2022 Oscar Predictions: ANIMATED FEATURE and DOCUMENTARY FEATURE (November)
Not much movement in animated feature this month, with a top six I feel pretty good about right now. Spots five and six are definitely the most open but if this category doesn’t include Flee, The Mitchells vs the Machines, Encanto and Raya and the Last Dragon on February 8, 2022 I will be surprised.
Unlike most feature film categories, we already have several guilds and groups announce nominations and even winners for documentary feature films.
The Gotham Awards nominated Ascension, Faya Dayi, Flee, President and Summer of Soul while the International Documentary Association revealed their nominations for doc features that feature four of those five (sorry, President) plus Jacinta, Apenas el sol (Nothing but the Sun), In the Same Breath, North By Current, Not Going Quietly, Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker and Writing With Fire.
Critics Choice have already announced their winners, where Summer of Soul made a clean sweep of all six of its nominations (a record) including feature, director and editing. But, is that a good thing? The curse of the Critics Choice doc winner could hold this year, especially for a film that’s almost entirely archival footage, something the Academy doc branch has rebuffed before. The last four winners here: Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Jane, Apollo 11 and Dick Johnson is Dead were all snubbed by Oscar.
The DOC NYC shortlist has often been a great precursor, as its overlap with the Academy’s official 15-film Oscar shortlist is substantial. In fact, until just last year, with Netflix’s My Octopus Teacher, the festival had screened the film that went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature: American Factory, Free Solo, Icarus, O.J.: Made in America, Amy, Citizenfour, 20 Feet From Stardom, Searching for Sugar Man and Undefeated.
With that, the doc race is really starting to take shape. Here’s a grid of who has what so far, winner(s) in bold.
Here are my 2022 Oscar predictions in Animated Feature and Documentary Feature for November 2021.
ANIMATED FEATURE
Green – moves up ↑ Red – moves down ↓ Blue – new/re-entry ♦ Black – no movement ↔
1. Flee (NEON) ↔
2. The Mitchells vs the Machines (Netflix) ↔
3. Encanto (Walt Disney) ↔
4. Raya and the Last Dragon (Walt Disney) ↔
5. Belle (GKIDS) ↔
6. Luca (Walt Disney/Pixar) ↔
7. Sing 2 (Universal Pictures) ↑
8. The Summit of the Gods (Netflix) ↑
9. Ron’s Gone Wrong (20th Century Studios) ↔
10. Vivo (Netflix) ↓
Other contenders:
The Addams Family 2 (United Artists Releasing)
The Boss Baby: Family Business (Universal Pictures)
Cryptozoo (Magnolia Pictures)
Spirit Untamed (Dreamworks Animation)
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Green – moves up ↑ Red – moves down ↓ Blue – new/re-entry ♦ Black – no movement ↔
1. Flee (NEON) ↔
2. The Rescue (NatGeo) ↔
3. Ascension (MTV Documentary Films) ↔
4. Faya Dayi (Janus Films) ♦
5. Procession (Netflix) ↑
6. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Searchlight Pictures) ↑
7. Attica (Showtime Documentary Films) ↓
8. Francesco (Discovery+) ↔
9. Julia (Sony Pictures Classics) ↓
10. The First Wave (NEON/NatGeo) ↑
Other contenders:
Ailey (NEON)
Becoming Cousteau (Picturehouse)
Black Power: A British Story of Resistance (Amazon Studios)
Citizen Ashe (CNN Films/HBO Max/Magnolia Pictures)
Convergence: Courage in a Crisis (Netflix)
Jacinta (Hulu)
In the Same Breath (HBO Documentary Films)
The Lost Leonardo (Sony Pictures Classics)
My Name is Pauli Murray (Amazon Studios)
Not Going Quietly (Greenwich Entertainment)
Pray Away (Netflix)
President (Greenwich Entertainment)
The Real Charlie Chaplin (Showtime Documentary Films)
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (Focus Features)
The Sparks Brothers (Focus Features)
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (Screen Films Media/HBO Documentary Films)
Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre (Hulu)
Val (Amazon Studios)
The Velvet Underground (Apple Original Films)
Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America (Sony Pictures Classics)
Photo: Sundance Institute/Jessica Beshir
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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