Short attention spans, schmort attention spans: Epically long documentaries You Can See Everything and Musk are drawing moviegoers to theaters in surprising numbers. They’re deep dives stretching to the three-hour mark and beyond, delving into highly topical, nerve-touching subject matter. The former is a warts-and-all hangout with contemptible Theranos healthcare founder Elizabeth Holmes before her incarceration for fraud, and the latter details the life and politics of trillionaire SpaceX/Tesla/Twitter/etc. guy Elon Musk.

Maybe the formula for documentary success is simple: Really really long profiles of incorrigible assholes apparently stir the public’s interest. That’s especially true for You Can See Everything, which capitalized on significant word-of-mouth buzz with an impressive $15 million opening weekend, among the highest ever for nonfiction films. Musk hasn’t earned nearly as much in ticket sales, but it’s similarly high on the list of water-cooler topics, considering it’s about the richest man in the world and one of the zeitgeist’s villains du jour.

So in a time when lengthy narrative features are met with increasingly weary sighs — the last Avatar was what, two weeks long? And we fully expect Avengers: Doomsday to be even longer, right? — the irony that nonfiction epics are earning notable returns is compelling. But those two films aren’t the first docs to test attention spans with detailed examinations of real-life events, of course. Here are eight of the most epic documentaries ever made, which promise to reward your time with their enlightening observations:

• Let’s start with the film that’s so very Right Now: Nathan Fielder (The Curse) and Joshua Oppenheim’s (Primetime) brain-bending meta-doc hangout with Holmes in the days before she went to prison in 2023. It offers quite the pairing: Holmes, a notorious figure for cashing in after falsely claiming that her company Theranos had developed a revolutionary blood testing method, has doubled down on her lies so many times they’ve become exponential; and Fielder warped reality with acclaimed quasi-documentary series The Rehearsal. So the film inevitably wrestles with the core elements of truth itself – and might become the first documentary to earn a best picture Oscar nomination.

  Time commitment: 2 hours and 54 minutes

  Read more about You Can See Everything

• Director Alex Gibney has quite the track record for profiling For Lack Of A Better Word “Controversial” public figures, dating back to Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, and many others. His examination of Elon Musk began as a regular-sized film in 2023, then ballooned as the trillionaire wormed his way into the political sphere by backing Donald Trump and spearheading DOGE, and all that. Musk responded to the film’s “unvarnished” take on his character by calling Gibney “a douche,” surprising no one. Surely a fascinating movie, but the tradeoff is, you have to spend four hours with Elon Musk.

  Time commitment: 3 hours and 55 minutes

  Read more about musk

• Famous for being a referential plot point in Annie Hall, Marcel Ophuls peers insightfully into the relationship between the French and German governments during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Also famously, the film was banned in France for revealing the difficult truth that said relationship was collaborative. The film earned an Oscar nomination and has since become one of the most celebrated docs about WWII.

  Time commitment: 4 hours and 26 minutes

  Read more about the sorrow and the pity

• A token theatrical run for this 2016 marathon of a documentary — helmed by Ezra Edelman under ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 banner — found this Mariana-deep dive on O.J. Simpson earning an Oscar nod and win, then cut up into five parts for TV. It details Simpson’s life, trial for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, and the myriad cultural implications of said ordeal. It landed Emmy and Peabody awards too, and prompted a new rule that excludes multipart films from Oscar contention. An absorbing, fascinating and overall thorough doc.

  Time commitment: 7 hours and 47 minutes

  Read more about o.j.: made in america

• “Shoah” is the Hebrew word referencing The Holocaust, and French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann addresses the tragedy by interviewing survivors, perpetrators and observers of atrocities committed by the Nazis in Polish concentration camps during World War II. Strengthening its unofficial status as a companion piece to The Sorrow and the Pity, Marcus Ophuls praised the film, which won a BAFTA for best documentary. Roger Ebert praised it for being “an act of witness.” It’s considered one of the best docs ever made.

  Time commitment: 9 hours and 26 minutes

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• Despite the impressive breadth and girth of Julia Loktev’s story about Russian journalists trying to do their jobs during the run-up to the war in Ukraine, this 2024 doc flew under the radar, and surprisingly failed to land an Oscar nod. Loktev spends considerable time with young female reporters working for one of their country’s only remaining independent outlets as Vladimir Putin attempts to squash free speech prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. My Undesirable Friends built up enough credibility to lure in Meryl Streep and Snowden director Laura Poitras as executive producers for the equally lengthy and ambitious 2026 follow-up, My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile.

  Time commitment: 5 hours and 24 minutes for Part I, 5 hours and 55 minutes for Part II

  stream My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow

• British director Peter Watkins’ 1987 doc is a curiosity of sorts; its status as the longest non-experimental film ever made is countered by the irony that few people have even seen it, and it remains inaccessible to the public. Filmed during the Cold War, the film is considered a “pacifist” doc that traverses continents to interview average citizens about education, nuclear weapons, the media and more. It’s also famously self-analytical, prompting viewers to consider how the film itself was made. Sounds fascinating; too bad its inaccessibility renders it a footnote.

  Time commitment: 14 hours and 33 minutes

• Here’s where we cheat a little to include a series of documentaries about the same topic (and no, this doesn’t take us down the slippery slope to proclaim the Marvel Cinematic Universe one really really really long movie, you maniacs). This is arguably late director Michael Apted’s life’s work, having helmed eight out of 10 films — the first by Paul Almond and the latest by Asif Kapadia — that revisit the same British people every seven years to catch up on their life stories. The project began with 1964’s Seven Up! when the subjects were seven years old, and continued with the 2026’s 70 Up. Baseline, a fascinating sociological study; also, one of the most impressive and ambitious projects in nonfiction film history.

  Time commitment: 16 hours and 58 minutes for all 10 films

  Read more about seven up!

• An impressive act of activist journalism, the three Paradise Lost documentaries — 1996’s Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, 2000’s Paradise Lost 2: Revelations ,and 2011’s Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory — follow the story of the West Memphis Three, a trio of young men incarcerated for murders they almost certainly didn’t commit. (Yes, we’re cheating again.) Directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky revisited the saga over the years as it developed, presenting compelling observations leading viewers to believe that the three accused were being railroaded by their community due to their status as social outsiders. These are some of the best movies of any kind you’ll likely ever see, period.

  Time commitment: 6 hours and 41 minutes for all three films

  Read more about Paradise lost: the child muirders at robin hood hills

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.