Two years after handing off the Oscars hosting duties to Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel came back to the awards ceremony to present the Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Short.
And with the few minutes that he had onstage, he crammed in as many swipes at Donald Trump and the right wing as he could.
Before presenting the short doc award, Kimmel noted that several of the nominees in the category created their films at great personal risk in countries “whose leaders don’t support free speech.”
“I’m not at liberty to say which, but let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS,” he joked in a veiled swipe at CBS’ cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”
Later, Kimmel turned his jabs on the recently released documentary “Melania,” which Amazon reportedly acquired after CEO Jeff Bezos met with Donald Trump and his wife, Melania at Mar-a-lago and followed the First Lady in the run-up to the 2025 inauguration.
“There’s an international community of filmmakers dedicated to telling the truth, oftentimes at great risk to make films that teach us, that call out injustice, that inspire us to take action,” he said. “And there are also documentaries where you walk around the White House trying on shoes.”
The Best Documentary Short Oscar went to Joshua Seftel’s “All the Empty Rooms,” which focuses on CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Steve Hartman’s efforts to document the bedrooms of children killed in school shootings in the United States. It is now available to view on Netflix.
The Best Documentary Feature Oscar went to “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” which tells the story of videographer Pavel Talankin as he secretly took footage of the Kremlin-mandated curriculum placed in Russian schools to justify the invasion of Ukraine. It is currently streaming on the Kino Film Collection.
And just before announcing “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” as the winner, Kimmel murmured with a groan, “Oh man, is he gonna be mad his wife wasn’t nominated for this.”
