Items11The creator’s order
  1. 1Walking with Cavemen (2003)Walking with Cavemen (2003) 7.6/10 on IMDbFirst aired Mar 27, 2003This BBC series is a docudrama rather than a straight documentary: actors in heavy prosthetic makeup, not computer animation, play our ancestors in reconstructed scenes, from Lucy, the famous upright ape, to modern humans. Robert Winston presents the British version; the US version uses narration…0
  2. 2Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb (2020)Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb (2020) 7.2/10 on IMDbReleased Oct 28, 2020An Egyptian team opens an untouched tomb from the 25th century BC at Saqqara and works out who was buried there. Kids get the thrill of a real dig: narrow shafts, painted walls and scores of mummified animals, including a lion cub. Meeting everyone from the dig director to the foreman shows that…0
  3. 3David Macaulay: Castle (1983)David Macaulay: Castle (1983) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased Jan 1, 1983David Macaulay, the illustrator behind the picture book Castle, visits real Welsh castles with co-host Sarah Bullen, while animated sequences show his imagined castle rising stone by stone. It dates from 1983 and looks it, but children who like building things tend to forget that once the drawings…0
  4. 4Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West (2002)Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West (2002) 7.2/10 on IMDbReleased Apr 20, 2002At about 40 minutes, this IMAX film is the shortest entry here and a smart choice for the youngest viewers. Jeff Bridges narrates as actors retrace the expedition to the Pacific and back, with river and mountain scenery made for the giant screen. Sacagawea and the Native Americans the party met…0
  5. 5Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) 6.8/10 on IMDbReleased Apr 10, 2003James Cameron goes back to the real Titanic wreck with actor Bill Paxton, and the cameras explore the ship inside as well as out. Kids who know the story from the 1997 movie get to see the actual rooms where it happened. Shot in 3D for IMAX, the theatrical version runs about an hour (a longer…0
  6. 6Endurance (2024)Endurance (2024) 7.5/10 on IMDbReleased Oct 14, 2024Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition of the 1910s and the 2022 search that finally found his lost ship run side by side, so the film cuts between a survival story and a treasure hunt. That back-and-forth keeps the suspense high for older kids, and the moment the wreck appears on the sea floor…0
  7. 7Paper Clips (2004)Paper Clips (2004) 7.3/10 on IMDbReleased Sep 8, 2004Middle schoolers in small-town Whitwell, Tennessee, set out to collect six million paper clips to grasp the number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and ended up housing them in a real German railcar. Because the story is told through kids close to the viewers' own age, it is one of the gentlest…0
  8. 8Mercury 13 (2018)Mercury 13 (2018) 7.0/10 on IMDbReleased Apr 8, 2018In 1961, thirteen women pilots passed every physical test in a private astronaut screening program, and then NASA said no. Jerrie Cobb, Wally Funk and others tell the story themselves, alongside archive footage, photographs and radio broadcasts. There is nothing upsetting here beyond the…0
  9. 9In the Shadow of the Moon (2007)In the Shadow of the Moon (2007) 8.0/10 on IMDbReleased Jan 19, 2007The moon landings told entirely by the astronauts who flew them, including Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Jim Lovell, with no narrator in between. Their humor and wonder land well with kids, and Aldrin's confession about what he did inside his spacesuit before stepping onto the moon gets…0
  10. 10Apollo 11 (2019)Apollo 11 (2019) 8.1/10 on IMDbReleased Mar 1, 2019Built entirely from archive footage, much of it newly found large-format 65mm film, with no narrator and no interviews. The picture is so sharp that the 1969 mission plays like an event unfolding rather than a history lesson, and the crowds watching the launch are half the fun. Rated G in the US,…0