8 Documentaries That Literally Changed The World

Film-making is a powerful tool. Often, stories are used as a way of discovering some kind of higher revelation about the nature of society, or the world at large. But documentary film-making is something else entirely. For a start, it's deeply rooted in truth. Regardless of whether or not certain documentaries exaggerate or fabricate, they are still intrinsically linked to reality. Perhaps they're based on a real story, or they're a response to a real piece of legislation. In general, the people are real, their reactions are real, and the subject matter is real too. It's this closeness to reality that allows documentary film-making to have a powerful, tangible effect on the real world, whether that's saving lives or vastly improving them. This is something that fictional, blockbuster film-making simply can't do. From freeing someone wrongly imprisoned for murder to shifting the course of several intimidatingly powerful companies, here are the documentaries that quite literally changed the world.