‘Life Itself,’ ‘The Overnighters’ And ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’ On Oscar Documentary Shortlist
One of the interesting things about awards season is how voters are sometimes forced to vote on certain films. Take, for example, the Oscar shortlists. A small group of people wade through the hundreds of eligible films in certain categories and then provide a shortlist. Then, nominees can only be picked from that list. So there’s really a round of nominations before the actual nominations.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences already released a shortlist for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, and now they’ve made public the shortlist for Best Documentary. Plenty of fantastic films are on the list including the Roger Ebert docLife Itself,The Overnighters, CitizenFourandJodorowsky’s Dune. Check out the full Oscar documentary shortlist below.
Thanks toVariety, here’s the Oscar Documentary shortlist:
At this point, you’d have to think this is a wide open race. Films likeCitizenFourandThe Case Against 8have a good amount of buzz, but might be too modern for the older Academy award voters.Life ItselfandJodorowsky’s Duneare beloved in film circles, but didn’t really get out into the public consciousness. I’ll leave the predicting up to the experts.
And, as always, there are snubs. My favorite documentary of the year, Mike Myers’Supermensch, isn’t on the list.The Final Memberwas great and not on there, same forIvory Tower,The Battered Bastards of Baseball (which, to be fair, may not have been eligible due to its distribution model),Dinosaur 13and plenty others.
As for this system of short lists, it feels dismissive in a way but, no one can be expected to see every single documentary out there. Even people who are tasked with giving away the award. So, for that reason, you understand and it makes sense. It’s just a bummer when certain films get left out.
What do you think of this year’s Oscar Documentary shortlist?
