{"id":329195,"date":"2026-03-14T10:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T10:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/329195\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T10:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T10:20:07","slug":"you-cannot-unsee-it-what-happened-next-for-this-years-oscar-documentary-nominees-oscars-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/329195\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You cannot unsee it\u2019: what happened next for this year\u2019s Oscar documentary nominees? | Oscars 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The year 2025 was a banner one for nonfiction film, with several extraordinary documentaries that provided windows to unfathomable acts of courage, heart and vulnerability. Less so, unfortunately, for nonfiction cinema, it\u2019s a difficult time<\/a> for the production of politically challenging documentaries, whether in and about the US or abroad, and many projects struggled to find distribution after torturous paths to completion. (Cutting Through Rocks, the first Iranian documentary ever nominated for an Oscar, still has no streaming distribution and is only available in select theaters.)<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, five incredible films make up the Oscars<\/a> documentary slate this year \u2013 films that demonstrate how individual actions can challenge immense systems of oppression; how national agendas trickle into the idiosyncratic, marginal every day; and how one can find transcendence in the smallest of daily miracles. The very existence of these films feels improbable: one is composed almost entirely of police footage acquired through legal action. Another was filmed on contraband cell phones within Alabama state prisons. There\u2019s a remarkably candid approach to processing terminal illness; an unprecedented record of Vladimir Putin\u2019s propaganda efforts, filmed by a schoolteacher in rural Russia and smuggled out of the country; and an extremely rare glimpse into small-scale women\u2019s rights efforts in north-west Iran.<\/p>\n

All five nominated films premiered over a year ago, in January 2025, at Utah\u2019s Sundance film festival. In the months since then, as they have found staggered and limited releases around the world, life has gone on for those both in front of and behind the camera. Here are where things stand for each film heading into Oscar weekend:<\/p>\n

The Perfect Neighbor<\/p>\n

The presumed Oscar frontrunner, Geeta Gandbhir\u2019s film<\/a> on the murder of Ajike \u201cAJ\u201d Owens is a tremendous feat of editing; the 96-minute film, available on Netflix, is composed almost entirely of bodycam footage from police officers in Ocala, Florida, where a woman named Susan Lorincz shot and killed Owens, a mother of four, through a locked door in June 2023.<\/p>\n

Gandbhir and her team whittled around 30 hours of police footage (bodycams, security cams, cell phones) filmed over two years \u2013 Lorincz, angered by neighborhood children playing outside, repeatedly called the police \u2013 into a devastating, sober portrait of racialized gun violence in the US. Lorincz, the film demonstrates, was fatally emboldened by Florida\u2019s so-called \u201cstand your ground\u201d law, an NRA-backed measure from 2005 that removes a person\u2019s legal duty to retreat from a perceived threat before using deadly force. (Similar laws, which disproportionately harm people of color, exist in 37 other states.)<\/p>\n

Lorincz was sentenced to 25 years in prison for manslaughter in November 2025, two months before the film\u2019s Sundance premiere. Since then, the film-making team and Owens\u2019s family have embarked on an advocacy campaign to overturn stand your ground laws in Owens\u2019s memory through their organization Standing in the Gap<\/a>. \u201cHad we not gone forth with the film and the Standing in the Gap fund, she would have been just another dead Black person,\u201d Pamela Dias, Owens\u2019s mother, told the Hollywood Reporter<\/a> in December.<\/p>\n

Lorincz, meanwhile, remains incarcerated in Florida. She has maintained that she felt Owens threatened her life and, according to a handwritten letter filed<\/a> with a Florida court last September, is mulling a defamation suit against the victim\u2019s family. \u201cAjike Owens and her children were trespassing,\u201d Lorincz stated in the letter. \u201cThere were multiple \u2018no trespassing signs\u2019 on the property. Ms. Owens did in fact scream, threaten to beat me multiple times while trespassing.\u201d (As seen in the film, this was disputed in real time by all witnesses.)<\/p>\n

Though Lorincz was convicted \u2013 by an all-white jury in the birthplace of stand your ground laws, no less \u2013 justice is \u201cbittersweet\u201d, as Gandbhir told<\/a> the Daily Show\u2019s Michael Kosta. According to the director, an Owens family friend prior to the tragedy, her four young children \u2013 all under 14 at the time of her death \u2013 have supported the film, which was \u201cdevastating\u201d for many in the multiracial neighborhood community to watch. But \u201cthey believed in what we were doing\u201d, Gandbhir said. \u201cThey understood why we were trying to share the film. Their hope is that this doesn\u2019t happen to another community.\u201d There is only one family from the film that remains on the block in Ocala; the rest of the community has moved.<\/p>\n

The Alabama Solution<\/p>\n

Few films have been so immediately galling, so unbelievably infuriating, as the Alabama Solution<\/a>, Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman\u2019s harrowing film of Alabama\u2019s hellish state prison system. The film, made in secret over six years for HBO, depicted or discussed the inhumane treatment of Alabama\u2019s disproportionately Black incarcerated population in the name of public safety, including but not limited to: severe beatings, rampant drug abuse, inedible food, filthy and rodent-infested dorms, forced labor and murder.<\/p>\n

Its lead subjects \u2013 Robert \u201cKinetik Justice\u201d Earl Council, Melvin Ray and Raoul Poole, who organized a statewide prisoners\u2019 strike<\/a> in October 2022 \u2013 recorded the bulk of the film via contraband cell phones, despite the risk of physical harm or indefinite solitary confinement, with the hope of raising awareness of a system without accountability. (The film takes its name from Governor Kay Ivey\u2019s response to the federal mandate for reform: \u201cAn Alabama problem deserves an Alabama solution.\u201d) In January 2026, days before the film was nominated for an Oscar, the three men were transferred<\/a> to solitary confinement at Kilby state prison, with no ability to contact loved ones<\/a> and no reason given by the Alabama department of corrections (ADOC), according to lawyers. They remain there today.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, efforts to reform ADOC, which was put under federal investigation for unconstitutional conditions over a decade ago (that lawsuit remains ongoing), have moved forward. Just this week, the state\u2019s senate judiciary committee held a public hearing on legislation, inspired by the film, that would establish independent oversight of the state\u2019s prisons. The bipartisan bill is co-sponsored by Larry Stutts, one of the legislature\u2019s most conservative members, who said the documentary sharpened his focus on the issue. (He has defended SB 316 on biblical grounds<\/a>.) \u201cThe movie has raised a lot of public awareness about it,\u201d he told<\/a> AL.com. \u201cYou cannot unsee what you\u2019ve seen,\u201d he said, including \u201ca culture of violence and corruption in the whole system\u201d.<\/p>\n

The legislative hearing comes a week after Jarecki went on the Tonight Show<\/a> and extended an invitation to Ivey and state attorney general Steve Marshall to screen the film in Los Angeles ahead of the Oscars, along with some family members of the 1,500 people who have died within the state\u2019s correctional system since they began production, \u201cin the hope that there can be some kind of realistic meeting of the minds, or [Ivey] could say: \u2018Look, I\u2019m going to stop denying this is a problem\u2019\u201d. Ivey declined. Marshall, who appears in the film, told CBS 42 in Birmingham<\/a> that he received the invitation a day before, \u201cwhich obviously shows that this was not a legitimate offer to have dialogue but instead is part of the agenda-driven effort of this film\u201d. Marshall went on to claim that he was never interviewed for the film (he was), nor that any family member of the incarcerated men talked to him about the film (they did).<\/p>\n

Marshall went on to tout \u201cprogress\u201d made in Alabama prisons in regards to staffing and a new $1.3bn, 4,000-bed state prison in Elmore county, paid for by cuts to the state\u2019s education budget and Covid-19 relief funds. That facility, called the Governor Kay Ivey correctional complex, is slated for completion in October.<\/p>\n

Mr Nobody Against Putin<\/p>\n

Films about opposition movements to Putin\u2019s regime in Russia tend to do well at the Oscars \u2013 in recent years, both Navalny<\/a>, on the late pro-democracy leader Alexei Navalny, and Mstyslav Chernov<\/a>\u2019s war record 20 Days in Mariupol<\/a> deservedly took home the award for best documentary for their sweeping portraits of the people\u2019s resilience to the regime\u2019s war and cruelty. But I have never seen anything quite like Mr Nobody Against Putin<\/a>, which documents the authoritarian government\u2019s propaganda efforts in microcosm, at a primary school in the Ural mountains.<\/p>\n

Filmed far away from Moscow by Pavel Talankin, the school\u2019s event coordinator, videographer and \u201cMr Nobody\u201d, the film is an extraordinary document of cultural regression and indoctrination in real time, as grenade-throwing classes and \u201cdenazification\u201d curricula replace sports and history. We are only able to see it because Talankin, who had spent his whole life in Karabash and whose mother was the school librarian, fled the country in 2024 under threat of life imprisonment thanks to updated anti-treason laws. He remains an exile in Europe, providing Russian-language interviews in support of the project and small efforts of increasingly fragile, dangerous resistance.<\/p>\n

Still, many in Karabash have been able to see the film, thanks to bootlegged or pirated copies. \u201cParents didn\u2019t really know what was being taught in these classes,\u201d Talankin told the Guardian days after Mr Nobody won the Bafta for best documentary. \u201cSome people have written to me with gratitude, others have said we will break your knees next time we see you.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope it will help these children in the future to understand that they were the victims of all this,\u201d he added. \u201cThis film is primarily aimed at Russians, showing them what is happening inside their schools now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both the Kremlin and school administrators have remained mum on the project ahead of the Oscars, likely content to pretend it doesn\u2019t exist. For the foreseeable future, Talankin will be unable to return home. At the Baftas, co-director David Borenstein thanked him, \u201cfor showing me that no matter how dark things get, whether it\u2019s in Russia or on the streets of Minneapolis, we always face a moral choice\u201d. Borenstein added: \u201cNo matter who we are, there is always power in our actions. To quote JRR Tolkien: \u2018Courage is found in unlikely places.\u2019 We need more Mr Nobodies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Come See Me in the Good Light<\/p>\n

Come See Me in the Good Light<\/a> may not deal specifically with oppressive regimes, but it is no less intense \u2013 a searing, frank, deceptively funny portrait of falling in love with life while coming to terms with death. Directed by Ryan White, this Apple TV doc follows the final years of Andrea Gibson, a spoken word dynamite and poet laureate of Colorado, as they face terminal ovarian cancer with their devoted partner and fellow poet, Megan Falley.<\/p>\n

The film ends in a liminal space: Gibson very much alive, vibrant and brimming with love. They lived to see its Sundance premiere, alongside Falley, producer Tig Notaro and others. They died surrounded by loved ones in July 2025, a date unmentioned in the film.<\/p>\n

Since then, Falley has carried on Gibson\u2019s legacy through their Substack, Things That Don\u2019t Suck<\/a>, and a relentless press tour that has served, in her writing, as a \u201cseance\u201d, \u201cresurrection\u201d and opportunity to grieve in public community. As Gibson once wrote: \u201cto die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I feel like Andrea\u2019s earth-side delegate,\u201d Falley wrote in a post<\/a> published on 9 March, en route to the Oscars. \u201cI stand before new audiences carrying forward the lessons they most wanted to leave the world with. In this way, Andrea is still doing what they always did \u2013 bringing people closer to the truth of their own lives. I\u2019m simply the voice they speak through now.<\/p>\n

\u201cAndrea once wrote, \u2018I know mortality isn\u2019t small talk, but I wish it was,\u2019\u201d she added. \u201cAfter screenings I sometimes feel like telling them, Baby. You got your wish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cutting Through Rocks<\/p>\n

Perhaps the least viewed of the five nominated documentaries this year, owing to limited distribution, Cutting Through Rocks is nonetheless a stunning portrait of courage: that of Sara Shahverdi, an iconoclastic female farmer and trailblazing village council member in rural north-west Iran, as well as the young girls daring to follow in her image.<\/p>\n

Protected only by her confidence and conviction that women should have control over their own destiny, Shahverdi cuts a fiercely unconventional nature in an extremely patriarchal world: she rides a motorcycle, wears pants, participates in construction projects, encourages girl to stay in school, advocates for teenage divorcees and works to get wives equal ownership of their husbands\u2019 property. Such actions, filmed by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni over eight years, come with great risk; Shahverdi faces a legal crisis in the film, which according to the film-makers has resolved safely.<\/p>\n

Since the film premiered \u2013 it won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance \u2013 Shahverdi\u2019s four-year village council term ended. But she \u201ccontinues to be a fierce advocate for women and girls\u201d, according to a statement from the film-makers, including advocacy for a new school that is under construction in the village. Owing to travel bans that predate the Trump administration\u2019s war in Iran, Shahverdi cannot attend the Oscars or any US screening, but she was \u201cthrilled to learn \u2026 that her story is reaching audiences worldwide\u201d.<\/p>\n