2021 Oscar Predictions: DOCUMENTARY FEATURE (November)

The Documentary Feature is a constantly moving piece, volatile even. The Critics Choice Documentary Awards already announced their winner, Dick Johnson is Dead, but they’ve been a bit of curse on this category in recent years. The doc branch of the Academy has consistently snubbed the populist choice so this month it falls out of the top 5. Entering the top 5 are Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution from Netflix (who’ve done very well here) and Welcome to Chechnya from HBO about the terrifying path LGBTQ+ have to take to escape the southern Russia republic.

Collective, from Magnolia Pictures, details a team of investigators at the Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor as they try to uncover a vast health-care fraud that enriched moguls and politicians and led to the deaths of innocent citizens. Two more very timely docs, Neon’s undercover COVID doc Totally Under Control and Briarcliff’s The Dissident (about the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi) should speak to the branch in their urgency. I’m wary of the amount of US political docs all finding a spot. I’m sticking with Apple’s Boys State for now but Magnolia’s John Lewis and Amazon’s Stacey Abrams films don’t feel like they have the same backing and weight at RBG did a few years ago.

Here are my ranked 2021 Oscar predictions in Documentary Feature for November.

Green – moves up; Red – moves down; Blue – new entry this month

1. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Netflix)
James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham

2. Welcome to Chechnya (HBO Documentary Films)
David France

3. Boys State (Apple TV+)
Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss

4. Collective (Magnolia Selects)
Alexander Nanau

5. The Truffle Hunters (Sony Pictures Classics)
Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw

6. The Dissident (Briarcliff Entertainment)
Bryan Fogel

7. Totally Under Control (Neon)
Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger

8. John Lewis: Good Trouble (Magnolia Pictures)
Dawn Porter

9. Dick Johnson is Dead (Netflix)
Kirsten Johnson

10. Time (Amazon Studios)
Garrett Bradley

Other Contenders

76 Days (MTV Documentary Films)
Weixi Chen, Hao Wu

All In: The Fight for Democracy (Amazon Studios)
Lisa Cortes, Liz Garbus

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

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

A Thousand Cuts (PBS Distribution and FRONTLINE PBS)
Ramona S. Diaz

The Way I See It (Focus Features)
Dawn Porter