So what we do here each year as a warm up for the Oscars is, I break down each of the 24 categories. The idea is to both familiarize everyone with the category and its history. I look at what the major trends are throughout the past bunch of years, how the precursors tend to go, whether they matter or not, that sort of stuff. I look at how the category came to be this year, and just anything else that seems totally pertinent about it. Then I rank each of the nominees and tell you what their likelihood (at this particular moment in time) of winning is.
This is all prelude to my giant Oscar ballot that I’m gonna give you. But I figure, if you have these as the warmup, it’s not as intimidating. You’ll have seen a lot of the pertinent trends here and we’ll all be able to reference these as a sort of cheat sheet. Plus it shows you where my head is at for how I think each of the categories are gonna go, and you can see me working my way up to all the bad decisions I usually make while guessing. Pretty much, with this, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the category is gonna turn out.
Today is Best Documentary Feature. There are no real precursors for this, and they didn’t nominate the best documentary of the year. So we don’t need to wait on this, and honestly I want to get it done as soon as possible because I’m still sore at how shitty this branch’s decision-making continues to be.
| Year | Best Documentary Winners |
| 1942 | The Battle of Midway
Kokoda Front Line! Moscow Strikes Back Prelude to War |
| 1943 | Desert Victory |
| 1944 | The Fighting Lady |
| 1945 | The True Glory |
| 1946 | No Award Given. |
| 1947 | Design for Death |
| 1948 | The Secret Land |
| 1949 | Daybreak in Udi |
| 1950 | The Titan: Story of Michelangelo |
| 1951 | Kon-Tiki |
| 1952 | The Sea Around Us |
| 1953 | The Living Desert |
| 1954 | The Vanishing Prairie |
| 1955 | Helen Keller in Her Story (aka The Unconquered) |
| 1956 | The Silent World |
| 1957 | Albert Schweitzer |
| 1958 | White Wilderness |
| 1959 | Serengeti Shall Not Die |
| 1960 | The Horse with the Flying Tail |
| 1961 | Sky Above and Mud Beneath |
| 1962 | Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler |
| 1963 | Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World |
| 1964 | World Without Sun |
| 1965 | The Eleanor Roosevelt Story |
| 1966 | The War Game |
| 1967 | The Anderson Platoon |
| 1968 | Journey Into Self |
| 1969 | Arthur Rubinstein – The Love of Life |
| 1970 | Woodstock |
| 1971 | The Hellstorm Chronicle |
| 1972 | Marjoe |
| 1973 | The Great American Cowboy |
| 1974 | Hearts and Minds |
| 1975 | The Man Who Skied Down Everest |
| 1976 | Harlan County, USA |
| 1977 | Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? |
| 1978 | Scared Straight! |
| 1979 | Best Boy |
| 1980 | From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China |
| 1981 | Genocide |
| 1982 | Just Another Missing Kid |
| 1983 | He Makes Me Feel Like Dancing |
| 1984 | The Times of Harvey Milk |
| 1985 | Broken Rainbow |
| 1986 | (tie) Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got
Down and Out in America |
| 1987 | The Ten-Year Lunch |
| 1988 | Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie |
| 1989 | Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt |
| 1990 | American Dream |
| 1991 | In the Shadow of the Stars |
| 1992 | The Panama Deception |
| 1993 | I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School |
| 1994 | Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision |
| 1995 | Anne Frank Remembered |
| 1996 | When We Were Kings |
| 1997 | The Long Way Home |
| 1998 | The Last Days |
| 1999 | One Day in September |
| 2000 | Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport |
| 2001 | Murder on a Sunday Morning |
| 2002 | Bowling for Columbine |
| 2003 | The Fog of War |
| 2004 | Born into Brothels |
| 2005 | March of the Penguins |
| 2006 | An Inconvenient Truth |
| 2007 | Taxi to the Dark Side |
| 2008 | Man on Wire |
| 2009 | The Cove |
| 2010 | Inside Job |
| 2011 | Undefeated |
| 2012 | Searching for Sugar Man |
| 2013 | 20 Feet from Stardom |
| 2014 | CitizenFour |
| 2015 | Amy |
| 2016 | O.J. Made in America |
| 2017 | Icarus |
It’s Best Documentary. You look at the list and you pretty much know what’s gonna win. Most years the best documentary isn’t even nominated. That happened again here.
Best Documentary Feature
Free Solo
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Minding the Gap
Of Fathers and Sons
RBG
They had a shortlist of 15, they picked 5. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? wasn’t nominated, and about 98% of the people who even cared about this category tuned out right there. This branch is broken. I’ve got nothing more to say, because three of these are not gonna be known by the voting body on a general level, and even though they will get copies of them, they won’t watch them.
Rankings:
5. Of Fathers and Sons — It hasn’t been released in the U.S. in any meaningful way, it takes place in the Middle East, and what’s the last non-English documentary to have won here? I’ve got nothing to make me think this wins at all. Gotta be considered fifth. I’ve got nothing else to go by at the moment because legitimately, no voters outside the branch were given a chance to see this movie.
4. Minding the Gap — Nominally some people may have heard of this because it made some of the other lists, but I doubt this gets any kind of real support. What’s it about? Look what’s won in recent years. Really entertaining stuff or really interesting political stuff. There’s no real political stuff this year (or is there?), and this doesn’t fit the mold of something that wins. Maybe it’s third, but I think you know where the votes are gonna go, and it’s not here.
3. Hale County This Morning, This Evening — Maybe it has something to do with race? I don’t know because I haven’t had a chance to see it. I’ll know better once I watch it, but I can’t see this having any kind of real support because, what’s it about? When has something like this done well in an open race in the past decade? It hasn’t. Third choice at best.
2. Free Solo — This category is always so intuitive. This documentary came out in theaters, people who normally don’t go see documentaries went to see it, and they came out saying the climb at the end was thrilling. People know this, people will vote for this. Automatic second choice on that alone. Can’t see it winning, but I wouldn’t necessarily be shocked if it did. That said, it’ll never be the #1 contender in this race because…
1. RBG — It has a second nomination. Has a documentary with a second nomination ever lost? I mean, sure, I think the only one was An Inconvenient Truth, but still. It’s about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which means it’s political. Not only is she a huge figure in the fight for women’s rights and equality, the voting body is gonna look at this as a fuck you to Trump. Of course this is gonna win. This may have won even with Won’t You Be My Neighbor? on the list. Doubtful, but it could have. This is gonna basically sweep this category now. The popular choice has won every year going back to 2011. The years it didn’t — CitizenFour won because Life Itself wasn’t nominated. Icarus won because Jane wasn’t nominated. This is gonna win. It fits both the popular and political slant that they go for. Nothing’s a lock in this branch, but you have to feel as confident as anything else with this as your choice. (This is just like Animated Feature. It’s not a lock, but it’s looking pretty damn good.)
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