News and Commentary Sites
An incomparably useful website of current release news and festival reports.
News and commentary blogs from PBS’s independent documentary showcase.
International Documentary Association magazine
Magazine of the European Documentary Network.
Scholarly websites
Film Festival Research Network
A loose association of scholars working on film festivals. The website contains an extensive bibliography, syllabi, and resource links.
A film-of-the-month dialogue between scholars discussing contemporary documentaries.
Streaming and video sources
This compendium of various doc festivals provides an excellent streaming service of (mostly European) festival documentaries that otherwise do not see video distribution. They have moved to a subscription model, but individual films are also available for purchase, and often there are free streams as part of a featured event.
A subscription-based streaming site devoted to documentaries, some mainstream, some issue-docs, and some festival films. Their catalog is not yet very large, but there are some surprising films to discover.
Their site also has regular free streaming of documentaries that have broadcast.
This is obvious, but a surprising number of documentary gems appear on Netflix, both mainstream doc releases and more obscure fare. While the streaming site has given up on its former cinephile offerings in favor of television, its documentary holdings are still strong.
Shorts are another overlooked niche in the documentary distribution market, and it can be hard to hear of new shorts. Short of the Week has a channel dedicated to documentary.
Documentary film festivals