2021 Oscar Predictions: DOCUMENTARY FEATURE (January)
With wins from LAFCA, NBR, NSFC and NYFCC, Garrett Bradley’s Time is the default frontrunner in the Documentary Feature category but, is that a mixed blessing?
We’ve seen all too many times recently when the critics’ favorite (like Apollo 11, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and Jane) gets snubbed by the doc branch, who often like to subvert populist choices in favor of more ‘important’ works. What separates Time from those films though is that its subject is important. The story of a Black woman, Fox Rich, as she fights for the release of her husband, Rob, who is serving a 60-year sentence in prison, would speak to voters in any given year but this one maybe even more. The one caveat is that, like Apollo 11, Time is largely constructed of existing footage, something the branch doesn’t look too kindly on, but should have enough new content to satisfy the most strict of voters.
The freshness of the Georgia runoff victories and presidential election may give All In: The Fight for Democracy and edge in this race. But this year, maybe more than any in recent memory, is packed with political docs like Collective, Boys State, The Dissident and John Lewis: Good Trouble, any of which could get lost in the shuffle.
Here are my ranked 2021 Oscar predictions in Documentary Feature for January.
Green – moves up; Red – moves down; Blue – new entry this month
1. Time (Amazon Studios)
Garrett Bradley
2. Collective (Magnolia Selects)
Alexander Nanau
3. Boys State (Apple TV+)
Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss
4. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Netflix)
James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham
5. The Truffle Hunters (Sony Pictures Classics)
Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
6. The Dissident (Briarcliff Entertainment)
Bryan Fogel
7. 76 Days (MTV Documentary Films)
Weixi Chen, Hao Wu
8. All In: The Fight for Democracy (Amazon Studios)
Lisa Cortes, Liz Garbus
9. Dick Johnson is Dead (Netflix)
Kirsten Johnson
10. Welcome to Chechnya (HBO Documentary Films)
David France
Other Contenders (alphabetical by film)
Assassins (Greenwich Entertainment)
Ryan White
Belushi (Showtime Documentary Films)
R.J. Cutler
Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry (Apple TV+)
R.J. Cutler
Giving Voice (Netflix)
James D. Stern, Fernando Villena
Gunda (Neon)
Victor Kossakovsky, Anita Rehoff Larsen
The Human Factor (Sony Pictures Classics)
Dror Moreh
I Am Greta (Hulu)
Nathan Grossman
John Lewis: Good Trouble (Magnolia Pictures)
Dawn Porter
Miss Americana (Netflix)
Lana Wilson
My Octopus Teacher (Netflix)
Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed
MLK/FBI (IFC Films)
Sam Pollard
Oliver Sacks: His Own Life (Zeitgeist Films)
Ric Burns
On the Record (HBO Max)
Kirby Dick, Amy Ziering
Rebuilding Paradise (National Geographic Documentary Films)
Ron Howard
The Social Dilemma (Netflix)
Jeff Orlowski
Totally Under Control (Neon)
Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger
A Thousand Cuts (PBS Distribution and FRONTLINE PBS)
Ramona S. Diaz
The Way I See It (Focus Features)
Dawn Porter
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.
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