The modern-day business environment is fiercely competitive and plagued with uncertainty. The imperative for constant innovation in certain industries can push people to their brink as they battle to keep skin in the market.
There are many documentaries like Netflix's Dirty Money, dissecting tremendous downfalls and scandals occurring in the business world, while others are humous, informative, or bring a somewhat positive or thrilling angle to its fast-paced chaos.
Dirty Money
This Netflix docu-series is set to release its third season in March of 2021. Viewers flocked to the first two seasons, allured by the tales of concentrated wealth and corruption.
Dirty Money has spotlighted various controversies, including the Volkswagon emission scandal, Wells Fargo account fraud scandal, as well as Donald Trump's career as a businessman. The series' renewal is exciting, as one can only wonder which twisted true-stories they'll tear into next.
The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley
Elizabeth Holmes is a former American businesswoman who was somewhat brilliant in her ability to get elderly financial leaders to invest over $1 billion in her far-fetched, impractical blood-analysis technology company. However, she was not brilliant enough to prove her doubters wrong — one being a former professor of Holmes' interviewed in the film — in terms of her ability to produce a viable product.
Holmes was eventually riddled with lawsuits and now suffers from public infamy. The HBO documentary does an excellent job of narrating Holmes' methodical rise and quick descent.
American Factory
The 2019 documentary follows the restoration of a shutdown GM manufacturing plant by a Chinese billionaire who hires 2,000 American workers in the process. The documentary begins on a high-note of optimism, but things quickly spin off course.
American Factory has an underbelly of frustration from the start, but it remains fairly objective throughout its two-hour length, as it demonstrates dwindling hope for the modern-day 'working man.' It won Best Documentary Feature at the 2020 Academy Awards.
POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
Supersize Me documentarian Morgan Spurlock made a clever, ironic film in The Greatest Movie Ever Sold by making a film centered around advertising and product-placement in film/TV that is entirely funded by advertisers themselves.
While documenting what goes on behind the scenes of these meetings between producers and businesses, Spurlock adds his usual flair of humor, making the satirical documentary both thought-provoking and laugh-worthy.
Inside Job
This Matt Damon-narrated documentary investigates the maze of events that led to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Inside Job travels around the world, visiting financial strongholds worldwide, interviewing major players involved in a conspiracy against the American people.
Charles Ferguson's documentary has been called "a masterpiece" by critics and went on to win Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards. The director's other films, such as No End in Sight and Time to Choose, are also held in high regard.
Something Ventured
Tracing the evolution of what is known today as the capital of technological innovation (Silicon Valley), Something Ventured takes a critical look at the growth of some of the wealthiest companies in human history, including Apple and Intel.
The documentary highlights key events and decisions that were catalysts for the hyper-acceleration of technological advances over the last several decades.
Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control
Documentarian Errol Morris' Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control is a compilation of interviews between four prominent figures in various disciplines: robotics, naked-mole-rat analysis, lion taming, and topiary gardening. The 1997 film is Morris' fifth documentary and was praised by critics at the time of its release, winning several awards, despite not being recognized by the Academy Awards.
The film's sequences of surreal imagery interspersed between shots of interviewees can get eerie but are fantastically alluring. Morris' ambitious intersection of four diverse perspectives amounts to a thought-provoking examination of our species, our world, and our place within it.
Food Inc.
This next entry may spoil your carnivorous appetites for several days, weeks, or maybe even months, but it is an important watch. The 'modern-meat-packing' documentary was released in 2008 by filmmaker Robert Kenner.
American consumers were outraged by the documentary's shocking footage of unsanitary conditions and maltreatment of livestock. However, it is unclear whether Food Inc. led to legislation or any other form of tangible change. The film was nominated for an Academy Award but lost to The Cove.
Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room
This 2005 documentary tackles the fall of the once-mighty and wealthy Enron Corporation. The company took measures that were both unthinkable and irreversible to protect its gargantuan profits and remain relevant in the American energy-trading industry.
Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room is finely put together with spell-binding interviews and insider footage, which earned it a nomination for Best Documentary Feature, but it was beat out by the formidable March of the Penguins.
Startup.com
Startup.com is a more upbeat film compared to the majority of business-related documentaries, tracing the simultaneously invigorating and overstressing assent of a dot-com start-up during the internet revolution period of the late 90s-early 00s.
Filmmakers take an intimate look into the duo behind govWorks.com, a website where citizens can directly interact with local government, after raising tens of millions of dollars of funding. The relationship between two childhood friends quickly strains under the high-stakes pressure of building what they envision as a billion-dollar company.