Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
The Academy Award for Documentary Feature is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Special Awards to Kukan and Target for Tonight. They have since been bestowed competitively each year, with the exception of 1946. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive.
Winners and nominees
Following the Academy's practice, films are listed below by the award year. In practice, due to the limited nature of documentary distribution, a film may be released in different years in different venues, sometimes years after production is complete.1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1980 | - | - |
| 1980 | Murray Lerner | |
| 1980 | Agee | Ross Spears |
| 1980 | The Day After Trinity | Jon H. Else |
| 1980 | Front Line | David Bradbury |
| 1980 | ' | Bengt von zur Mühlen and Arthur Cohn |
| 1981 | - | - |
| 1981 | Genocide | Arnold Schwartzman and Rabbi Marvin Hier |
| 1981 | ' | Suzanne Bauman, Paul Neshamkin and Jim Burroughs |
| 1981 | Brooklyn Bridge | Ken Burns |
| 1981 | ' | Mary Benjamin, Susanne Simpson and Boyd Estus |
| 1981 | ' | Glenn Silber and Tete Vasconcellos |
| 1982 | - | - |
| 1982 | Just Another Missing Kid | John Zaritsky |
| 1982 | After the Axe | Sturla Gunnarsson and Steve Lucas |
| 1982 | Ben's Mill | John Karol and Michel Chalufour |
| 1982 | In Our Water | Meg Switzgable |
| 1982 | A Portrait of Giselle | Joseph Wishy |
| 1983 | - | - |
| 1983 | He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' | Emile Ardolino |
| 1983 | Children of Darkness | Richard Kotuk and Ara Chekmayan |
| 1983 | First Contact | Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson |
| 1983 | The Profession of Arms | Michael Bryans and Tina Viljoen |
| 1983 | Seeing Red | James Klein and Julia Reichert |
| 1984 | - | - |
| 1984 | The Times of Harvey Milk | Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen |
| 1984 | High Schools | Charles Guggenheim and Nancy Sloss |
| 1984 | In the Name of the People | Alex W. Drehsler and Frank Christopher |
| 1984 | Marlene | Karel Dirka and Zev Braun |
| 1984 | Streetwise | Cheryl McCall |
| 1985 | - | - |
| 1985 | Broken Rainbow | Maria Florio and Victoria Mudd |
| 1985 | Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo | Susana Blaustein Muñoz and Lourdes Portillo |
| 1985 | Soldiers in Hiding | Japhet Asher |
| 1985 | The Statue of Liberty | Ken Burns and Buddy Squires |
| 1985 | Unfinished Business | Steven Okazaki |
| 1986 | - | - |
| 1986 | Brigitte Berman | |
| 1986 | Down and Out in America | Joseph Feury and Milton Justice |
| 1986 | ' | David Bradbury |
| 1986 | ' | Kirk Simon and Amram Nowak |
| 1986 | Witness to Apartheid | Sharon I. Sopher |
| 1987 | - | - |
| 1987 | The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table | Aviva Slesin |
| 1987 | Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years/Bridge to Freedom 1965 | Callie Crossley and James A. DeVinney |
| 1987 | ' | John Junkerman and John W. Dower |
| 1987 | Radio Bikini | Robert Stone |
| 1987 | A Stitch for Time | Barbara Herbich and Cyril Christo |
| 1988 | - | - |
| 1988 | Marcel Ophüls | |
| 1988 | The Cry of Reason - Beyers Naudé: An Afrikaner Speaks Out | Robert Bilheimer and Ronald Mix |
| 1988 | Let's Get Lost | Bruce Weber and Nan Bush |
| 1988 | Promises to Keep | Ginny Durrin |
| 1988 | Who Killed Vincent Chin? | Renee Tajima-Peña and Christine Choy |
| 1989 | - | - |
| 1989 | Rob Epstein and Bill Couturié | |
| 1989 | Adam Clayton Powell | Richard Kilberg and Yvonne Smith |
| 1989 | ' | Vince DiPersio and William Guttentag |
| 1989 | For All Mankind | Al Reinert and Betsy Broyles Breier |
| 1989 | Judith Leonard and Bill Jersey |
1990s
| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1990 | - | - |
| 1990 | American Dream | Barbara Kopple and Arthur Cohn |
| 1990 | Berkeley in the Sixties | Mark Kitchell |
| 1990 | Building Bombs | Mark Mori and Susan Robinson |
| 1990 | Forever Activists: Stories from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade | Judith Montell |
| 1990 | ' | Robert Hillmann and Eugene Corr |
| 1991 | - | - |
| 1991 | In the Shadow of the Stars | Allie Light and Irving Saraf |
| 1991 | Death on the Job | Vince DiPersio and William Guttentag |
| 1991 | ' | Alan Raymond and Susan Raymond |
| 1991 | ' | Hava Kohav Beller |
| 1991 | Wild by Law | Lawrence Hott and Diane Garey |
| 1992 | - | - |
| 1992 | The Panama Deception | Barbara Trent and David Kasper |
| 1992 | ' | David Haugland |
| 1992 | Fires of Kuwait | Sally Dundas |
| 1992 | ' | Bill Miles and Nina Rosenblum |
| 1992 | ' | Margaret Smilow and Roma Baran |
| 1993 | - | - |
| 1993 | Susan Raymond and Alan Raymond | |
| 1993 | The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter | David Paperny and Arthur Ginsberg |
| 1993 | ' | Susan Todd and Andrew Young |
| 1993 | For Better or For Worse | David Collier and Betsy Thompson |
| 1993 | The War Room | D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus |
| 1994 | - | - |
| 1994 | Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders | |
| 1994 | Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter | Deborah Hoffmann |
| 1994 | D-Day Remembered | Charles Guggenheim |
| 1994 | Freedom on My Mind | Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford |
| 1994 | A Great Day in Harlem | Jean Bach |
| 1995 | - | - |
| 1995 | Anne Frank Remembered | Jon Blair |
| 1995 | The Battle Over Citizen Kane | Thomas Lennon and Michael Epstein |
| 1995 | Fiddlefest: Roberta Tzavaras and Her East Harlem Violin Program | Allan Miller and Walter Scheuer |
| 1995 | ' | Michael Tollin and Fredric Golding |
| 1995 | ' | Jeanne Jordan and Steven Ascher |
| 1996 | - | - |
| 1996 | When We Were Kings | Leon Gast and David Sonenberg |
| 1996 | ' | Susan W. Dryfoos |
| 1996 | Mandela | Jo Menell and Angus Gibson |
| 1996 | ' | Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson |
| 1996 | ' | Rick Goldsmith |
| 1997 | - | - |
| 1997 | The Long Way Home | Marvin Hier and Richard Trank |
| 1997 | 4 Little Girls | Spike Lee and Sam Pollard |
| 1997 | ' | Michael Paxton |
| 1997 | Colors Straight Up | Michèle Ohayon and Julia Schachter |
| 1997 | ' | Dan Gifford and William Gazecki |
| 1998 | - | - |
| 1998 | The Last Days | James Moll and Kenneth Lipper |
| 1998 | Dancemaker | Matthew Diamond and Jerry Kupfer |
| 1998 | ' | Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus |
| 1998 | ' | Robert B. Weide |
| 1998 | Regret to Inform | Barbara Sonneborn and Janet Cole |
| 1999 | - | - |
| 1999 | One Day in September | Arthur Cohn and Kevin Macdonald |
| 1999 | Buena Vista Social Club | Wim Wenders and Ulrich Felsberg |
| 1999 | Genghis Blues | Roko Belic and Adrian Belic |
| 1999 | On the Ropes | Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen |
| 1999 | Speaking in Strings | Paola di Florio and Lilibet Foster |
2000s
| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 2000 | - | - |
| 2000 | Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer | |
| 2000 | Legacy | Tod Lending |
| 2000 | Long Night's Journey into Day | Deborah Hoffmann and Frances Reid |
| 2000 | ' | Daniel Anker and Barak Goodman |
| 2000 | Sound and Fury | Josh Aronson and Roger Weisberg |
| 2001 | - | - |
| 2001 | Murder on a Sunday Morning | Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Denis Poncet |
| 2001 | Children Underground | Edet Belzberg |
| 2001 | ' | Deborah Dickson and Susan Froemke |
| 2001 | Promises | B.Z. Goldberg and Justine Shapiro |
| 2001 | War Photographer | Christian Frei |
| 2002 | - | - |
| 2002 | Bowling for Columbine | Michael Moore and Michael Donovan |
| 2002 | Daughter from Danang | Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco |
| 2002 | Prisoner of Paradise | Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender |
| 2002 | Spellbound | Jeffrey Blitz and Sean Welch |
| 2002 | Winged Migration | Jacques Perrin |
| 2003 | - | - |
| 2003 | The Fog of War | Errol Morris and Michael Williams |
| 2003 | Balseros | Carlos Bosch and Josep Maria Domenech |
| 2003 | Capturing the Friedmans | Andrew Jarecki and Marc Smerling |
| 2003 | My Architect | Nathaniel Kahn and Susan R. Behr |
| 2003 | The Weather Underground | Sam Green and Bill Siegel |
| 2004 | - | - |
| 2004 | Born into Brothels | Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski |
| 2004 | The Story of the Weeping Camel | Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni |
| 2004 | Super Size Me | Morgan Spurlock |
| 2004 | ' | Karolyn Ali and Lauren Lazin |
| 2004 | Twist of Faith | Kirby Dick and Eddie Schmidt |
| 2005 | - | - |
| 2005 | March of the Penguins | Luc Jacquet and Yves Darondeau |
| 2005 | Darwin's Nightmare | Hubert Sauper |
| 2005 | ' | Alex Gibney and Jason Kliot |
| 2005 | Murderball | Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro |
| 2005 | Street Fight | Marshall Curry |
| 2006 | - | - |
| 2006 | An Inconvenient Truth | Davis Guggenheim |
| 2006 | Deliver Us from Evil | Amy Berg and Frank Donner |
| 2006 | Iraq in Fragments | James Longley and John Sinno |
| 2006 | Jesus Camp | Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady |
| 2006 | My Country, My Country | Jocelyn Glatzer and Laura Poitras |
| 2007 | - | - |
| 2007 | Taxi to the Dark Side | Alex Gibney and Eva Orner |
| 2007 | No End in Sight | Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs |
| 2007 | ' | Richard Robbins |
| 2007 | Sicko | Michael Moore and Meghan O'Hara |
| 2007 | War/Dance | Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine |
| 2008 | - | - |
| 2008 | Man on Wire | Simon Chinn and James Marsh |
| 2008 | The Betrayal | Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath |
| 2008 | Encounters at the End of the World | Werner Herzog and Henry Kaiser |
| 2008 | The Garden | Scott Hamilton Kennedy |
| 2008 | Trouble the Water | Carl Deal and Tia Lessin |
| 2009 | - | - |
| 2009 | The Cove | Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens |
| 2009 | Burma VJ | Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller |
| 2009 | Food, Inc. | Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein |
| 2009 | The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers | Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith |
| 2009' | Which Way Home'' | Rebecca Cammisa |
2010s
| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 2010 | - | - |
| 2010 | Inside Job | Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs |
| 2010 | Exit Through the Gift Shop | Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz |
| 2010 | Gasland | Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic |
| 2010 | Restrepo | Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger |
| 2010 | Waste Land | Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley |
| 2011 | - | - |
| 2011 | Undefeated | T. J. Martin, Daniel Lindsay and Rich Middlemas |
| 2011 | Hell and Back Again | Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner |
| 2011 | If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front | Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman |
| 2011 | ' | Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky |
| 2011 | Pina | Wim Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel |
| 2012 | - | - |
| 2012 | Searching for Sugar Man | Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn |
| 2012 | 5 Broken Cameras | Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi |
| 2012 | The Gatekeepers | Dror Moreh, Philippa Kowarsky, and Estelle Fialon |
| 2012 | How to Survive a Plague | David France and Howard Gertler |
| 2012 | The Invisible War | Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering |
| 2013 | - | - |
| 2013 | 20 Feet from Stardom | Morgan Neville, Gil Friesen and Caitrin Rogers |
| 2013 | The Act of Killing | Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen |
| 2013 | Cutie and the Boxer | Zachary Heinzerling and Lydia Dean Pilcher |
| 2013 | Dirty Wars | Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill |
| 2013 | The Square | Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer |
| 2014 | - | - |
| 2014 | Citizenfour | Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky |
| 2014 | Finding Vivian Maier | John Maloof and Charlie Siskel |
| 2014 | Last Days in Vietnam | Rory Kennedy and Kevin McAlester |
| 2014 | The Salt of the Earth | Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and David Rosier |
| 2014 | Virunga | Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara |
| 2015 | - | - |
| 2015 | Amy | Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees |
| 2015 | Cartel Land | Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin |
| 2015 | The Look of Silence | Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen |
| 2015 | What Happened, Miss Simone? | Liz Garbus, Amy Hobby and Justin Wilkes |
| 2015 | ' | Evgeny Afineevsky and Den Tolmor |
| 2016 | - | - |
| 2016 | Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow | |
| 2016 | Fire at Sea | Gianfranco Rosi and Donatella Palermo |
| 2016 | I Am Not Your Negro | Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety and Hébert Peck |
| 2016 | Life, Animated | Roger Ross Williams and Julie Goldman |
| 2016 | 13th | Ava DuVernay, Spencer Averick and Howard Barish |
| 2017 | - | - |
| 2017 | Icarus | Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogan |
| 2017 | ' | Steve James, Mark Mitten and Julie Goldman |
| 2017 | Faces Places | Agnès Varda, JR and Rosalie Varda |
| 2017 | Last Men in Aleppo | Feras Fayyad, Kareem Abeed and Søren Steen Jespersen |
| 2017 | Strong Island | Yance Ford and Joslyn Barnes |
| 2018 | - | - |
| 2018 | Free Solo | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Evan Hayes, and Shannon Dill |
| 2018 | Hale County This Morning, This Evening | RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, and Su Kim |
| 2018 | Minding the Gap | Bing Liu and Diane Quon |
| 2018 | Of Fathers and Sons | Talal Derki, Ansgar Frerich, Eva Kemme, and Tobias N. Siebert |
| 2018 | RBG | Betsy West and Julie Cohen |
| 2019 | - | - |
| 2019 | American Factory | Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert and Jeff Reichert |
| 2019 | The Cave | Feras Fayyad, Kirstine Barfod and Sigrid Dyekjær |
| 2019 | The Edge of Democracy | Petra Costa, Joanna Natasegara, Shane Boris and Tiago Pavan |
| 2019 | For Sama | Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts |
| 2019' | Honeyland'' | Ljubo Stefanov, Tamara Kotevska and Atanas Georgiev |
Shortlisted finalists
Finalists for Best Documentary Feature are selected by the Documentary Branch based on a preliminary ballot. A second preferential ballot determines the five nominees. Prior to the 78th Academy Awards, there were twelve films shortlisted. These are the additional films that were shortlisted.| Year | Finalists |
| 1999 | Amargosa, American Movie, Beyond the Mat, ', Pop & Me, Smoke and Mirrors: A History of Denial, The Source |
| 2003 | The Agronomist, Bus 174, ', Heir to an Execution, Inheritance: A Fisherman's Story, Lost Boys of Sudan, My Flesh and Blood |
| 2004 | Home of the Brave, ', In the Realms of the Unreal, Riding Giants, The Ritchie Boys, Tell Them Who You Are, Touching the Void |
| 2005 | After Innocence, The Boys of Baraka, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Favela Rising, Mad Hot Ballroom, ', On Native Soil: The Documentary of the 9/11 Commission Report, Rize, 39 Pounds of Love, Unknown White Male |
| 2006 | Blindsight, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?, The Ground Truth, ', ', Sisters in Law,Storm of Emotions, The Trials of Darryl Hunt, An Unreasonable Man, The War Tapes |
| 2007 | ', Body of War, For the Bible Tells Me So, Lake of Fire, Nanking, Please Vote for Me, The Price of Sugar, ', The Rape of Europa, ' |
| 2008 | At the Death House Door, Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, Fuel, ', I.O.U.S.A., In a Dream, Made in America, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, Standard Operating Procedure, They Killed Sister Dorothy |
| 2009 | The Beaches of Agnès, Every Little Step, Facing Ali, Garbage Dreams, Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders, Mugabe and the White African, Sergio, Soundtrack for a Revolution, Under Our Skin, ' |
| 2010 | ', Enemies of the People, Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, The Lottery, Precious Life, Quest for Honor, This Way of Life, The Tillman Story, Waiting for "Superman", ' |
| 2011 | Battle for Brooklyn, Bill Cunningham New York, Buck, Jane's Journey, The Loving Story, Project Nim, ', Sing Your Song, Under Fire: Journalists in Combat, We Were Here |
| 2012 | ', Bully, Chasing Ice, Detropia, Ethel, The House I Live In, The Imposter, ', This Is Not a Film, The Waiting Room |
| 2013 | The Armstrong Lie, Blackfish, The Crash Reel, First Cousin Once Removed, God Loves Uganda, Life According to Sam, ', Stories We Tell, Tim's Vermeer, Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington |
| 2014 | Art and Craft, The Case Against 8, Citizen Koch, The Internet's Own Boy, Jodorowsky's Dune, Keep on Keepin' On, The Kill Team, Life Itself, The Overnighters, Tales of the Grim Sleeper |
| 2015 | Best of Enemies, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, He Named Me Malala, Heart of a Dog, The Hunting Ground, Listen to Me Marlon, Meru, 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, We Come as Friends, Where to Invade Next |
| 2016 | Cameraperson, Command and Control, The Eagle Huntress, Gleason, Hooligan Sparrow, The Ivory Game, Tower, Weiner, The Witness, Zero Days |
| 2017 | Chasing Coral, City of Ghosts, ', Human Flow, ', Jane, LA 92, Long Strange Trip, One of Us, Unrest |
| 2018 | Charm City, Communion, Crime + Punishment, Dark Money, The Distant Barking of Dogs, On Her Shoulders, Shirkers, The Silence of Others, Three Identical Strangers, Won't You Be My Neighbor? |
| 2019' | Advocate, The Apollo, Apollo 11, Aquarela, The Biggest Little Farm, The Great Hack, Knock Down the House, Maiden, Midnight Family, One Child Nation'' |
Superlatives
For this Academy Award category, the following superlatives emerge:- Most awards:
Simon Chinn 2 awards;
Jacques-Yves Cousteau 2 awards;
Walt Disney 2 awards ';
Rob Epstein 2 awards;
Marvin Hier 2 awards;
Barbara Kopple 2 awards
Process controversies
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, at the time the highest-grossing documentary film in movie history, was ruled ineligible because Moore had opted to have it played on television prior to the 2004 election. Previously, the 1982 winner Just Another Missing Kid had already been broadcast in Canada and won that country's ACTRA award for excellence in television at the time of its nomination.In 1990, a group of 45 filmmakers filed a protest to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences over a potential conflict of interest involving Block. They noted that Block was a member of the Documentary Steering Committee, which selects films as nominees, but he had a conflict of interest because his company Direct Cinema owned the distribution rights to three of the five films selected that year as nominees for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. They noted that Michael Moore's Roger & Me was omitted from the nominees, although it had been highly praised by numerous critics and was ranked by many critics as one of the top ten films of the year.
The controversy over Hoop Dreams exclusion was enough to have the Academy Awards begin the process to change its documentary voting system. Roger Ebert, who had declared it to be the best 1994 movie of any kind, looked into its failure to receive a nomination: "We learned, through very reliable sources, that the members of the committee had a system. They carried little flashlights. When one gave up on a film, he waved a light on the screen. When a majority of flashlights had voted, the film was switched off. Hoop Dreams was stopped after 15 minutes."
The Academy's executive director, Bruce Davis, took the unprecedented step of asking accounting firm Price Waterhouse to turn over the complete results of that year's voting, in which members of the committee had rated each of the 63 eligible documentaries on a scale of six to ten. "What I found," said Davis, "is that a small group of members gave zeros to every single film except the five they wanted to see nominated. And they gave tens to those five, which completely skewed the voting. There was one film that received more scores of ten than any other, but it wasn't nominated. It also got zeros from those few voters, and that was enough to push it to sixth place."
In 2000, Arthur Cohn, the producer of the winning One Day in September boasted "I won this without showing it in a single theater!" Cohn had hit upon the tactic of showing his Oscar entries at invitation-only screenings, and to as few other people as possible. Oscar bylaws at the time required voters to have seen all five nominated documentaries; by limiting his audience, Cohn shrank the voting pool and improved his odds. Following protests by many documentarians, the nominating system subsequently was changed.
Hoop Dreams director Steve James said "With so few people looking at any given film, it only takes one to dislike a film and its chances for making the short list are diminished greatly. So they've got to do something, I think, to make the process more sane for deciding the shortlist." Among other rule changes taking effect in 2013, the Academy began requiring a documentary to have been reviewed by either The New York Times or Los Angeles Times, and be commercially released for at least one week in both of those cities. Advocating for the rule change, Michael Moore said "When people get the award for best documentary and they go on stage and thank the Academy, it's not really the Academy, is it? It's 5% of the Academy."
The awards process has also been criticized for emphasizing a documentary's subject matter over its style or quality. In 2009, Entertainment Weeklys Owen Gleiberman wrote about the documentary branch members' penchant for choosing "movies that the selection committee deemed good because they're good for you... a kind of self-defeating aesthetic of granola documentary correctness."
In 2014, following the announcement of the shortlist of eligible feature documentary nominees, Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard publicly criticized Academy documentary voters after they excluded SPC's Red Army from the shortlist. "It's a sign of some really old people in the documentary area of the Academy. There's a lot of people who are really up in their years. It's shocking to me that that film didn't get in," Bernard said. Additionally, in his reporting of the Oscar documentary shortlist exclusions that year, The Hollywood Reporter′s Scott Feinberg reacted to Red Army's omission: "...no matter which 15 titles the doc branch selected, plenty of other great ones would be left on the outside. That is the case, most egregiously, with Gabe Polsky's Red Army, a masterful look at the role of sports in society and Russian-American relations".
In 2017, following the win of the eight-hour O.J.: Made in America in this category, the Academy announced that multi-part and limited series would be ineligible for the award in the future, even if they are not broadcast after their Oscar-qualifying release.
Acclaimed documentaries not nominated for Best Documentary Feature
- Dont Look Back
- Salesman
- Gimme Shelter
- Grey Gardens
- Gates of Heaven
- Stop Making Sense
- Shoah
- The Thin Blue Line
- Roger & Me
- Paris Is Burning
- Crumb
- Hoop Dreams
- The Celluloid Closet
- Grizzly Man
- Stories We Tell
- Life Itself
- Cameraperson
- Jane
- Won't You Be My Neighbor
- Apollo 11
- One Child Nation''
Documentaries with wins or nominations in other categories
No documentary feature has yet been nominated for Best Picture, although Chang was nominated in the "Unique and Artistic Production" category at the 1927/28 awards.
At the 3rd Academy Awards, prior to the introduction of a documentary category, With Byrd at the South Pole won the award for Best Cinematography, becoming the first documentary both to be nominated for and win an Oscar. Woodstock was the first documentary to be nominated for Best Film Editing while Hoop Dreams was the second. Woodstock is also the only documentary to receive a nomination for Best Sound Mixing. Honeyland became the first documentary to be nominated for both Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature. Prior to this, Waltz with Bashir became the first documentary and first animated film nominated for Best International Feature Film, although it was not nominated for Best Documentary Feature.
Seven documentaries have received nominations for Best Original Song: Mondo Cane, An Inconvenient Truth, Chasing Ice, Racing Extinction, , The Hunting Ground, and RBG.
Five documentary filmmakers have received honorary Oscars: Pete Smith, William L. Hendricks, D. A. Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman, and Agnès Varda.