed by: Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed
   • Country: South Africa

   Filmmaker Craig Foster dives in a cold kelp forest off South Africa every day for a year and builds an unlikely relationship with a wild octopus. It is a small, personal film, closer to a diary than a lecture, and it won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. You will look at seafood counters differently afterwards.

2. 

   12. The True Cost

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2015
   • Runtime: 93 min
   • Directed by: Andrew Morgan
   • Country: United States

   Made after the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh, this documentary follows the price of cheap clothing back through cotton fields and factories. It mixes the human and environmental costs well and asks a simple question: who pays for a T-shirt that costs less than a sandwich?

3. 

   13. Food, Inc.

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2008
   • Runtime: 94 min
   • Directed by: Robert Kenner
   • Country: United States

   A look at how a handful of companies came to dominate food production in the United States, from corn fields to chicken sheds. Writers Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser guide much of it. Parts are specific to the US, but the questions about cheap food, monoculture and who controls the system apply in Europe too.

4. 

   14. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

   • Animated film
   • Released: 1984
   • Runtime: 117 min
   • Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki
   • Country: Japan

   A thousand years after an industrial collapse, a toxic jungle is spreading across the world. Princess Nausicaä discovers the jungle is actually cleaning the poisoned soil. Made before Studio Ghibli was founded, it set out themes Miyazaki would return to for decades, and its idea of nature healing on its own terms has aged remarkably well.

5. 

   15. Home

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2009
   • Runtime: 90 min
   • Directed by: Yann Arthus-Bertrand
   • Country: France

   Shot almost entirely from the air, Home is the most beautiful film on this list and also one of the bleakest. Arthus-Bertrand shows farmland, cities and deserts from above and lets the patterns tell the story of human impact. It was released for free online on the same day it opened in cinemas, which was unusual at the time.

6. 

   16. Seaspiracy

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2021
   • Runtime: 89 min
   • Directed by: Ali Tabrizi
   • Country: United States

   Ali Tabrizi sets out to make a film about plastic in the ocean and ends up blaming industrial fishing instead. It is gripping and it reached a huge audience on Netflix, but several of its statistics were disputed by scientists and organisations featured in it. Watch it, then read the criticism. That combination is more useful than either alone.

7. 

   17. Tomorrow (Demain)

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2015
   • Runtime: 118 min
   • Directed by: Cyril Dion, Mélanie Laurent
   • Country: France

   After a study warning that civilisation could collapse, a group of French filmmakers go looking for people who are already doing things differently: urban farmers, local currencies, renewable energy towns and new schools. It is the antidote to doom films, and it won the César for Best Documentary in France.

8. 

   18. Plastic China

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2016
   • Runtime: 81 min
   • Directed by: Wang Jiuliang
   • Country: China

   An eleven-year-old girl grows up in a small Chinese workshop where her family sorts and melts imported plastic waste, much of it from Europe and America. No commentary, just daily life among mountains of foreign packaging. The film appeared shortly before China closed its doors to most imported plastic waste in 2018.

9. 

   19. Don't Look Up

   • Feature film
   • Released: 2021
   • Runtime: 138 min
   • Directed by: Adam McKay
   • Country: United States

   Two astronomers discover a comet heading for Earth and nobody wants to hear it. The comet is a barely hidden stand-in for climate change, and the satire of media, politics and tech billionaires is broad. Not subtle, often funny, sometimes too long, and very much a film people argued about.

10. 

    20. Waste Land

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2010
    • Runtime: 99 min
    • Directed by: Lucy Walker
    • Country: United Kingdom, Brazil

    Artist Vik Muniz spends time with the pickers at Jardim Gramacho, once one of the largest landfills in the world, outside Rio de Janeiro. Together they make large portraits out of recyclable materials. It is a film about rubbish, but mainly about the dignity of the people who sort it.

11. 

    21. The Biggest Little Farm

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2018
    • Runtime: 92 min
    • Directed by: John Chester
    • Country: United States

    A couple from Los Angeles buy exhausted farmland and try to turn it into a diverse, self-regulating farm. Snails, coyotes and drought test them for years. The film is beautifully shot and shows that working with nature is slow and messy, which makes the eventual success feel earned.

12. 

    22. Okja

    • Feature film
    • Released: 2017
    • Runtime: 120 min
    • Directed by: Bong Joon Ho
    • Country: South Korea, United States

    A Korean girl raises a giant genetically engineered pig in the mountains, until the company that owns it wants it back for meat. Bong Joon Ho swings between adventure, comedy and genuine horror. The slaughterhouse scenes are tough to watch, and that is clearly the point.

13. 

    23. Virunga

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2014
    • Runtime: 100 min
    • Directed by: Orlando von Einsiedel
    • Country: United Kingdom, DR Congo

    Rangers in Africa's oldest national park protect the last mountain gorillas while armed conflict and oil exploration close in. It plays like a thriller, including undercover footage, and it was nominated for an Oscar. A reminder that conservation can be dangerous work.

14. 

    24. Trashed

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2012
    • Runtime: 97 min
    • Directed by: Candida Brady
    • Country: United Kingdom

    Actor Jeremy Irons follows our rubbish to landfills, incinerators and beaches around the world. It covers ground other films skip, especially what burning waste does to air and soil. Sobering, a little old-fashioned in style, and still relevant to anyone who thinks the bin is the end of the story.

15. 

    25. Woman at War

    • Feature film
    • Released: 2018
    • Runtime: 101 min
    • Directed by: Benedikt Erlingsson
    • Country: Iceland, France, Ukraine

    A choir conductor in Iceland leads a secret second life sabotaging the power lines of the aluminium industry. Then an old adoption request is approved and she has to choose. Funny, odd and warm, with a live band that wanders into the scenes. Probably the most original film on this list.

26 to 40: worth your evening

1. 

   26. The Cove

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2009
   • Runtime: 87 min
   • Directed by: Louie Psihoyos
   • Country: United States

   A team of activists and divers use hidden cameras to expose a dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan. It is structured like a heist movie and won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. Some critics found it one-sided, but it changed the public debate about dolphins in captivity.

2. 

   27. 2040

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2019
   • Runtime: 92 min
   • Directed by: Damon Gameau
   • Country: Australia

   Damon Gameau imagines what the world could look like for his daughter in 2040 if we simply used solutions that already exist: rooftop solar shared between neighbours, regenerative farming, seaweed farms, fewer cars. Optimistic without being naive, and good to watch with teenagers.

3. 

   28. Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2014
   • Runtime: 75 min
   • Directed by: Grant Baldwin
   • Country: Canada

   Two Canadian filmmakers decide to live for six months on food that would otherwise be thrown away. They end up with more than they can eat. Light in tone and full of practical detail on best-before dates and supermarket standards. One of the best films about food waste, and directly relevant to packaging.

4. 

   29. First Reformed

   • Feature film
   • Released: 2017
   • Runtime: 114 min
   • Directed by: Paul Schrader
   • Country: United States

   Ethan Hawke plays a pastor of a small church whose faith starts to crack after a conversation with a young environmental activist. It is the darkest film here, a serious study of climate despair and what it can do to a person. Demanding, but it stays with you.

5. 

   30. Bag It

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2010
   • Runtime: 74 min
   • Directed by: Suzan Beraza
   • Country: United States

   An ordinary guy decides to stop using plastic bags and slowly realises plastic is everywhere, including in his own body. Easy-going and funny, it works as a gentle introduction to plastic packaging. Some details are dated now that bag charges are common, but the core questions are not.

6. 

   31. Earth

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2007
   • Runtime: 99 min
   • Directed by: Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield
   • Country: United Kingdom, Germany

   The cinema version of the BBC series Planet Earth follows a polar bear family, elephants and humpback whales over one year. The images are the main attraction, but the shrinking sea ice gives the polar bear story a clear message. A good first nature documentary for younger viewers.

7. 

   32. I Am Greta

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2020
   • Runtime: 97 min
   • Directed by: Nathan Grossman
   • Country: Sweden

   Follows Greta Thunberg from her first solitary school strike outside the Swedish parliament to her voyage across the Atlantic by sailboat. The private moments are the most revealing: a teenager who is tired, stubborn and often alone. Whatever you think of her, it is a fascinating portrait of sudden fame.

8. 

   33. The Story of Stuff

   • Short documentary
   • Released: 2007
   • Runtime: 20 min
   • Directed by: Louis Fox
   • Country: United States

   Twenty minutes, simple drawings and Annie Leonard explaining the life of our things, from extraction through production and shopping to the bin. Used in classrooms for years, partly because it is short enough to show in one lesson. Some figures are simplified, but the overall picture holds.

9. 

   34. Blackfish

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2013
   • Runtime: 83 min
   • Directed by: Gabriela Cowperthwaite
   • Country: United States

   The story of Tilikum, a captive orca involved in the deaths of several people, including a trainer. Former trainers explain what life in a tank does to a large, social animal. The film had a real-world effect on how marine parks are run and seen. Not about climate, but very much about how we treat nature.

10. 

    35. The Salt of the Earth

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2014
    • Runtime: 110 min
    • Directed by: Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
    • Country: France, Brazil, Italy

    A portrait of the photographer Sebastião Salgado, who documented war, famine and migration until he could not bear it any more. He returned to his family's ruined farm in Brazil and replanted it as forest. The black-and-white photography is stunning, and the reforestation story at the end is quietly moving.

11. 

    36. Mission Blue

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2014
    • Runtime: 95 min
    • Directed by: Robert Nixon, Fisher Stevens
    • Country: United States

    Oceanographer Sylvia Earle has spent decades exploring the deep sea, and in her seventies she is still diving. The film follows her campaign for "hope spots", protected areas of the ocean. Part biography, part manifesto, and an inspiring portrait of a scientist who never retired from curiosity.

12. 

    37. The Day After Tomorrow

    • Feature film
    • Released: 2004
    • Runtime: 123 min
    • Directed by: Roland Emmerich
    • Country: United States

    Climate change triggers a new ice age within days and freezes New York. The science is wildly exaggerated, as scientists said at the time, but the disaster spectacle got millions of people talking about ocean currents. Enjoy it as a blockbuster, not a forecast.

13. 

    38. Racing Extinction

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2015
    • Runtime: 94 min
    • Directed by: Louie Psihoyos
    • Country: United States

    From the director of The Cove, a film about the mass extinction of species caused by humans, from the illegal wildlife trade to ocean acidification. Undercover operations mix with a striking finale where images of endangered animals are projected onto the Empire State Building.

14. 

    39. Fantastic Fungi

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2019
    • Runtime: 80 min
    • Directed by: Louie Schwartzberg
    • Country: United States

    Time-lapse photography of mushrooms growing, glowing and decomposing, with mycologist Paul Stamets explaining the networks fungi build underground. A visual treat, and relevant here because fungi are behind some of the most interesting work on bio-based packaging materials.

15. 

    40. Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet

    • Documentary
    • Released: 2021
    • Runtime: 73 min
    • Directed by: Jon Clay
    • Country: United Kingdom

    Scientist Johan Rockström explains the idea of planetary boundaries, the limits within which humanity can operate safely, with David Attenborough narrating. More of a clear lecture than a story, but the best short introduction to the science of the whole Earth system that we know of.

41 to 50: for the dedicated

1. 

   41. Avatar

   • Feature film
   • Released: 2009
   • Runtime: 162 min
   • Directed by: James Cameron
   • Country: United States

   A mining company wants the minerals under the forest of an alien moon, and the native Na'vi stand in the way. The story is familiar, but the visual world is so rich that it left many viewers thinking about real rainforests. One of the highest-grossing films ever made carried an unambiguous environmental message.

2. 

   42. Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2014
   • Runtime: 91 min
   • Directed by: Kip Andersen, Keegan Kuhn
   • Country: United States

   A filmmaker asks why big environmental groups rarely talk about livestock farming. It made many people rethink their diet. It also uses some figures that researchers have contested, so treat its numbers with care. The core point, that food choices have a large footprint, is well supported elsewhere.

3. 

   43. Thank You for the Rain

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2017
   • Runtime: 87 min
   • Directed by: Julia Dahr
   • Country: Norway, United Kingdom

   Kenyan farmer Kisilu Musya filmed his own family for years as droughts and storms hit their village. He becomes an activist and takes his story to international climate talks. Rare in climate films: the people most affected are the ones holding the camera.

4. 

   44. Gasland

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2010
   • Runtime: 104 min
   • Directed by: Josh Fox
   • Country: United States

   Josh Fox travels across the United States to meet families living near fracking sites. The scene of tap water being set on fire became famous. The gas industry disputed many claims, but the film pushed fracking into public debate and, in some places, into regulation.

5. 

   45. The Lorax

   • Animated film
   • Released: 2012
   • Runtime: 86 min
   • Directed by: Chris Renaud
   • Country: United States

   The Dr. Seuss story of the Once-ler, who cuts down every tree to make a product nobody needs, turned into a colourful family musical. Lighter than the book, but the image of a town that buys bottled air because the trees are gone works on children and adults alike.

6. 

   46. Oceans

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2009
   • Runtime: 104 min
   • Directed by: Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud
   • Country: France

   Jacques Perrin, who had already filmed birds in Winged Migration, spent years filming marine life with new underwater camera techniques. Mostly wordless and visual, with a brief and pointed section on pollution and overfishing. Best on the biggest screen you can find.

7. 

   47. The 11th Hour

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2007
   • Runtime: 92 min
   • Directed by: Nadia Conners, Leila Conners
   • Country: United States

   Leonardo DiCaprio's first environmental documentary, with dozens of scientists and thinkers explaining the state of the planet. Dense with interviews and short on story, it works best as a time capsule of environmental thinking just before the 2008 financial crisis.

8. 

   48. Promised Land

   • Feature film
   • Released: 2012
   • Runtime: 106 min
   • Directed by: Gus Van Sant
   • Country: United States

   Matt Damon plays a gas company salesman sent to a struggling farming town to buy drilling rights. A quiet drama about money, pride and rural decline, with a twist in the last act. A good companion piece to Gasland, from the other side of the table.

9. 

   49. The Age of Stupid

   • Documentary
   • Released: 2009
   • Runtime: 89 min
   • Directed by: Franny Armstrong
   • Country: United Kingdom

   Pete Postlethwaite plays an archivist in a ruined world of 2055, looking back at footage from 2008 and asking why we did nothing. A mix of drama and real documentary stories. Crowdfunded at a time when that was rare, and still an effective framing device.

10. 

    50. FernGully: The Last Rainforest

    • Animated film
    • Released: 1992
    • Runtime: 76 min
    • Directed by: Bill Kroyer
    • Country: United States, Australia

    Fairies in an Australian rainforest fight a logging machine and a pollution monster called Hexxus, with Robin Williams voicing a manic bat. Very much of its time, but for many people who grew up in the nineties it was the first film that made deforestation feel personal.

Films that connect to packaging and waste

If you came here from our packaging guides, these are the ones most closely linked to what we write about: Plastic China and Bag It on plastic waste, Just Eat It on food waste, Dark Waters on PFAS chemicals, and WALL-E and Trashed on what happens when waste has nowhere to go. For the regulation side, read our guide to the EU packaging regulation.