15 documentary features and short docs advance in this year’s Academy Awards race with the release of the Oscar shortlists. The expected frontrunners are on the list for features, including No Other Land and Sugarcane, which have generally dominated the precursors. The doc branch again favoured underdogs over celebrity-driven streamer titles with Netflix’s Will & Harper being a lone exception. The road movie about the friendship of Will Ferrell and Harper Steele following the latter’s transition scored two shortlist citations: documentary feature and original song for “Harper and Will Go West.” Also scoring two spots was Dahomey, which advanced in the international feature race as Senegal’s submission.
The slate also reflects the doc branch’s increasingly global reach. Besides Dahomey and No Other Land (a Norewgian-Palestinian co-pro), the shortlist include the Japanese doc Black Box Diaries, Shiori Ito’s investigation into her own sexual assault; the Norwegian The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, about the community of the online gaming world; and the Belgian Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. Dark horse Queendom, a USA-France co-pro, is entirely in Russian with its portrait of a drag artist asserting LGBTQ+ rights under Putin’s reign.
It’s a good day for Canadian talent, too, as Vancouver native Natalie Rae advanced in the race for Netflix’s Daughters, directed with Angela Patton, while Toronto’s Brett Story joined director Steven Maing in passing the hurdle with their film Union. Union, like No Other Land, struggled to find distribution this season. Meanwhile, the Sugarcane duo of Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie round-up the Canadian directors in the feature category. Canada’s Oscar submission in the international category, Universal Language by Matthew Rankin, advanced in the race, as did Torill Kove’s animated short Maybe Elephants and Alexandra Myotte and Jean-Sébastien Hamel for A Crab in the Pool in the short animation category.
Big surprises on the feature front include Gary Hustwit’s Eno, a shape-shifting documentary that draws from an archive of clips and generates their order at random. The film, a festival circuit favourite, has been different wherever it played. Alexis Bloom’s The Bibi Files, moreover, proved that it drew enough buzz on the circuit debuting as a work in progress at the Toronto International Film Festival this year before debuting on new streamer Jolt. Notable omissions, however, include Lucy Walker’s Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa and Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which swept the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards.
Other docs landing shortlist citations outside the non-fiction categories include Morgan Neville’s Piece by Piece. It joined Kristen Wiig’s ditty from Will & Harper in the original song line-up for the film’s title track by Pharrell. The Palestinian anthology film From Ground Zero landed a surprise slot in the international race for its mix of docs and dramas, while Ireland’s innovative hybrid Kneecap also advanced. Nominations will be announced on Friday, January 17.
The documentary short lists are:
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM
The Bibi Files
Black Box Diaries
Dahomey
Daughters
Eno
Frida
Hollywoodgate
No Other Land
Porcelain War
Queendom
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Sugarcane
Union
Will & Harper
DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM
Chasing Roo
Death by Numbers
Eternal Father
I Am Ready, Warden
Incident
Instruments of a Beating Heart
Keeper
Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World
Once upon a Time in Ukraine
The Only Girl in the Orchestra
Planetwalker
The Quilters
Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr
A Swim Lesson
Until He’s Back
