134 Films to Compete for Documentary Feature Oscar

Erik Anderson October 31, 2014

From left; CITIZENFOUR, Life Itself, The Case Against 8 all compete for the Documentary Feature Oscar — From left; *CITIZENFOUR*, *Life Itself*, *The Case Against 8* all compete for the Documentary Feature Oscar

A whopping 134 films are in contention for the Documentary Feature Oscar this year. A big number to be sure, but down a bit from last year’s record of 151 features.

Major contenders in the conversation amongst the Oscar predicting community are all here: CITIZENFOUR, Life Itself, The Case Against 8, Tales of the Grim Sleeper and Red Army. Tales of the Grim Sleeper and CITIZENFOUR were among the nominated this week by the International Documentary Association as the best of 2014. Point and Shoot, The Salt of the Earth and Finding Vivian Maier, also IDA nominated, are on the qualifying list as well.

One big omission from the list is The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to last year’s Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing. Distributors Drafthouse and Participant Media have chosen a roll-out for the film that will not give it a 2014 qualifying release.

While the documentary committees and rules have been mired in controversy for years, attempts have been made to update some of the more archaic statutes there is still often distrust that the groups assigned certain films are voting for what they think is the best film vs. strategic placement. The documentary branch of the Academy sits at around 400 members who choose the nominees. With one of the new rules being that the entire academy can vote for the winner here (previously it was just the doc branch) we’ve seen major frontrunner snubbed even before they get the chance. Last year, Blackfish and Stories We Tell were the two main contenders for Documentary Feature only to be left off the nomination list entirely. Both of those films also received IDA nominations.

Another new rules states that a documentary must run four times a day during its LA or NY qualifying run. Further still, these four showings must fall between noon and 10:00pm and have at least one showing during the prime moviegoing time between 6:00-10:00pm. Previously, the films only needed two showings and had no time restrictions. This is ostensibly so that more docs can be seen by the public before head-scratching nominations come out but it also favors distributors with deeper pockets and more studio-produced films.

THE LIST:

“Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq”
“Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case”
“Algorithms”
“Alive Inside”
“All You Need Is Love”
“Altina”
“America: Imagine the World without Her”
“American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”
“Anita”
“Antarctica: A Year on Ice”
“Art and Craft”
“Awake: The Life of Yogananda”

“The Barefoot Artist”
“The Battered Bastards of Baseball”
“Before You Know It”
“Bitter Honey”
“Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity”
“Botso The Teacher from Tbilisi”

“Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart”
“The Case Against 8”
“Cesar’s Last Fast”
“Citizen Koch”
“CitizenFour”
“Code Black”
“Concerning Violence”
“The Culture High”
“Cyber-Seniors”

“DamNation”
“Dancing in Jaffa”
“Death Metal Angola”
“The Decent One”
“Dinosaur 13”
“Do You Know What My Name Is?”
“Documented”
“The Dog”

“E-Team”
“Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me”
“Elena”
“Evolution of a Criminal”

“Fed Up”
“Finding Fela”
“Finding Vivian Maier”
“Food Chains”

“The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden”
“Getting to the Nutcracker”
“Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me”
“Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia”
“The Great Flood”
“The Great Invisible”
“The Green Prince”

“The Hacker Wars”
“The Hadza: Last of the First”
“Hanna Ranch”
“Happy Valley”
“The Hornet’s Nest”

“I Am Ali”
“If You Build It”
“The Immortalists”
“The Internet’s Own Boy”
“Ivory Tower”

“James Cameron‘s Deepsea Challenge”
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”
“Journey of a Female Comic”

“Keep On Keepin’ On”
“Kids for Cash”
“The Kill Team”
“Korengal”

“La Bare”
“Last Days in Vietnam”
“Last Hijack”
“The Last Patrol”
“Levitated Mass”
“Life Itself”
“Little White Lie”
“Llyn Foulkes One Man Band”

“Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles”
“Manakamana”
“Merchants of Doubt”
“Mission Blue”
“Mistaken for Strangers”
“Mitt”
“Monk with a Camera”

“Nas: Time Is Illmatic”
“National Gallery”
“Next Goal Wins”
“Next Year Jerusalem”
“Night Will Fall”
“No Cameras Allowed”
“NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage”

“Occupy the Farm”
“The Only Real Game”
“The Overnighters”

“Particle Fever”
“Pay 2 Play: Democracy’s High Stakes”
“Pelican Dreams”
“The Pleasures of Being Out of Step”
“Plot for Peace”
“Point and Shoot”
“Poverty Inc.”
“Print the Legend”
“Private Violence”
“Pump”

“Rabindranath Tagore – The Poet of Eternity”
“Red Army”
“Remote Area Medical”
“Rich Hill”
“The Rule”

“The Salt of the Earth”
“Shadows from My Past”
“She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry”
“A Small Section of the World”
“Smiling through the Apocalypse – Esquire in the 60s”
“Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon”
“The Supreme Price”

“Tales of the Grim Sleeper”
“Tanzania: A Journey Within”
“This Is Not a Ball”
“Thomas Keating: A Rising Tide of Silence”
“Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People”
“True Son”
“20,000 Days on Earth”

“Unclaimed”
“Under the Electric Sky”
“Underwater Dreams”

“Virunga”

“Waiting for August”
“Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago”
“Warsaw Uprising”
“Watchers of the Sky”
“Watermark”
“We Are the Giant”
“We Could Be King”
“Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger”
“A World Not Ours”

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.