93rd Academy Awards: Doc, Doc, who's there? A deep dive into the feature nominees

by Josh Bierman

I’m sure I’m not the only contributor/reader on this site who upon Oscar nomination morning wakes to find they’ve already seen just about every above the line nominee. Or if they haven’t, they come to terms with having to sit through Hillbilly Elegy after managing to avoid it for months. 

This season, like in so many past ones, it’s those below the line nominees that I spent time getting to know after the nomination announcement. I didn't expect to be so far behind on Best Documentary Feature ahead of nomination morning...

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Where are the docs in the technical categories?

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Almost two weeks after the Oscar nominations and one snub still stings: Welcome to Chechnya in Visual Effects. After making it in the shortlist, hopes were high that its life-saving use of facial replacements could catapult it to Oscar history as the first documentary to be nominated in this category, one largely dominated by Hollywood blockbusters (which were mostly missing last year) Only a year like 2020 could have brought a documentary film close to this category and it still did not happen. 

This begs the question: why are documentaries routinely ignored in categories outside of Documentary Feature? 

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The Academy Shortlists Have Arrived

As most of you reading probably know, there are nine Oscar categories that go through rounds of voting rather than just one ballot for the nominations. So each year the Academy narrows the field in these nine categories a few weeks to a month before the final nominations. Anything not listed below is no longer possible as a nominee in that specific category, since the ballots will only include these choices. (Curiously they don't do this winnowing process with one of the specialized categories, Best Animated Feature, so all 27 eligible films in that category are still possible as nominees.) The Academy will vote on the actual nominations between March 5th and March 10th and the Oscar nominatitons will be announced on March 15th, 2021. Then we'll have an unusually long wait for Oscar night on April 25th, 2021.

Here are the shortlists... 

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Oscars: 238 eligible documentaries — but what will make the shortlist?

By Glenn Dunks

18 of the staggering 238 hopefuls in Best Documentary Feature

Yes, you read that right. Two-hundred and thirty-eight (238!) films have qualified for this year’s Best Documentary Feature category. That’s up from the previous record number of submissions, a lowly and pathetic 170 in 2017. Pfft. From Acasă, My Home (which we reviewed here just last week) to Zappa, the full list is available on the Academy’s website.

This incredible high figure can of course be partly explained by the extended eligibility period. After all, documentaries are among the only breed of movie that doesn’t necessarily get slotted in seasons; there’s always new, great content getting released every week either through theatrical or digital platforms...

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Interview: Bao Nguyen on "Be Water" and the cultural resonance of Bruce Lee

by Nathaniel R

Bao Nguyen's Be Water premiered on ESPN this past summer and has touched a lot of people since then. It's a lovely meditation on Bruce Lee's life, his relationships to both the East and the West, and the meaning of his legacy and activism. Be Water is one of 238 films eligible for the Oscar this year in Best Documentary Feature. We were thrilled to sit down with Bao Nguyen, over Zoom of course, to discuss his picture and the man and myth that is Bruce Lee.

Be Water was five years in the making, though things sped up considerably once ESPN signed on two years or so ago. Originally Be Water was supposed to come out around Bruce Lee's 80th birthday this past November but demand was so great for new movies during quarantine that the release was moved up to June. Nyugen, had a strange year (didn't we all!) but one recurring joy was hearing from and seeing photos of multigenerational families watching the film together. He describes the film as "connective tissue" and the parents and kids and grandparents could then discuss what Bruce Lee meant to them...

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