![\"A](\"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-variety-2020\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIn nearly a century of Oscars, not a single documentary has been nominated for best picture. But that shouldn\u2019t be the case.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile a documentary can win its own Oscar, reshape the cultural conversation and become one of the defining films of its era, these nonfiction feature films have been excluded from the top category meant to honor the year\u2019s best filmmaking. When the Academy expanded the Best Picture lineup from five to 10 after the snub of \u201cThe Dark Knight\u201d (2008), the press release led with the possibility of a documentary getting recognized. That has yet to happen \u2026 perhaps until now?<\/p>\n
\n\tThat assumption is finally being tested this season with \u201cYou Can See Everything,\u201d Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim\u2019s nonfiction sensation about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Acclaim and box office success are raising the possibility that a documentary could finally break one of the Academy\u2019s longest-standing barriers. If it earns a nomination, the achievement would be historic. But it would also raise an uncomfortable question: Why did it take this long?<\/p>\n
\n\tTo celebrate this potential historic nomination, Variety is ranking the 20 films that should have received a best picture nomination in the past 40 years.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe films mentioned here span genres, styles and subjects, from the pursuit of an NBA dream to a high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers, from a confrontation with Indonesia\u2019s history of mass killing to a real-time account of Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations.<\/p>\n
\n\tYou can blame the Academy at large for some of these omissions; others tie directly to the Documentary Branch itself, which snubbed many of them in its own category.<\/p>\n
\n\tIf \u201cYou Can See Everything\u201d finally breaks through, it will undoubtedly have earned its place in history. But it should not have been the first. Many others from this very year could also be deemed worthy, such as \u201cOnce Upon a Time in Harlem\u201d and \u201cNaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRead the list below.<\/p>\n
\n\tHonorable mentions: \u201cAn Inconvenient Truth\u201d (2006); \u201cSenna\u201d (2010); \u201cThe Act of Killing\u201d (2012); \u201cApollo 11\u2033 (2019)<\/p>\n
\tDaughters (2024)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of Sundance Institute\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tAngela Patton and Natalie Rae\u2019s \u201cDaughters\u201d follows four girls preparing for a father-daughter dance inside a Washington, D.C., prison as part of a fatherhood program Patton helped build.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe filmmakers\u2019 choice to focus on the girls\u2019 anticipation, anger and longing is its strongest element. It carries the film toward a dance sequence of almost unbearable tenderness.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt won both the Audience Award and the Festival Favorite prize at Sundance, then made the documentary shortlist only to miss the nomination at the 2025 ceremony. Few films that year said more about love under impossible conditions.<\/p>\n
\tMan on Wire (2008)<\/p>\n
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\n\tJames Marsh\u2019s \u201cMan on Wire\u201d reconstructs Philippe Petit\u2019s 1974 high-wire walk between the World Trade Center towers. Through interviews, archival footage and recreations, Marsh builds a structure as a model for any good movie heist.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cMan on Wire\u201d won the documentary Oscar at the 2009 ceremony, and its success lives on, demonstrating how effectively a nonfiction film could deliver the pleasures of a caper.<\/p>\n
\tO.J.: Made in America (2016)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: ESPN\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThere are strong feelings about whether or not Ezra Edelman\u2019s Oscar winner is, in fact, a documentary feature, but it\u2019s included nonetheless. <\/p>\n
\n\tEdelman\u2019s nearly eight-hour \u201cO.J.: Made in America\u201d is an expansive examination of race, celebrity, policing and the American justice system, using the life of O.J. Simpson as a lens through which to understand the country\u2019s social and cultural divisions. What begins as a portrait of an athlete becomes a sweeping account of Los Angeles and the forces that shaped one of the most consequential public dramas of the modern era.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe documentary feature Oscar winner\u2019s format also exposed the boundaries of the category. Its recognition prompted renewed scrutiny of how the Academy treats multipart nonfiction projects, contributing to subsequent eligibility changes concerning episodic work.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhatever the debate over its classification, the filmmaking is extraordinary. Its scope exceeds that of most narrative features.<\/p>\n
\tWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor? (2018)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Everett Collection \/ Everett Colllection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tMorgan Neville\u2019s portrait of television icon Fred Rogers became the highest-grossing biographical documentary of its time and became a sensation for all of us who grew up with the prolific figure.<\/p>\n
\n\tRather than canonize its subject, Oscar winner Neville (\u201c20 Feet From Stardom\u201d) examines the radical patience behind \u201cMister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood\u201d and the quiet conviction that children deserved to be taken seriously. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe film made the documentary shortlist but, shockingly, missed a nomination at the 2019 ceremony, a snub that still stings.<\/p>\n
\n\tFew films that year moved audiences so completely, in any category.<\/p>\n
\tFlee (2021)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of Neon\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tJonas Poher Rasmussen\u2019s \u201cFlee\u201d uses animation to tell the story of Amin, an Afghan refugee who reveals the full extent of his childhood and his journey to safety. The decision to use the animation medium for the testimony allows Amin to revisit traumatic memories while preserving his anonymity, creating a visual language for experiences that would be difficult to reconstruct. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cFlee\u201d made Oscar history by becoming the first film nominated for documentary feature, international feature and animated feature in the same year. It lost in all three categories, and best picture remained out of reach. <\/p>\n
\n\tRasmussen\u2019s film is a reminder that nonfiction is not confined to one visual language or storytelling tradition. <\/p>\n
\tThe Look of Silence (2014)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Getty\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tMany will argue I chose the wrong Joshua Oppenheimer film, and that \u201cThe Act of Killing\u201d is more worthy of a spot than its companion piece. That a filmmaker\u2019s work can spark such a debate is itself a mark of genius.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe Look of Silence\u201d approaches Indonesia\u2019s 1965-66 mass killings through an optometrist whose brother was murdered during the violence. Oppenheimer resists the conventions of a historical expos\u00e9, allowing pauses and glances to communicate what his subjects refuse to say. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe film landed a documentary feature nomination but lost to \u201cAmy.\u201d <\/p>\n
\tCameraperson (2016)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tKirsten Johnson spent decades as a documentary cinematographer, filming subjects in war zones, hospitals and interview rooms. With \u201cCameraperson,\u201d she assembled fragments from that career into a moving essay about the ethics of looking and the emotional toll of bearing witness.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe doc branch failed to nominate \u201cCameraperson,\u201d a shocking omission for a work so widely admired for its originality. Johnson\u2019s 2020 follow-up, \u201cDick Johnson Is Dead,\u201d a playful and heartbreaking reckoning with her father\u2019s decline, that could just as easily have claimed this spot.<\/p>\n
\t13th (2016)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of Netflix\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tAva DuVernay\u2019s \u201c13th\u201d examines the connection between the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the rise of mass incarceration in the United States. Through interviews with scholars, activists and politicians, alongside archival footage, DuVernay builds an argument about the enduring relationship between race and the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n
\n\tRather than treating the amendment as a historical endpoint, she traces how its language became a blueprint for systems of control, and presenting a complex history with clarity and urgency.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201c13th\u201d opened the 2016 New York Film Festival and landed a documentary feature nom, losing to \u201cO.J.: Made in America.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tA decade later, DuVernay returned to NYFF with the equally urgent \u201c14th,\u201d the festival\u2019s 2026 closing night film, which Netflix will also release.<\/p>\n
\tDear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)<\/p>\n
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\n\tNo documentary has made me cry more than the one about a baby named Zachary.<\/p>\n
\n\tKurt Kuenne began \u201cDear Zachary\u201d as a film for the infant son of his murdered best friend, Andrew Bagby. And what starts as a tribute built from home videos, photographs and memories becomes a devastating account of grief, family and a legal system that fails those seeking justice.<\/p>\n
\n\tKuenne is not a detached observer. As events unfold, the film\u2019s purpose changes, and its structure takes on a force no viewer can anticipate. Kuenne\u2019s mid-film narration is something your heart can never properly prepare for.<\/p>\n
\n\tNonetheless, the documentary branch passed on \u201cDear Zachary.\u201d It remains one of the clearest examples of why documentaries deserve to be considered among the year\u2019s best films, not merely the year\u2019s best documentaries.<\/p>\n
\tExit Through the Gift Shop (2010)<\/p>\n
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\n\tBanksy\u2019s \u201cExit Through the Gift Shop\u201d makes uncertainty part of the moviewatching experience. <\/p>\n
\n\tIs the film documenting an absurd art-world spectacle, manufacturing one or doing both at once? Banksy never provides a definitive answer, and the film\u2019s refusal to settle the question gives it life.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cExit Through the Gift Shop\u201d earned a documentary feature nom, losing to \u201cInside Job.\u201d Moreover, it challenged the assumption that documentaries must present a distinction between observer and participant.<\/p>\n
\tI Am Not Your Negro (2016)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of TIFF\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tRaoul Peck\u2019s Oscar-nominated \u201cI Am Not Your Negro\u201d takes James Baldwin\u2019s unfinished manuscript about Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. and transforms it into a searing cinematic essay on race and America. <\/p>\n
\n\tSamuel L. Jackson narrates Baldwin\u2019s words, with the film\u2019s force coming from the collision between the writer\u2019s observations and a country that still refuses to reckon with its past. It\u2019s sheer brilliance, and always timely.<\/p>\n
\tThree Identical Strangers (2018)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tTim Wardle\u2019s film opens as a feel-good reunion of triplets separated at birth and curdles into an account of a secret psychological study that treated infants as test subjects. Wardle controls the revelations with the discipline of a thriller, letting each turn leave the viewer shocked before the next is revealed. <\/p>\n
\n\tLike \u201cWon\u2019t You Be My Neighbor?,\u201d it was shortlisted and then passed over entirely by the documentary branch. Its story of nature, nurture and institutional betrayal deserved a much wider stage.<\/p>\n
\tCitizenfour (2014)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of The Weinstein Company\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tLaura Poitras\u2019 \u201cCitizenfour\u201d puts viewers inside a Hong Kong hotel room while Edward Snowden meets journalists and begins revealing classified information about government surveillance. Poitras allows conversations to develop in real time, building suspense through the simple act of watching history unfold.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cCitizenfour\u201d won the documentary Oscar at the 2015 ceremony, but no best picture heat would ensue. <\/p>\n
\tSearching for Sugar Man (2012)<\/p>\n
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\n\tMalik Bendjelloul\u2019s \u201cSearching for Sugar Man\u201d chases the ghost of Rodriguez, a Detroit musician whose albums vanished in America but became anthems in apartheid-era South Africa, where fans knew nothing about the man behind the music. <\/p>\n
\n\tBy my estimation, it\u2019s the single standout nonfiction film of its decade.<\/p>\n
\n\tBendjelloul builds the mystery like a detective story, with an emotional payoff that feels almost too extraordinary to be true. Rodriguez\u2019s incredible songs carry a story about fame, obscurity and the strange ways art outlives the circumstances of its making.<\/p>\n
\n\tOscar voters handed it the documentary prize in 2013. Nobody mounted a best picture push for a film that had already proven it could hold a broad audience in its palm. Bendjelloul died in 2014 at 36, but the joyous discovery he left behind is well intact.<\/p>\n
\tGrizzly Man (2005)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: \u00a9Lions Gate\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tWerner Herzog\u2019s \u201cGrizzly Man\u201d begins with footage shot by Timothy Treadwell, a self-appointed protector of Alaskan grizzlies who was killed by one of the animals he sought to defend. Herzog\u2019s narration becomes a film unto itself, challenging Treadwell\u2019s romantic vision of the wilderness.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe footage is funny, unnerving and devastating, sometimes within the same frame. Few filmmakers have turned a real-life tragedy into a philosophical inquiry so effectively without losing sight of the person at its center.<\/p>\n
\n\tUnfortunately, this was yet another victim of the doc branch\u2019s allergy to mainstream and successful films, even though it\u2019s widely considered among Herzog\u2019s most celebrated works.<\/p>\n
\tStories We Tell (2012)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: National Board of Canada\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tSarah Polley\u2019s \u201cStories We Tell\u201d is an investigation into her own family history and becomes a remarkably intricate exploration of memory, and the fragile relationship between personal truth and the stories people preserve.<\/p>\n
\n\tPolley interviews relatives and friends, reconstructing family moments with its most effective moments being best experienced without advance knowledge of the revelations it shows.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cStories We Tell\u201d was snubbed for the documentary Oscar, let alone best picture. That omission is particularly striking given Polley\u2019s command of structure and her willingness to question the very conventions on which documentary filmmaking depends. <\/p>\n
\tBowling for Columbine (2002)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: \u00a9United Artists\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tMichael Moore turned the Columbine High School massacre into a mirror for America to see. <\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cBowling for Columbine\u201d interrogates America\u2019s relationship with guns, violence and fear, mixing interviews, archival footage and Moore\u2019s confrontational on-camera presence into an argument that dared audiences to fight back. <\/p>\n
\n\tFew releases of 2002 commanded that attention.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Writers Guild made it the first documentary to win its original screenplay prize, and the Academy followed with the documentary Oscar, where Moore\u2019s \u201cshame on you, Mr. Bush\u201d speech became the most talked-about moment of the night (and history).<\/p>\n
\tHoop Dreams (1994)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: \u00a9Fine Line Features\/Courtesy Everett Collection\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tNo documentary snub remains quite as painful as the Academy\u2019s failure to recognize Steve James\u2019 \u201cHoop Dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOver five years, James followed Chicago teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee as they pursued basketball dreams that promised an escape from poverty. The result is a nearly three-hour American epic about race, class, family and the machinery that turns young athletes into commodities.<\/p>\n
\n\tCritics embraced the film as one of the year\u2019s finest, regardless of genre. The Academy\u2019s documentary branch, however, failed to nominate it, prompting widespread criticism and contributing to voting changes in the documentary nomination process. <\/p>\n
\n\tInterestingly, \u201cHoop Dreams\u201d managed to receive an Oscar nomination for film editing, but best picture was likely an even more distant possibility.<\/p>\n
\tThe Thin Blue Line (1988)<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of Miramax Films\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\tErrol Morris\u2019 investigation into the 1976 killing of a Dallas police officer did something few doc films hope to do: It helped free an innocent man. <\/p>\n
\n\tRandall Dale Adams was released from prison within a year of the film\u2019s debut, after Morris\u2019 interviews exposed the holes in the case against him.<\/p>\n
\n\tIts stylized reenactments, Philip Glass score and noir structure reinvented the nonfiction form in many ways.<\/p>\n
\n\tOnce again, the doc branch had other plans, with a snub measured just as scandalous in its moment as \u201cHoop Dreams\u201d would be six years later.<\/p>\n
\n\tLeaving out the film that changed how documentaries are made is indefensible.<\/p>\n
\tParis is Burning (1990)<\/p>\n
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\n\tJennie Livingston\u2019s \u201cParis Is Burning\u201d documents Harlem\u2019s ballroom scene in the late 1980s, where Black and Latino queer performers built houses, families and an entire vocabulary of survival in the face of poverty, racism and the AIDS crisis. <\/p>\n
\n\tIts subjects, including Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey and Venus Xtravaganza, are among the most vivid figures nonfiction cinema has captured. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe film won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance yet was snubbed by the Academy\u2019s documentary branch at the 1992 ceremony. Decades later, its influence has been felt in artistic achievements such as television\u2019s \u201cPose,\u201d \u201cRuPaul\u2019s Drag Race\u201d and the mainstream itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In nearly a century of Oscars, not a single documentary has been nominated for best picture. But that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,219193,295728,85,46,397,3220,276482],"class_list":["post-657217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-flee","tag-hoop-dreams","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-oscars","tag-you-can-see-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}