Unknown: Cave of Bones

Unknown: Cave of Bones (2023) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM, following paleoanthropologist Lee Berger deep into South Africa's Rising Star cave network. Down there lie the bones of Homo naledi — an ancient cousin of ours whose brain was barely the size of an orange.

Berger's team makes a startling argument: these creatures may have buried their dead in the dark and carved marks into the rock long before textbooks say any species but our own could manage it. Director Mark Mannucci shoots the descent like a thriller, the camera squeezing through gaps an adult can barely fit through, every meter earned. Across 93 minutes the simple question of what makes us human stops feeling simple at all. The claims are contested — fellow scientists push back hard — and that argument is exactly what makes it worth watching. Stream Unknown: Cave of Bones (2023) online on iFILM.