Best Documentary Feature: Ranking Every Oscar Nominee
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Last year’s winner: American Factory.
We’re at the second category that awards an entire feature film: the Best Documentary Feature group. Now, without incurring the wrath of Academy obsessives, I feel like the Oscars usually do a great job with selecting great documentaries, but not with awarding the right documentary most years. Case in point: The Act of Killing, Exit Through the Gift Shop, and Minding the Gap getting nominated but not awarded just doesn’t make sense. Well, that’s exactly the song and dance we’re getting this year, as well as the Academy’s occasional massive oversight (you’ll be seeing what very soon). Here are your nominees.
Biggest Snub: Dick Johnson Is Dead
Around the time before the announcement of the Academy Award nominees, most Oscar prophets projected that Dick Johnson Is Dead was actually going to win this award. Here we are, with what I feel is the greatest snub of the Academy Awards this year. This darkly comedic, moving experiment where Kirsten Johnson and her father turn the tragic fact (that he is going to die soon) into a bonding experience for them both was one of the top documentaries for many critics last year. It’s certainly an inventive documentary, which usually are the best kinds. It not being here — especially when the films that I have ranked lower are here — just feels incredibly stupid, quite frankly.
5. The Mole Agent
Look. I like the idea behind The Mole Agent, but its execution is so monotonous and questionable, that I feel that this meaningful message and strong pieces of evidence end up just doing their job at the barest level. I felt like I was watching a dramedy by Woody Allen or something at times, and there was so much taking away from the sincerity and importance of this picture. I don’t mean to be too harsh, since The Mole Agent is decent, but for me it was clearly the weakest entry here.
4. My Octopus Teacher
I love nature and the animal kingdom, so I get My Octopus Teacher on a sentimental level. However, I have absolutely zero idea why this film is decimating every documentary award under the sun presently. Yes, the film is endearing and sweet, as well as astonishing to look at (that helps), but I don’t feel like I’m seeing what other Academies are spotting, because I’m flabbergasted that this film is doing as well as it is (over some incredible documentaries, mind you) when I found it pretty good at best.
3. Crip Camp
Crip Camp is a crowd pleaser, but it doesn’t use this element of its foundation to get lazy. It is still a fully fledged story that rounds out the stories of all that are involved; I love that the film answers “where do we go from here?” before you can even ask it. Crip Camp is a really good film that might embody a lot of the blueprints of typical documentaries, but blows past these conventions with charm, heart, and a really compelling story of perseverance.
2. Collective
Seeing a cinema verité journalism thriller is really something, especially since you feel like you’re sitting in the room with these researchers as everything hits the fan. Collective starts out compelling, but only gets more and more harrowing from there. At times, I felt like I forgot that this was all real footage, because of how sickening the subject matter was; sadly, Collective is a hyper real film that sugar coats nothing, and it is guaranteed that you will feel sick afterwards (the corruption this world is full of will never feel normal).
1. Time
For me, Time was heads and shoulders above the rest as the best documentary of 2020 (only Dick Johnson is Dead and Collective came close for me). There are some films that just feel like miracles of filmmaking, because of how effortless they feel, as well as the amount of indescribable emotions they extract out of you. Time is such a film: it’s as devastating as it is extravagant. I adore this film. This is for sure my number one pick.
Who I want to win: Even though I love Collective, I am going all in on Time. It was one of my top films of 2020 (of any kind, not just documentaries), and I think it’s gorgeously moving. That’s all I have to say about this
Who I think will win: Much to my chagrin, there is this obsession with My Octopus Teacher. Look. I love animals. I find octopuses fascinating. I just don’t get it, even so. Maybe I need to watch this film again. I’m willing to revisit down the road, even though I personally felt like it was a one-time-viewing kind of work. Maybe I had viewing fatigue with all of the films I’ve reviewed lately. I don’t know. I’ll give it another chance down the road. My point is, My Octopus Teacher is almost guaranteed to win, and I’m still trying to see why academies love the film this much.
Tune in tomorrow for our next Academy Award category! We’re reviewing every single nominee.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.