Doc Corner: A to Z of the Longlist (Part 2)

By Glenn Dunks

The Academy may have released their shortlist for the Best Documentary Feature category, but we’re going to continue our A to Z skim through the 144-wide longlist as a means of playing catch-up before I do my annual best of documentary list for the year. Last time we looked at Shaunak Sen’s sorta-frontrunner All That Breathes, Paweł Łoziński’s EFA nominee The Balcony Movie, and Hà Lệ Diễm’s dark horse contender Children of the Mist.

DESCENDANT

This week, themes of racism, authoritarianism and war are a heady and heavy mix. All of them come with some sort of Oscar pedigree, although only one has made it to the next round of the Academy’s race to a nomination...

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Oscar Volley: Who will triumph in Best Documentary?

Team Experience is discussing the various Oscar categories. Here's Baby Clyde, Glenn Dunks, and Nick Taylor to discuss Best Documentary Feature.

Baby Clyde: Every December (Or more likely January) when I’m putting together my year end ‘Best of’ list, it’s always filled with docs and International Features. In recent years I’ve found them vastly more interesting than the prestige pics that get churned out by Hollywood and inevitably nominated for Best Picture (I’ll be coming to that soon). 2021 was no exception. Half of my Top 10 is made up of documentaries. Three of which have made it into this category.

The big, splashy, hit of the year Summer of Soul, cleared its biggest hurdle by making the list in the first place. (The sometimes snobby Doc branch is notorious for snubbing the crowd pleasers -- Remember the Won’t You Be My Neighbour? debacle).  Whilst I’m mostly delighted by the quality of the nominees it does leave me with a quandary... 

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Dorian Awards doubles up on its winners and 'Flee' takes four prizes

by Nathaniel R

The Society for LGBTQ Entertainment Journalists (a few of us at Team Experience are members) have voted. The society has chosen the following films, marked with a ★ as the best of 2021. Unfortunately, there was a LOT of doubling up on prizes rather than spreading the wealth: Ariana deBose, Jane Campion, and Pedro Almodóvar each won two awards and Flee won four times. Argh. You know how your host here feels about spreading the wealth. Anyway, can you feel the season wrapping up? Voting is underway and the last burst of awardage is over the next few days with the Oscars on the 27th. The winners are after the jump...

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Netflix triumphs all over the place at the 49th Annie Awards

by Nathaniel R

The 49th annual Annie Awards honoring animation in features, shorts, and television were held last night. While Raya and the Last Dragon led the nominations it went home empty-handed. The night's Best Animated Feature winner was Netflix and Sony's The Mitchells vs The Machines which took home 8 Annies in total. The Annie winner doesn't always line up with Oscar but it might. Disney's Encanto, which many pundits including us are predicting for the Oscar win, only won three prizes: Music, Character Animation, and Storyboarding. On the television side of the prizes, Netflix's Arcane was totally dominant winning an amazing nine trophies, a clean sweep of its nominations. Full list of winners is after the jump...

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Oscar Volley: Sobbing and Fuming at the "Best Animated Feature" nominees

Team Experience will be covering the various Oscar categories in the lead up to Oscar night. Here's Tim Brayton, Cláudio Alves, and Nathaniel R...

TIM BRAYTON: Hello Nathaniel and Cláudio! I'm thrilled to have the chance to discuss this year's slate of nominees for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars with you - animation is, I think it's fair to say, the most important form of filmmaking to me, and it's always fun to share it. Whether these exact five films represent animation at its peak, well, we'll just have to get into that as we go.

A quick recap for all of us and those of you reading, here are the five nominees: Encanto, a CGI feature produced by Walt Disney Animation; Raya and the Last Dragon, a CGI feature produced by Walt Disney Animation; Luca, a CGI feature produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by their corporate owners, the Walt Disney Company; The Mitchells vs the Machines, a CGI feature produced by Sony Animation, who sold it off to Netflix. And then literally on the other side of the world, Flee, a Danish documentary about politics and identity, largely consisting of interviews that were animated in a cartoony 2D style by Sun Creature Studio. So my point, obviously, is that this isn't exactly the most stylistically or industrially diverse set of nominees this category has ever produced...

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