STEM Documentaries: Overview

This page highlights documentary films related to STEM. Most films require Penn students, faculty, and staff to log in to their library account with PennKey and password.

• Links connect with Franklin, the Penn Libraries catalog, and to films made available on YouTube or ad-supported services.
• Hover over title links to see a description of each film. Search Franklin by keyword and limit to Format: Video, for more.
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• Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021)
• The Atomic States of America (Don Argott & Sheena M. Joyce, 2012)
• Before the Flood (Fisher Stevens, 2016)
• Between the Folds (Vanessa Goulds, 2008)
• The Botany of Desire (Michael Schwarz, 2009)
• A Brief History of Time (Errol Morris, 1991) - until 3/15/2025
• Century of the Self (Adam Curtis, 2002)
• CERN: The Sense of Beauty (Valerio Jalongo, 2017)
• Cosmos: Solar System (2010)
• The Disruptors (Stephanie Soechtig, 2022)
• Do No Harm: The Opioid Epidemic (Harry Wyland, 2018)
• The Farthest: Voyager in Space (Emer Reynolds, 2017)
• The Immortalists (David Alvarado & Jason Sussberg, 2014)
• Into the Dark (Michael O. Snyder, 2020)
• Merchants of Doubt (Robert Kenner, 2014)
• Particle Fever (Mark A. Levinson & David E. Kaplan, 2013)
• Picture a Scientist (Ian Cheney & Sharon Shattuck, 2020)
• The Quantum Tamers: Revealing Our Weird and Wired Future (Derek Diorio, 2009) - until 12/14/2025
• The Secret Life of the Brain (David Grubin, 2001)>

• AlphaGo (Greg Kohs, 2017)
• Banking on Bitcoin (Christopher Cannucciari, 2016)
• BBS: The Documentary (Jason Scott, 2005)
• Billion Dollar Bully (Kaylie Milliken, 2018)
• Biometrics (Laurent Guyot, 2007) - until 12/14/2025
• The Creepy Line (M.A. Taylor, 2018)
• Deep Web (Alex Winter, 2015)
• Digital Disconnect (Jeremy Earp, 2018)
• Digital Memory Gatekeepers (Quentin Domart, 2013)
• Do You Trust This Computer? (Chris Paine, 2018)
• Glitch: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia (Salima Koroma, 2023)
• Google and the World Brain (Ben Lewis, 2013)
• Indie Game: The Movie (Lisanne Pajot & James Swirsky, 2011)
• The Internet’s Own Boy (Brian Knapperberger, 2014)
• The Nano Revolution (Takahiro Hamano & Tetsuya Itano, 2014)
• NOVA: Cyber_war threat (James Bamford & Chris Schmidt, 2015)
• Revenge Porn: The Cyberwar Against Women (Contessa Gayles, 2015)
• RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (Brett Gaylor, 2008)
• Silicon Cowboys (Jason Cohen, 2016)
• Terms and Conditions May Apply (Cullen Hoback, 2013)
• TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard (Simon Klose, 2013)
• The Triumph of the Nerds (Paul Sen, 1996)
• Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain (Alex Winter, 2018)
• We Are Legion: Story of the Hacktivists (Brian Knapperberger, 2012)

• America Betrayed (Leslie Cardé, 2008)
• Behemoth (Zhao Liang, 2015)
• BP: In Deep Water (James Brabazon, 2010)
• China's Ultimate Port (Steve R. Talley, 2007)
• Crapshoot: The Gamble with Our Wastes (Jeff McKay, 2004)
• Division Street (Eric Bendick, 2009)
• Engineering Disasters: Kentucky Sinkhole (2015)
• Ethicana (American Society of Civil Engineers, 2009)
• Horizon: How to Be an Astronaut (Simon Winchcombe, 2015)
• How Ships Grow (Lars-Olof Albert, 2014)
• Mad Electricity (Jeff Cole & Bruce Nash, 2008)
• NOVA: Nuclear Option (Miles O'Brien, 2017)
• NOVA: Operation Bridge Rescue (Joby Lubman, 2018)
• NOVA: Rise of the Robots (Terri Randall, 2017)
• NOVA: Treasures of the Earth: Metals (Terri Randall, 2016)
• Objectified (Gary Hustwit, 2014)
• The Rise and Fall of Nokia (Arto Koskinen, 2017)
• Singapore's Vegas (John Hyde & Jocelyn Little, 2010)
• The Sustainable City (Voi Senart, 2003)
• Who Killed the Electric Car? (Chris Paine, 2006)
• Zerograd (Karen Shakhnazarov, 1988)

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• Babies 1: Becoming You (Serena Davis & Helen Sage, 2018)
• Babies 2: Becoming Social (Serena Davis & Helen Sage, 2018)
• Babies 3: Becoming Independent (Serena Davis & Helen Sage, 2018)
• Breeding Cells (Anna Straube, 2009)
• The Child the Stork Brought Home (Gilian Goslinga-Roy, 2000)
• The Crime of the Century (Part 1) (Alex Gibney, 2021) - until 10/31/2024
• The Crime of the Century (Part 2) (Alex Gibney, 2021) - until 10/31/2024
• Do No Harm: The Opioid Epidemic (Harry Wyland, 2018)
• Drug$: The Price We Pay (Jonathan Marshall Thompson, 2018)
• Dying at Grace (Allan King, 2014) - until 3/15/2025
• The Electric Mind (Nadav Harel, 2010)
• The End of Medicine (Alex Lockwood, 2022)
• Ending Disease: The Stem Cell, Anti-Cancer T Cell, and Antibody Revolution in Medicine (Joe Gantz, 2019)
• Fièvres (Fevers) (Ariane Doublet, 2017)
• Fighting for Life (Terry Sanders, 2008)
• Fire in the Blood (Sut Jhally, 2013)
• The First Patient (Chip Duncan, 2018)
• The Forgotten Plague (Chana Gazit, 2015)
• Frontline: Being Mortal (Thomas Jennings, 2013)
• Health for Sale (Michele Mellara & Alessandro Rossi, 2007)
• The Immortalists (David Alvarado & Jason Sussberg, 2014)
• In Our Own Hands: How Patients Are Reinventing Medicine (Elizabeth Horn, 2020)
• It Is Not Over Yet (Louise Detlefsen, 2021)
• The Man with the Golden Cells (Florence Martin-Kessler, 2015)
• The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science (Ken Burns & Ewers Bros., 2018)
• Medicating Normal (Lynn Cunningham & Wendy Ractliffe, 2020)
• Money & Medicine (Roger Weisberg, 2012)
• Money-Driven Medicine (Andrew Fredericks, 2009)
• The Odds of Recovery (Su Friedrich, 2013)
• One Cut, One Life (Edward Pincus, 2014)
• Organs for Sale (Steen Jensen, 2004)
• Placebo (Abhay Kumar, 2014)
• Rocio (Dario Guerrero, 2022)
• Roots of Health (Sarah Holt et al, 2009)
• Sastun (Guido Verweyen, 2004)
• Selling Sickness (Catherine Scott, 2015)
• The Shaman's Apprentice (Miranda Smith, 2014)
• TED Talk: How Do We Heal Medicine? (Atul Gawande, 2013)
• Vital Signs: Conjoined Twins (CNN / Sanjay Gupta, 2017)
• White Coat Rebels (Greg Barker, 2021)
• Worlds Apart (Maren Grainger-Monsen & Julia Haslett, 2003)