Autumn has always been a good season for documentaries, and this year there’s a run of great music ones to get through. Pulp are looking back over four decades on MUBI, Rick Rubin has sat Jay-Z down 30 years on from Reasonable Doubt, Oasis have put their reunion on screen, and Patrick Wolf is finally explaining where he went. Nearly all of these documentaries are about looking back, which says a lot about how much music loves its own past right now. The exceptions are Mac DeMarco, who spends his film writing a brand new song in a week with an Italo disco star, and Ninho, France’s biggest rapper, who is busy wondering whether he wants to carry on at all. Here are the ones worth your evening.
Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?
Garth Jennings has history with Pulp. He made the videos for “Help the Aged” in 1997 and “A Little Soul” the year after, and when he heard reunion rumours in 2022, he texted Jarvis Cocker on a whim, offering to film it. That cheek paid off. A first attempt fell apart when the money did, but the project came back to life once the band had recorded More, their first album in 24 years. What Do You Do For An Encore? centres on the biggest arena show of their career, with 20 songs and four decades of unseen archive, all narrated by Cocker himself. The title comes from the song “This Is Hardcore,” and the film is a fond, scrappy scrapbook of Sheffield misfits who somehow ended up defining an era. It’s been streaming on MUBI since 25 September.
JAŸ-Z In 8
No talking heads or glossy montages — just two men in a room. JAŸ-Z In 8 is Rick Rubin’s directing debut, an eight-part series of long, candid conversations with the rapper, shot in stark black and white. Rubin picks the songs, and Jay-Z unpicks them, from “Can’t Knock The Hustle” and “Brooklyn’s Finest” to “99 Problems,” “The Story Of O.J.,” and “4:44.” Along the way, he talks about his childhood, the writing process, and how his career has changed over time. Rubin is in no rush, and some of the best bits are when neither of them says anything at all; they just put a track on and listen to it the whole way through. You come away understanding a bit more about how Jay-Z writes. MUBI has it exclusively in the UK.
Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger
For years, the Gallagher brothers getting back in a room together felt like a running joke, and then, in 2025, it happened. Oasis: Don’t Look Back In Anger follows Liam and Noel through Oasis Live ’25 with rehearsal, backstage, and onstage access, plus their first joint interview in more than 20 years. The film was created by Peaky Blinders’s Steven Knight and directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, the pair behind Shut Up and Play the Hits and Meet Me in the Bathroom, and it spends as much time with the fans as the band, looking at what those songs mean to people across generations. After a world premiere at Venice, it became the highest-grossing documentary of the year at the UK and Irish box office. It’s now streaming on Disney+, and that version adds more of the brothers’ joint interview along with unseen performances of “D’You Know What I Mean?” and “Half The World Away.”
WOLF
WOLF opened this year’s Doc’n Roll Film Festival at the Barbican, a portrait of cult British musician Patrick Wolf guided by his longtime friend Tilda Swinton. Director Christian Cargill pieces together a lifetime of archive footage into something better described as a private diary, with Wolf speaking openly about identity, sexuality, bullying, addiction, and the upheavals that shaped his music. Cargill weaves in animation along the way, and Owen Pallett’s score suits Wolf’s world perfectly. It’s Cargill’s debut feature, which premiered at Sheffield DocFest. Rather than turning Wolf into a rock star myth, the doc lets him talk like he’s catching up with an old friend. If you missed the sold-out opening night, there’s a second Barbican screening with a director Q&A on 8 November.
Mac DeMarco: 7 Days in May
This one has been a decade in the making. Mac DeMarco name-checked Italo disco star Ryan Paris in Pitchfork’s Pepperoni Playboy documentary; Paris replied with a YouTube video in January 2016 inviting him to remix “Dolce Vita,” and their friendship eventually produced the songs “Simply Paradise” and “Still What I’m Looking For.” 7 Days in May follows Paris as he flies to Los Angeles to write a ballad with DeMarco. Over the course of a week, the filmmakers capture a collage of music, basketball, and pasta. Directed by Joseph Bird Jr and Raf Fellner, the doc runs to 89 minutes and had its world premiere at the ICA on 3 November. It’s about as warm and daft as you’d hope from two men who bonded over a 1983 hit that reached number five in the UK.
Ninho: Fame Ain’t Worth It
France’s biggest rapper spent 2025 seriously thinking about quitting. Ninho has had a decade of record-breaking hits and pulls in more than 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify, yet early in Ninho: Fame Ain’t Worth It, he admits to the camera that he hasn’t really wanted to rap for almost 10 years, and keeps going mostly for his fans. The Netflix documentary pieces together personal archive, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with his friends and family to work out how he got here, and how much the success has cost him. It’s rare to see a star make this kind of film in the middle of a career rather than at the end of one, and it’s all the more honest for it. It comes to Netflix worldwide on 4 November.
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