Deadline’s Doc Talk Debates: Is The Documentary World Really “Reeling” Over The Oscar Nominations?

When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, it marked a watershed moment for the Documentary Feature category. All the nominated films focused on international subjects – stories from Uganda, Tunisia, Ukraine, India and Chile — and not a single American director was recognized.

Two prominent documentaries by major U.S. filmmakers were among the leading contenders that got snubbed: Matthew Heineman’s American Symphony, and Davis Guggenheim’s Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.

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A headline in a recent Variety piece described the doc community as “reeling” over the nominations. An unnamed documentary producer quoted in the article expressed deep concern over the lack of recognition for American filmmakers and said it was a “giant mistake” that the Documentary branch – which determines the nominees – “did not nominate some of the most successful and most beloved films of the year.”

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On the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, we step into the debate over the Oscar documentary feature nominations. Did the Doc branch get it right by nominating Bobi Wine: The People’s President, The Eternal Memory, Four Daughters, To Kill a Tiger, and 20 Days in Mariupol? Or did it injure a U.S. domestic documentary field already wounded by a soft acquisition market and other challenges?

We are joined by three leaders in the documentary community: Lois Vossen, founding executive producer of the public television series Independent Lens and a member of the Academy’s Doc branch; Iranian filmmaker and former IDA board president Marjan Safinia, also an Academy Doc branch member; and Tom White, the former longtime editor of Documentary magazine and a contributor to Filmmaker magazine, Deadline and other publications. It’s a pointed and unfiltered conversation.

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Doc Talk is hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s Documentary Editor. The podcast is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios, presented with support from National Geographic Documentary Films.

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