Film
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
Alex Gibney's exposé pulls back the curtain on the Church of Scientology through eight defectors, including former insiders once close to the top, and the two most famous believers still inside. It's less about theology than psychology: the sunk-cost logic of belonging, the machinery of coercion, and how smart, determined people signed away their freedom one small commitment at a time. Sober, meticulous, quietly devastating.
If you liked this
Wild Wild Country2018
This Netflix docuseries about the Rajneeshpuram commune has the same DNA — a charismatic leader, ordinary people swept into an alternate reality, secretly recorded moral chaos. It's stranger and funnier than you'd expect, and just as damning.
But Six episodes is a lot of runtime for one group's rise and fall; the middle stretch sags.

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath2016no page yet
Made by an actual Scientology defector, this series picks up almost exactly where Going Clear leaves off, with victims naming names and describing the Church's retaliation tactics in granular, furious detail.
But It's angrier and less polished than Gibney's film — advocacy journalism more than cinema, and it repeats itself across seasons.
The Vow2020
A modern-day cult unfolds in real time as members secretly film their own recruitment into NXIVM. Watching true believers slowly wake up mid-series is genuinely unsettling to sit through.
But It's a slow-burn sprawled across two seasons; some viewers find the access-driven structure indulgent and meandering.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Marjoe1972
Both films study manufactured belief performed for profit — Marjoe shows the machinery from inside one con man's act, decades before Gibney scaled the same trick up to institutional, litigious size.
This Oscar-winning documentary follows a child evangelist turned professional revivalist who lets cameras backstage to show exactly how he manufactures religious ecstasy for cash. It's the blueprint for everything Going Clear investigates decades later.
But The film stock and pacing feel their age, and it's a smaller, quieter story than a global organisation like Scientology.

More like this (8)
Holy Hell2016
A former member filmed his own cult from the inside for twenty years and turned the footage into this documentary. The intimacy of that access is unlike anything else here.
But The home-video aesthetic is rough, and the story stays narrow — one group, one filmmaker's very personal reckoning.

The Master2012
Paul Thomas Anderson's drama, loosely inspired by Hubbard himself, swaps documentary rigor for psychological intensity. Philip Seymour Hoffman's guru is magnetic in exactly the way real cult leaders are described as being.
But It's deliberately opaque and offers no answers — a mood piece rather than an exposé, which can frustrate viewers wanting facts.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple2006no page yet
The original American cult catastrophe, told through survivor testimony and Jim Jones's own recordings. It shows exactly how Going Clear's small compromises can end somewhere unthinkable and irreversible.
But It's grim in a way Going Clear never quite is — this one ends in mass death, not just broken families.
Prophet's Prey2015no page yet
Another look at manufactured devotion, this time inside Warren Jeffs's FLDS church. Investigative and patient, with the same eye for institutional cowardice that lets abuse continue unchecked.
But The subject matter around underage marriage is disturbing even by this genre's standards — go in warned.
Taxi to the Dark Side2008
Gibney's Oscar-winning look at American torture in the War on Terror shares Going Clear's real subject: how institutions get ordinary people to do terrible things and call it necessary.
But It's a harder watch — political rather than personal, and the subject is torture, not belief.

Waco2018
A dramatized miniseries about the Branch Davidian siege, showing how a standoff between a fringe religious group and the government spirals past the point of return for everyone involved.
But It fictionalizes real trauma with movie-star faces, which some viewers find distasteful given how recent the events remain.

The Wave2008
Going Clear explains how ordinary adults get pulled into extreme belief through interview and testimony; The Wave stages the identical process live, letting you watch the mechanism take hold in real time instead of after the fact.
A German teacher runs a week-long classroom experiment in authoritarianism that spirals horribly out of control. Fiction, not documentary, but it dramatizes the exact psychological hooks Going Clear describes secondhand.
But It's a foreign-language film, and its high-school setting can feel like lower stakes than a global church with real casualties.

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey2022
Same anatomy of coercive religion and celebrity-adjacent leadership as Going Clear, but told in a pulpier true-crime register — proof the same story becomes either sober prestige documentary or lurid streaming binge depending entirely on who's telling it.
A trashier, glossier true-crime docuseries about Warren Jeffs's FLDS church, with archival sermons, survivor interviews, and the tabloid pacing Going Clear studiously avoids in favor of restraint.
But It leans into sensationalism and dramatic reenactment in ways Gibney's film never would; some will find the tone tasteless.

People
Cast
Paul HaggisSelf - Interviewee
Jason BegheSelf - Interviewee
Alex GibneyNarrator (voice)
Lawrence WrightSelf - Interviewee
Sherry StringfieldSara Northrup (voice)
Katie HolmesSelf (archive footage)
Nancy CartwrightSelf (archive footage)
Kirstie AlleySelf (archive footage)
Karen BlackSelf (archive footage)
Jenna ElfmanSelf (archive footage)
Isaac HayesSelf (archive footage)
Kelly PrestonSelf (archive footage)
Directing
- Alex GibneyDirector
Writing
- Lawrence WrightNovel
- Alex GibneyWriter
Production
- Jacqui LewisAssociate Producer
- Lauren WolfAssociate Producer
- Sheila NevinsExecutive Producer
- Alex GibneyProducer
- Kristen VaurioProducer
- Lawrence WrightProducer
Recommended by
Wild Wild Country, Tickled, Behind the Curve, The Vow, Holy Hell, Marjoe, The Master, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, Dark Side of the Ring, Jesus Camp, The Unknown Known, Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, Bowfinger, Zero Days, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer