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Movies Like Cocaine Cowboys

If you loved Cocaine Cowboys's Documentary storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.

Top Picks

Take Your Pills
6.5

Take Your Pills

2018

In a hypercompetitive world, drugs like Adderall offer students, athletes, coders and others a way to do more -- faster and better. But at what cost?

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story
6.3

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story

2025

Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.

How to Make Money Selling Drugs
7.1

How to Make Money Selling Drugs

2012

Ten easy steps show you how to make money from drugs, featuring a series of interviews with drug dealers, prison employees, and lobbyists arguing for tougher drug laws.

John Candy: I Like Me
7.9

John Candy: I Like Me

2025

Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.

Voyeur
5.9

Voyeur

2017

Legendary journalist Gay Talese unmasks a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades. But his bombshell story soon becomes a scandal of its own.

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
6.0

Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood

2018

A deliciously scandalous portrait of unsung Hollywood legend Scotty Bowers, whose bestselling memoir chronicled his decades spent as sexual procurer to the stars.

Cameraperson
6.7

Cameraperson

2016

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

Whitney: Can I Be Me
6.5

Whitney: Can I Be Me

2017

The life and tragic death of Whitney Houston.

More Movies Like Cocaine Cowboys

Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy
6.8

Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy

2021

A cheap, powerful drug emerges during a recession, igniting a moral panic fueled by racism. Explore the complex history of crack in the 1980s.

Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski
7.5

Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski

2018

Artists in LA discover the work of forgotten Polish sculptor Stanislav Szukalski, a mad genius whose true story unfolds chapter by astounding chapter.

LA Originals
7.0

LA Originals

2020

Photographer Estevan Oriol and artist Mister Cartoon turned their Chicano roots into gritty art, impacting street culture, hip hop and beyond.

Icarus
7.7

Icarus

2017

While investigating the furtive world of illegal doping in sports, director Bryan Fogel connects with renegade Russian scientist Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov—a pillar of his country’s “anti-doping” program. Over dozens of Skype calls, urine samples, and badly administered hormone injections, Fogel and Rodchenkov grow closer despite shocking allegations that place Rodchenkov at the center of Russia’s state-sponsored Olympic doping program.

Cartel Land
7.2

Cartel Land

2015

In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as "El Doctor," shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona's Altar Valley—a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley—Tim "Nailer" Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.

Hot Girls Wanted
6.1

Hot Girls Wanted

2015

A first-ever look at the realities of the professional “amateur” porn world and the steady stream of 18-to-19-year old girls entering into it.

All That Breathes
6.9

All That Breathes

2022

Against the darkening backdrop of New Delhi's apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protecting one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the black kite.

Bigger Stronger Faster*
6.8

Bigger Stronger Faster*

2008

In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs? Director Christopher Bell explores America's win-at-all-cost culture by examining how his two brothers became members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream.

McQueen
7.5

McQueen

2018

Alexander McQueen's rags-to-riches story is a modern-day fairy tale, laced with the gothic. Mirroring the savage beauty, boldness and vivacity of his design, this documentary is an intimate revelation of McQueen's own world, both tortured and inspired, which celebrates a radical and mesmerizing genius of profound influence.

Gilbert
6.7

Gilbert

2017

The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.

Narco Cultura
7.0

Narco Cultura

2013

To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco-traffickers have become iconic outlaws and the new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto, nurturing a new American dream fueled by the war on drugs. Narco Cultura looks at this explosive phenomenon from within, exposing cycles of addiction to money, drugs, and violence that are rapidly gaining strength on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border

Heart of a Dog
6.5

Heart of a Dog

2015

Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.

Why These Movies Are Similar

These recommendations share core qualities with Cocaine Cowboys (2006): Documentary themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of Cocaine Cowboys.

See full details for Cocaine Cowboys (2006)

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