Here’s the list of docs that are already available to voters in a year when new rules make it easier for films to qualify
It makes sense that this year’s AFI Fest closed on Thursday night with the premiere of director Errol Morris’ wild and entertaining documentary “My Psychedelic Love Story.” In a year in which reality has smacked all of us in the face, nonfiction filmmaking is in the spotlight more than ever, from a string of docs that deal with issues at stake in the upcoming election (“All In: The Fight for Democracy,” “Slay the Dragon,” “Becoming,” “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” “#UNFIT: The Psychology of Donald Trump”) to more freewheeling works like Morris’ film, a WTF concoction from a director who only gets this playful once in a while.
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It’s undeniable that the Oscars race for Best Picture is off to a slow start, with fewer films than usual playing the scaled-down fall film festivals and studios reluctant to commit to theatrical openings as the pandemic stretches on. But the race for Best Documentary Feature promises to be a robust one. More than 50 films are now available in the Academy’s virtual screening room for Documentary Branch members, and far more than that have qualified to enter the race under rules specific to 2020.
In a normal year, around 150 documentary features qualify for the Oscars; this year, most doc-watchers expect the numbers to be the same or even more, and few think that theater closings and stay-at-home viewers will significantly depress the number of films competing for prizes.
Partly, that’s because new rules enacted in the wake of the pandemic allow documentary features to qualify simply by being chosen by two out of nine specified film festivals, whether or not those festivals took place. Films can also qualify by winning one of 55 different awards from 36 international festivals.
The films that have been placed in the members’ virtual screening room, which came in batches of 25 in July, 12 in August and 16 in September, include 20 that qualified under those new rules. An additional 57 films qualified via festivals but have not yet been added to the screening room – which is expected to more than double in size after the Dec. 1 submission deadline.
In addition, dozens of high-profile films haven’t been put in the screening room but are expected to enter and be competitive. Those include political films (“The Way I See It,” “The Dissident”), a trio of films about COVID (“Totally Under Control,” “76 Days” and, assuming it lands U.S. distribution, “Wuhan Wuhan”), critical favorites (“Dick Johnson Is Dead,” “Time”) and recent festival releases (“The Truffle Hunters,” “My Psychedelic Love Story”).
The films that have already gone to doc-branch voters were first made available in July, when an initial group of 25 films were placed in the online screening room. Those films included Sundance premieres “Crip Camp,” “The Fight,” “Lance,” “Miss Americana,” “On the Record” and “Spaceship Earth,” as well as Netflix’s “Athlete A,” “Becoming” and “Father Soldier Son,” CNN Films’ “John Lewis: Good Trouble” and the 2019 Toronto Film Festival opening-night film, “Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band.”
In August, voters received a second group of 12 films, including “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn,” “Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl” and Ron Howard’s “Rebuilding Paradise.”
The September selection, which was actually sent to voters on Oct. 1, consisted of 16 more films. They include “All In: The Fight for Democracy,” “Feels Good Man,” “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life,” “Red Penguins,” “The Social Dilemma” and “Welcome to Chechnya.”
In a normal year, the final batch of films would be made available to voters in early November – but with everything pushed back this year, and with eligibility extended to films that are released in January or February of next year, the branch will probably continue to deliver docs to voters into early 2020.
Also Read: 'Welcome to Chechnya' Film Review: LGBT Refugees Flee Violence in Gripping Documentary
This is the list of documentaries that are currently in the Academy’s screening room for the Documentary Branch. At this point, each member of the branch has been randomly assigned 10 to 12 of these films as required viewing, in order to ensure that all films will be screened by a minimum number of voters. Outside of the required films, all voters are free to watch as many of them as they want.
“All I Can Say”
“All In: The Fight for Democracy”
“Athlete A”
“Be Water”
“Becoming”
“Beyond the Visible: Hilma Af Klint”
“Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn”
“Childhood 2.0”
“Circus of Books”
“Colombia in My Arms”
“Coronation”
“Crip Camp”
“Disclosure”
“The Dog Doc”
“Elementa”
“Epicentro”
“Erased, ____ Ascent of the Individual”
“Fandango at the Wall”
“Father Solider Son”
“Feels Good Man”
“The Fight”
“Find Your Groove”
“For They Know Not What They Do”
“The Ghost of Peter Sellers”
“iHuman”
“The Infiltrators”
“John Lewis: Good Trouble”
“Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl”
“A Kid from Coney Island”
“Lance”
“Miss Americana”
“The Mole Agent”
“A Most Beautiful Thing”
“Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado”
“Oliver Sacks: His Own Life”
“Olympia”
“On the Record”
“Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band”
“Our Time Machine”
“The Painter and the Thief”
“Planet of the Humans”
“Rebuilding Paradise”
“Red Penguins”
“Rewind”
“Ringside”
“Rising Phoenix”
“Slay the Dragon”
“The Social Dilemma”
“Songs of Repression”
“Spaceship Earth”
“A Thousand Cuts”
“Welcome to Chechnya”
“Wild Daze”
15 Top Grossing Documentaries at the Box Office, From 'An Inconvenient Truth' to 'Fahrenheit 9/11' (Photos)
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Warner Bros./National Geographic Films/Paramount Classics
Documentaries are rarely big money makers, but they can have the power to influence change and motivate people to action in a way narrative films cannot. So when a documentary does make a splash at the box office, it's an even bigger surprise. This list of the top-15 grossing documentaries ever is an interesting mix of political, nature and concert docs, and several of them likewise went on to win Oscars and critical acclaim. All numbers are domestic totals via Box Office Mojo.
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Warner Bros.
15. "They Shall Not Grow Old" (2018) - $17.9 million
Director Peter Jackson went to painstaking lengths to digitally restore and transform 100-year-old archival footage for his powerful documentary on World War I. Jackson restored color and sound to the Great War, something that was previously only known through black and white silent film. The documentary performed well in part because of a release that even transformed the footage into 3D.
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Disneynature
14. "Oceans" (2010) - $19.4 million
You'll see a lot of Disneynature documentaries on this list. Pierce Brosnan narrates this 2010 documentary filmed across the world's oceans.
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United Artists
13. "Bowling for Columbine" (2002) - $21.5 million
Michael Moore's provocative documentary about American gun violence (and one of his best) won the Oscar for Best Documentary and broke international box office records for a documentary in 2002.
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Jim Judkis / Focus Features
12. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (2018) - $22.8 million
Morgan Neville's portrait of Fred Rogers and "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" proved to be a crowd-pleasing hit in the summer of 2018 because of the absolute niceness at its heart. Neville in his film explains that Fred Rogers was the rare person who really did not have a dark side, and in "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" it shows.
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Paramount Classics
11. "An Inconvenient Truth" (2006) - $24.1 million
Davis Guggenheim's documentary spotlighting former Vice President Al Gore's plea to alert the world to the effects of global warming and climate change went on to win two Oscars and earn a sequel.
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Lionsgate
10. "Sicko" (2007) - $24.5 million
Another Michael Moore movie to crack the list, "Sicko" was Moore's look at the healthcare industry in America compared to other nations, with Moore sailing sick veterans down to Cuba to receive the care they couldn't have had at home.
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Paramount Pictures
9. "Katy Perry: Part of Me" (2012) - $25.3 million
This 2012 concert movie followed Katy Perry on her California Dreams World Tour.
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TriStar
8. "One Direction: This Is Us" (2013) - $28.8 million
"Super Size Me" filmmaker Morgan Spurlock directed this concert doc about the then wildly popular British boy group.
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Disneynature
7. "Chimpanzee" (2012) - $28.9 million
Tim Allen narrated this Disneynature doc about a three-month old chimp separated from his flock and adopted by another grown male.
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Disneynature
6. "Earth" (2007) - $32 million
The first of Disneynature's documentaries, "Earth" was a theatrical version of the popular "Planet Earth" miniseries from 2006. "Earth" was finally given a stateside theatrical release in 2009.
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Getty Images
5. "2016: Obama's America" (2012) - $33.4 million
Dinesh D'Souza's anti-Obama documentary speculated about where the country would be if Obama won a second term in office in 2012.
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Getty Images
4. "Michael Jackson's This Is It" (2009) - $72 million
The footage in "This Is It" comes from a behind-the-scenes look at preparation for Michael Jackson's 50 shows at London's O2 Arena. It wasn't originally meant to be made into a film, but it provided an intimate look at Jackson in his final days.
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Paramount Pictures
3. "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never" (2011) - $73 million
The Biebs holds the spot for the highest-grossing concert film ever and the documentary with the biggest opening weekend of all time.
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National Geographic Films
2. "March of the Penguins" (2005) - $77.4 million
People sure love penguins. Morgan Freeman narrates the nature documentary that opened on just four screens but soon spread into a nationwide hit.
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Miramax
1. "Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004) - $119.1 million
Michael Moore's scathing documentary about President George W. Bush and the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks is the highest-grossing documentary of all time and it isn't even close. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Opening at over $23 million, the movie at the time opened higher than any other documentary had ever grossed in its lifetime. Moore followed up the film with a documentary about the 2016 election and Donald Trump, titled "Fahrenheit 11/9," which refers to the day after he was elected.
Michael Moore, Disneynature and several concert films top the list
Documentaries are rarely big money makers, but they can have the power to influence change and motivate people to action in a way narrative films cannot. So when a documentary does make a splash at the box office, it's an even bigger surprise. This list of the top-15 grossing documentaries ever is an interesting mix of political, nature and concert docs, and several of them likewise went on to win Oscars and critical acclaim. All numbers are domestic totals via Box Office Mojo.
Steve Pond
Steve Pond has been writing about film, music, pop culture and the entertainment industry for more than 40 years. He has served as TheWrap’s awards editor and executive editor, awards since joining the company in 2009. Steve began his career writing about music for the Los Angeles Times, where he remained a contributor for more than 15 years, and Rolling Stone, where he was West Coast Music Editor and wrote 16 cover stories. He moved into film coverage with a weekly column in the Washington Post and became a contributing writer at Premiere magazine, where he became the first journalist to have all access to the Academy Awards show and rehearsals. He has also written for the New York Times, Movieline, the DGA Quarterly, GQ, Playboy, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, New York, the Christian Science Monitor, Live! magazine and many others. He is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller “The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards” (Faber and Faber, 2005). He has also written “Elvis in Hollywood” (New American Library, 1990) and contributed to books that include “Cash,” “The Rolling Stone Reader,” U2: The Rolling Stone Files,” “Bruce Springsteen: The Rolling Stone Files” and “The Rolling Stone Interviews: The 1980s.” He was the co-managing editor of the syndicated TV news program “The Industry News” and the creative consultant for the A&E series “The Inside Track With Graham Nash.” He has won L.A. Press Club awards for stories in TheWrap, the Los Angeles Times and Playboy, and was nominated for a National Magazine Award for a story in Premiere.