Netflix has so many new additions each week that it's hard to keep track of what's worth watching but, hidden between three international drama series, the streamer has quietly added a must-watch documentary called The Quilters.
The Quilters was added to Netflix on Friday, May 16 on the same day as Korean drama Dear Hongrang, Spanish drama Rotten Legacy and Dutch drama Football Parents. So your Netflix algorithm may bury it for you, but trust me, it's well worth a watch (and not just because it's a short doc, clocking in at only 30 minutes).
As you can guess by the picture at the top of this article, The Quilters is about a quilting group in the South Central Correctional Center state prison of Missouri. They take donated material and turn them into quilts for foster children in neighboring counties.
(No, before you ask, you don't actually need to know anything about quilting, or even have an interest in it, to enjoy The Quilters).
When watching the doc I was struck by how it eschewed the expected themes and messages in favor of more personal stories. You often hear of prison groups doing work like this that helps local communities and trains inmates in useful skills — this isn't even the first Netflix documentary about it — and it's undeniable that it's important work to take place and to be documented.
But The Quilters manages to differentiate itself from others by focusing on its characters instead of the message. We meet Chill, who loves butterflies and creates some astounding-looking quilts; we meet Potter, the new kid in town who's quick to learn and help his seniors; we meet Fred, who's so caught up in his new skills that he makes a tragic mistake. In many of the people we meet, the transformative power of the quilting group isn't explicitly stated but is shown through their speech and testimony.
Doc creator Jenifer McShane compassionately defines her subjects not by the crime they committed — in only one case we actually hear what they're doing time for — but by their new life in prison. Tiny touches like people's introductory cards only stating their name and sentence makes this clear. These men aren't criminals but inmates and we create our understanding of them based on their craft and outlook, not on a decision made decades ago.
It's a very nuanced film to come out on Netflix of all places, home of endless true crime murder docs and crime dramas, but the streamer has been known to put out some really artistic documentaries from time to time as well. At the end of last year we saw a similar doc in Daughters, about four children of inmates as they prepare for a Daddy Daughter Dance, which hits similar themes to The Quilters in a different way.
We're only in May so I can't called The Quilters "the best documentary of 2025" but it's definitely one of my favorites of the year, and well worth a stream if you're interested.
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