Theoretically, all independent documentary films can have a second or third part to them once the first version is released. Just like television documentaries and so-called reality television programs documentary films can easily be broken down in a chapter-like series or a sequential, multi-version episodic product. HBO, PBS, ESPN, CNN, and even Netflix have all aired documentary films in multiple succeeding parts or a television documentary program broken up in a series distributed as episodes airing in a given season. Documentaries in essence are long, continuous running storylines of a nonfictional subject matter captured loosely and vividly on camera. Filmmakers and producers of such nonfiction content are compelled to drive a clear story through film delivery in the most concise way envisioned and creatively documented for a targeted audience. Hours and hours of unused material is inevitable in the documentary filmmaking journey. Archival material, audio soundbites, captured footage, and long durations of interview clips are bound to happen in overabundance which leaves a lot of good (and sometimes great) stuff on the proverbial cutting room floor during post-production. Whether for marketing purposes or clear producer discretion a story-driven focus motivates a production team to construct a documentary film in a nice, clean edited version of a single piece of product or an ongoing series/multi-part, episodic product. Ken Burns’ landmark 1990 PBS documentary television programming Civil War was broadcasted in nine episodes ranging in about two hours each for five consecutive nights.

What makes a documentary an ongoing piece or a single film narrative beyond producer’s discretion? Besides, whether targeted audiences demand more material of the given documentary it’s all about what can sell based on a film’s theme. Selling in this sense is not necessarily monetary in pursuit. Oscar-nominated documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer delivered his initial award-wining film, The Art of Killing, a 2012 documentary about individuals who participated in the Indonesian killings of 1965–66. Two years later he followed up the film with the documentary, The Look of Silence, a companion piece on the same subject matter. The second part or follow-up version to his earlier film is that clearly Oppenheimer had plenty of material to work with. He can sell his original film story in new themes, broader perspective, and lucid summation in a second-part version. In it Oppenheimer and his team saw a flowing theme worthy enough of angling and constructing a whole new film with unused footage material. This is central to the sojourn of the documentary film expedition where a director and/or producer is pulled into a single, specific world with tons of potential storylines to capture and characters to follow. Oftentimes, most documentary film teams delve into such a world initially not clear what they will lucidly capture for an end product. With the pressure of taking footage material into a clean, edited, and marketable version of a full-length feature film with a running time between seventy minutes through two hours all material shot and sought will most likely not make it in the finished product readying itself for the marketplace and viewing public.

Part II of a documentary film may well be motivated beyond marketing purposes. New evidence to a crime documentary or science documentary may necessitate a continuance for a follow-up production to the first completed film. Updates in character development and storylines years later may contribute to the overall theme of a film worth expanding on by documentary filmmakers either to address a social issue, ground a moral theme, or substantiated earlier stated facts. Occasions of rebuttals to a documentary film may find its way toward another filmmaking team to debate and contrast what a single documentary film presented. For example, The Great Global Warming Swindle was a polemical documentary on climate change rebutting claims of the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. One can see that a “Part II”-like version was initiated since a lot of the subject matter continued and extended the narrative of the first film. The documentaries: Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore and Michael Moore Hates America and Michael & Me all came out of reaction to Michael Moore’s two acclaimed documentary films, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. The independent feature FrackNation was documentary film created by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney that counter-argues the claims and focus of Josh Fox’s Academy-Award nominated film, Gasland. Only to which, Josh Fox returned with a part two version of his own film three years later in Gasland II. Moreover, two seasoned documentary filmmakers each embarked on a feature film on cyclist Lance Armstrong and and his 2012 doping scandal relatively at the same time—Alex Gibney’s 2013 film, The Armstrong Lie and Alex Holmes’ 2014 film, Stop at Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story. Clearly both films are the case of a part two version in the making simultaneously and oblivious to both filmmakers. Yet, both films went on to reach a wide international audience, garner numerous awards, distinctions and acclaim through a successful festival and television run. While both Gibney and Holmes interviewed the same characters in the Lance Armstrong saga both astonishingly approached the subject matter differently yet honestly. Holmes tracks down some of Lance Armstrong’s cohorts and sworn enemies who knew him at the peak of his success to uncover the biggest fraud in sport history furthering the theme of his documentary of an athlete bent on winning at all costs. In 2009, Alex Gibney set out to film a documentary on the cyclist’s comeback year after a four-year retirement from the sport. Three years later, on October 2012, a doping investigation led to Lance Armstrong’s lifetime ban from competition and the stripping of his seven Tour de France titles. Thus, the documentary was shelved. This prompted Armstrong to go back to Gibney to set the record straight about his career. Alex Gibney’s film treats Lance Armstrong as a tragic hero that fell to his own hubris.

Rarely, do documentaries end with a second part needed to establish the focus, theme, and morale to the story of the initial movie. In the span of three decades the film team of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky produced a documentary film trilogy of Paradise Lost that documents the infamous West Memphis Three murder cases. Respectively released on HBO in the years 1996, 2000, and 2011 the trilogy was a clear case of a documentary film team following characters and storylines of a given topic followed up with new evidence, changes, and updates to the specific characters and their storylines. Since, the West Memphis Three legal cases continued to be a pending court case a documentary film story that was delivered in three parts motivated the filmmaking duo to keep going something that compels most—if not all–documentarians out in the field. With the average time span of independent documentary film production ranging from two through ten years in making rarely do the first part of documentary films get completed prematurely.