The Oscar documentary shortlist is looming.
And the outlook is confusing.
This is not a year with a clear frontrunner like "The Cove" or "Man on Wire" or "An Inconvenient Truth." It's a year when some of the most acclaimed documentaries ("The Interrupters," "Project Nim") didn't fare well at the box office. It's a year when the only film nominated for the top prize by both the IDA Awards and the Cinema Eye Honors, "Nostalgia for the Light," has an extremely low profile outside the doc community.
The top-grossing non-fiction film of the year, meanwhile, doesn't have a prayer of getting Oscar recognition: the concert film "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never," which with a $73 million gross has earned more than every other documentary release this year combined.
(In second place: the IMAX film "African Cats," with $15 million.)
It's a year when one of the prime doc events aimed at Academy voters in recent weeks was a luncheon for Martin Scorsese, at which directors Sacha Gervasi ("Anvil!"), Penelope Spheeris ("The Decline of Western Civilization"), Scott Kennedy ("The Garden") and Freida Lee Mock ("Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision") feted Scorsese, whose documentary "George Harrison: Living in the Material World" had a quiet theatrical run to qualify it for the Oscar before its splashy debut across two nights on HBO.
And given the fact that the last rock doc to win was "Woodstock" in 1970, Scorsese's TV-doc-with-Oscar-hopes can't even be counted as a likely contender for the shortlist.
"I would suggest that the lack of consensus is a good thing for documentaries," Eddie Schmidt, the president of the board of directors of the International Documentary Assn., told TheWrap this week. "It means there's a high number of really good films out there."
Added Michael Lumpkin, the IDA's executive director: "In the past, you've had years with obvious leaders, or with a small group of films that were going to sweep all the awards. You don't have that this year – which is a really positive thing, but it makes the job more difficult for all the groups that are choosing the best films of the year."
And it means that the Oscar doc picture is muddy indeed. First-round voting has concluded, and the Academy is expected to release a shortlist of 12-to-15 films by the end of the week.
Also read: Inconvenient Truths About Oscar's Documentary Process
"I think this is going to be a more interesting year for Oscar documentaries than some other recent years, where you had one or two overwhelming frontrunners," said Thom Powers, a documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival and DocNYC.
This year, the contenders are varied. The IDA Awards nominated five films for its top honor, while the Cinema Eye Honors chose six; only "Nostalgia for the Light" (right) was nominated by both groups.
