POV is PBS’s flagship documentary series, having won over 30 Emmy® Awards and numerous other accolades. Throughout the summer, they are sharing some of their most popular independent titles free online and on the PBS app's  POV channel.

Both features and shorts are available. Quality short films can be hard to access elsewhere, but POV has surfaced many, from Nancy Schwartzman’s xoxosms to Theo Rigby and Kate McLean’s The Caretaker, and all the episodes of everyone’s favorite radio-segment-turned-animation, StoryCorps. (I challenge you to stay dry-eyed during these, such as Danny and Annie below.)


Here is a handful of the feature docs that we’re excited to watch (or re-watch).

Ella Es el Matador (She Is the Matador)
by Gemma Cubero and Celeste Carrasco

A film about two female matadors finding their way in the male-dominated bullfighting field? Yes, please.

Lost Boys of Sudan
by Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk

This classic American doc about young Sudanese refugees making lives for themselves in America takes on new relevance amidst Europe’s refugee crisis today and America’s own complicit role.

5 Broken Cameras'5 Broken Cameras'

After Tiller
by Martha Shane and Lana Wilson

This Sundance and Emmy-winning doc explores the ever-raging abortion debate in the United States via the stories of the only four doctors in the United States who still openly perform late-term abortions after the 2009 assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

5 Broken Cameras
by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

This Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature takes life in the Israeli Occupied Territories head on through personal verite footage of West Bank. Shot by a Palestinian (each of whose five cameras were destroyed by various Israelis throughout production) and co-directed by an Israeli, the film shows a rarely-seen, first-person perspective on a contentious story.

Tea Time
by Maite Alberdi

Documentary films are notoriously heavy, and though this film may cover some weighty topics—​illness, betrayal, political unrest—​it seems to do it in the sweetest possible way, through the 60-year-running teatime ritual of five Chilean women.

Get to watching, and let us know which other films we should put on our must-view list!

Featured Image from Ella Es el Matador (She Is the Matador)