19 min read
This post was written about 6 years ago, so most likely contains out-dated information.
This page might take a minute to load because there are trailers for every film embedded here.
This list contains only feature-length or TV documentaries that are directly related to veganism - not clips originating from YouTubers or internet-famous speeches.
There are a lot of popular films out there that allude to veganism with their themes but do not actually mention it or promote it.
These films are not included here.
Because everyone knows it's cool to come first, I have listed these films here in chronological order by their original release date.
WARNING: Some of the following embedded videos include very graphic footage.
At the time of making this it is the most comprehensive list like this available online.
Shockingly relevant to today, the controversial classic film about the exploitation of animals in modern society, narrated by Academy Award Winner Julie Christie.
Presents a survey of the uses of animals in factory farming, as pets, for entertainment, in scientific and military research, hunting, etc. The film also profiles the international animal rights movement and incorporates secret government footage, cartoons, newsreels and excerpts from propaganda films.
"Forty Minutes" Episode
TV documentary on the events of a winter's day in rural Sussex, England on which a group of hunt saboteurs are out to "hit" the local fox hunt. Basically, The Hunt Saboteurs Association use non-violent tactics to intervene at organised hunts in an attempt to save the hunted animals. Includes an appearance by the legendary Dave Wetton.
The full documentary is embedded above.
Produced by PETA, this 26 minute film exposes footage shot in 1983–1984 inside the University of Pennsylvania's Head Injury Clinic by the researchers themselves as they inflicted brain damage on baboons with a hydraulic device.
Sixty hours of audio and videotape were stolen from the laboratory during a raid in May 1984 by the Animal Liberation Front, who handed it over to PETA before they edited it down and released it, which led to the closing down of the lab, the chief veterinarian being fired and the university being placed on probation. These experiments had been conducted for 15 years at the expense of 12 million dollars, funded by the tax payer.
The entire film has been embedded above.
You can download the video in .wmv format in parts from ALF.com: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
More info on Wikipedia
"Diet for a New America: Your Health, Your Planet" was a 1987 bestselling book by John Robbins. The book discussed vegetarianism, the environmental impact of factory farming and animal rights.
In 1991 KCET, the Los Angeles PBS affiliate, produced the above TV documentary based on the book. The film is narrated by John Robbins and features interviews with plant-based doctors and scientists Michael Klaper, T. Colin Campbell, and John A. McDougall. This well-documented expose of America's "factory farms" should prompt even die-hard meat-and-potatoes lovers to reevaluate their diets.
The full 57 minute video is embedded above. No trailer could be found.
UK tele-documentary featuring two "undercover" journalists who infiltrate Manchester Hunt Saboteurs and the hunt they're sabbing. Basically, "sabbing" uses non-violent tactics to intervene at organised hunts in an attempt to save the hunted animals.
Clearly bia towards the hunters side this 24 minute journalistic piece never even discusses the ethics of hunting, but does cover the death of activist Mike Hill and the demonstration outside the home of his murderer Alan Summersgill.
Full documentary embedded above.
This graphic HBO documentary looks at how man's relationship to animals differs from country to country around the world, showing how animals are viewed with compassion and even reverence in one society, while being butchered or used in grisly experiments in another.
Very little information about this film exists online, but it has been fully uploaded in 5 parts to YouTube (embedded above).
Cast and crew info on TCMDB.
Explores Western attitudes towards farm animals and meat, and the intense battle between animal advocates and the meat industry to influence the consumer's mind. Five years in production took Director Jennifer Abbott across Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand to meet with the leaders of the animal rights movement, animal welfare advocates as well as spokespeople from livestock industries. A Cow at My Table inter-cuts these diverse perspectives with archival films, images from modern-day agribusiness and footage of farm animals shot from uncharacteristic vantage points.
TV documentary exploring animal rights campaigning, with a particular focus on militancy and Huntingdon Life Sciences. Covers Coventry Animal Action, Justice Department campaign, Isle of Wight arson campaign, Barry Horne (RIP), Jill Phipps (RIP) and some coverage of ALF/ELF actions in the USA. Includes interviews with Keith Mann, John Curtain, Gurjeet Aujla, David Barbarash, Nancy Phillips, Robin Webb, Kevin Kjonaas and Rod Coronado.
Full documentary embedded above.
In this PETA film with a moving narration, actor and activist Alec Baldwin exposes the truth behind humanity's cruelest invention - the factory farm.
This short film is only 12 minutes long and can be watched for free on PETA's YouTube (embedded above).
A documentary about several farmers who refuse to kill animals and how they convert to veganism as a way of life.
A newer version of the film premiered in 2009 called Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home (find it below) which featured different people and effectively replaced any trace of the original.
More info about the original 2004 release on Wikipedia
Using hidden cameras and never-before-seen footage, Earthlings chronicles the day-to-day practices of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit. Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, featuring original music by Moby, and known as "The Vegan Maker" due to its convincing arguments and strong emotional appeal.
Watch: Official
"Money Programme" TV series episode
Dramatic 30 minute TV documentary looking at the successful six-year campaign to shut down Newchurch Guinea Pig Farm in England, which bred the animals for research. Includes Nancy Phipps (RIP) and Kerry Whitburn.
The campaign started in 1999 after an Animal Liberation Front raid on the farm, during which 600 guinea pigs were removed. Video footage of the farm showed dirty, barren, crowded conditions inside the breeding sheds, as well as unhealthy and dying guinea pigs. Police logged over 450 separate criminal acts over a two-year period. More info on Wikipedia.
Full documentary embedded above.
Behind the Mask: The Story Of The People Who Risk Everything To Save Animals is a documentary film about the Animal Liberation Front - animal rights activists who break into laboratories and other facilities to provide previously unseen footage of the way animals are used. It includes well-known names within the animal rights movement, some of whom have been imprisoned for taking direct action.
Watch: YT
An irreverent and uplifting documentary about a young woman looking for a cure and finding her life. Taking a seemingly tragic situation and turning it into a creative expression, Kris shares her inspirational story of survival with honesty, courage, and lots of humour.
Emulating the style of "An Inconvenient Truth," this Dutch documentary is centred around a talk by animal party politician Marianne Thieme and draws attention to intensive livestock production by demonstrating that livestock farming generates more greenhouse gas emissions worldwide than all cars, lorries, trains, boats and planes added together.
An in-depth look at the animal rights movement and the FBI's recent declaration calling them the number one domestic terrorist threat to the United States. The film is inspired by a political comic book Your Mommy Kills Animals published by PETA starting in 2003.
Watch: YT
This documentary predominantly explores the effects of animal protein on the human body and the environment. It is a succinct production featuring candid, heartfelt interviews with some of the world's leading experts (including mainstream researchers, doctors, nutritionists, cattle ranchers, environmentalists and politicians) from Harvard to Cornell to Tufts.
Watch: YT
Food Matter examines how the food we eat can help or hurt our health. Nutritionists, naturopaths, doctors, and journalists weigh in on topics organic food, food safety, raw foodism, and nutritional therapy.
Watch: WHD
An unflattering look inside America's corporate controlled food industry and how the food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.
AKA "The Milk Documentary"
An entertaining, award winning feature documentary that dares to question the conventional wisdom of the much publicized health benefits of milk and dairy products. Addressing myth, truth and all in-between, the film is a humorous yet shocking exposition that provokes serious thought about this everyday staple.
Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, The Usual Suspects, Brassed Off) stars as an archivist living in the devastated future world of 2055, looking back at old footage from our time and asking: why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?
Watch: Official YT
Using state-of-the-art equipment, a group of activists, led by renowned dolphin trainer Ric O'Barry, infiltrate a cove near Taijii, Japan to expose both a shocking instance of animal abuse and a serious threat to human health.
Documentary filmmaker Rupert Murray examines the devastating effect that overfishing has had on the world's fish populations and argues that drastic action must be taken to reverse these trends. Filmed over two years, the investigative reporter Charles Clover confronts politicians and celebrity restaurateurs, who exhibit little regard for the damage they are doing to the oceans.
The full documentary is embedded above.
Explores the powerful struggle of conscience experienced by several people from traditional farming backgrounds who come to question the basic assumptions of their way of life. Interwoven with the farmers' stories is the dramatic animal rescue work of a newly-trained humane police officer whose sense of justice puts her at odds with the law she is charged to uphold. This groundbreaking documentary shatters stereotypical notions of farmers, farm life, and perhaps most surprisingly, farm animals themselves.
Chronicles six Americans with 'incurable' diabetes switching their diet and getting off insulin. The film follows each participant's remarkable journey and captures the medical, physical, and emotional transformations brought on by this diet and lifestyle change.
100 pounds overweight, loaded up on steroids and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease, Joe Cross is at the end of his rope and the end of his hope. With one foot already in the grave, the other isn't far behind. An inspiring film that chronicles Joe's personal mission to regain his health.
A film about dogs commonly referred to as "pit bulls" and those who love and defend these breeds. It explores the contributing factors behind the public's generalized fear of "pit bulls," and examines the conflict existing between advocates and opponents of breed discriminatory laws, as carried out in three cities that ban pit bull-type dog.
Watch: YT
This half hour film explores a lifestyle that includes delicious, healthy food while tackling many of the ethical and global challenges of today. The film features a dietitian, an MP, chefs, farmers, an elite athlete, environmental groups and a world-renowned poet. It explains how becoming vegan is good for your health, good for the environment, good for all animals and can help feed a growing world population.
Embedded here in full from the official Vegan Society's YouTube page.
Frank Ferrante is 54, weighs 290lbs., had a lifetime of drug & alcohol abuse and as a result contracted Hepatitis-C. He's on multiple medications including anti-depressants, undergoing chemo and drinks 10 espressos a day to stay awake. Watch as Ryland, his brother Cary and best friend Conor, help Frank take on his weight, health, relationships and loving himself in just 42 days.
PLANEAT is the story of three men's life-long search for a diet, which is good for our health, good for the environment and good for the future of the planet. With an additional cast of pioneering chefs and some of the best cooking you have ever seen, the scientists and doctors in the film present a convincing case for the West to re-examine its love affair with meat and dairy.
Watch: FM
A feature length documentary film about the raw foods diet, made by Jenna Norwood, a former public relations consultant turned independent filmmaker, health educator and raw food chef. In the film, inspired by Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me, Jenna ate only raw foods - i.e. uncooked fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds - for thirty days, to document the effect it would have on her health. The movie features interviews with noted raw vegan David Wolfe, as well as others who follow the diet, including celebrities Ben Vereen and Kathy Sledge.
Join Rip Esselstyn, former Texas firefighter and bestselling author, in this 52 minute video as he teaches the White and Wali families the basics of a whole-food, plant-based diet. Rip guides these families through pantry clean-outs, teaches them how to navigate grocery store aisles, and provides cooking lessons to make delicious "plant-strong" meals. Presented by Forks Over Knives.
Examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.
Watch: FM
Part sociological experiment and part adventure comedy, Vegucated is a guerrilla-style documentary that follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers who agree to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks and learn what it's all about. They have no idea that so much more than steak is at stake and that the planet's fate may fall on their plates.
Watch: YT
A documentary that systematically challenges the common human belief that humans are superior to other life forms. The documentary humorously reveals the absurdity of this belief while exploding human bias.
Notorious killer whale Tilikum is responsible for the deaths of three individuals, including a top killer whale trainer. Blackfish shows the sometimes devastating and controversial consequences of keeping such intelligent and sentient creatures in captivity.
Watch: SM
A cinematic documentary that illuminates the lives of individual animals living within and rescued from the machine of our modern world. Through the heart and photographic lens of animal rights photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur, audiences become intimately familiar with a cast of non-human animals and McArthur's efforts to bring wider attention to a topic that most of humankind strives hard to avoid.
A feature documentary examining our relationship with animals, the history of veganism and the ethical, environmental and health reasons that move people to go vegan. From butcher to vegan chef, from factory farmer to farm sanctuary owner - Live and Let Live tells the stories of six individuals who decided to stop consuming animal products for different reasons and shows the impact this decision has had on their lives.
A young man begins investigating the underworld of "factory farming" and soon discovers a growing political and intellectual movement that considers animals as important as humans.
"The film that environmental organisations don't want you to see." Follow the shocking, yet humorous, journey of an aspiring environmentalist, as he daringly seeks to find the real solution to the most pressing environmental issues and true path to sustainability.
What began as the story of one man, is now a story about millions. In this sequal Joe Cross examines how to make healthy habits last. Joe meets with experts who present realistic solutions to make long-term sustainable improvements to eating behaviours and overall health.
There is so much interest in food these days yet there is almost no interest in the hands that pick that food. While the legal restrictions which kept people bound to farms, like slavery, have been abolished, exploitation still exists, ranging from wage theft to modern-day slavery. These days, this exploitation is perpetuated by the corporations at the top of the food chain: supermarkets. Their buying power has kept wages pitifully low and has created a scenario where desperately poor people are willing to put up with anything to keep their jobs.
Watch: MO
Through a combination of hand-held and hidden camera footage, Lucent explores the darker side of Australia's pig farming industry, highlighting the day-to-day cruelty accepted by the industry as standard practice. Narrated by Australian punk-rock musician and radio personality Lindsay McDougall.
Watch: Official YT / Official V
Despite the advent of science, literature, technology, philosophy, religion, and so on -- none of these has assuaged humankind from killing one another, the animals, and nature. From the creator of Earthlings, UNITY is a film about why we can't seem to get along, even after thousands and thousands of years.
This is the gripping and emotionally charged story of Tyke, a circus elephant that went on a rampage in Honolulu in 1994, killed her trainer in front of thousands of spectators and died in a hail of gunfire. Her break for freedom - filmed from start to tragic end - traumatised a city and ignited a global battle over the use of animals in the entertainment industry. Ultimately, this moving documentary raises fundamental questions about our deep and mysterious connection to other species.
How and why what we eat is the cause of the chronic diseases that are killing us, and changing what we eat can save our lives one bite at a time.
(Originally released 2016, being re-released in cinemas in 2018.)
Between 2013 and 2015, a group of nonprofit attorneys seek nonhuman clients for whom they can advocate in two U.S. territories, in order to establish legal personhood for elephants, cetaceans and nonhuman apes in the U.S.
A feature-length documentary that explores the lives of four remarkably different people who share a common thread - they're all vegan. The movie traces the personal journeys of an ultramarathon runner who has overcome addiction to compete in one hundred mile races, a cattle rancher's wife who creates the first cattle ranch turned farmed animal sanctuary in Texas, a food truck owner cooking up knee-buckling plant-based foods, and an 8-year-old girl who convinces her family of six to go vegan.
Watch: YT
"A groundbreaking documentary film envisioning a future where meat consumption belongs to the past."
Explores the idea of a post-meat world including interviews with philosophers, scientists, artists and activists who offer their insight and progressive ideas about the role of animals in our society.
Vegan activist and YouTuber Earthling Ed exposes the hidden truth behind UK animal farming - featuring approximately 100 facilities across the UK and never before seen undercover footage.
Watch: Official YT
A lyrical meditation on what it means to be a sentient creature with the power to kill. Through sparse, intimate musings, the farmer reveals the growing conflict of a life spent “peddling in death.”
The film exposes the collusion and corruption in government and big business that is costing us trillions of healthcare dollars, and keeping us sick. A surprising, and at times hilarious, investigative documentary that will be an eye-opener for everyone concerned about our nation’s health and how big business influences it. From the creators of the award winning Cowspiracy 2014 documentary featured above.
A short documentary about the journey and personal conflict of Jay Wilde, the first farmer in the UK to embark upon transitioning from beef farming to entirely organic plant based farming.
Dominion is the feature-length documentary sequel to 2014's Lucent (featured above). While Lucent focused mostly on the Australian pig farming industry, Dominion will have a much broader scope as a comprehensive account of the numerous ways animals are used and abused in Australia. Through covertly obtained footage, the film will question the morality and validity of our dominion over the animal kingdom, and aims to serve as Australia's answer to "Earthlings".
Directed by Academy Award winner Louie Psihoyos ("The Cove" from 2009 - featured above) and executive produced by James Cameron (Academy Award Winning director of "Titanic" & "Avatar"), The Game Changers tells the story of James Wilks — elite special forces trainer and winner of The Ultimate Fighter — as he travels the world on a quest for the truth behind the world's most dangerous myth: that meat is necessary for protein, strength and optimal health. Meeting elite athletes, special ops soldiers, visionary scientists, cultural icons, and everyday heroes, what James discovers permanently changes his relationship with food and his definition of true strength.
