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The Academy Award for Documentary Feature is one of the most prestigious awards for documentary films.

Controversy

The Award for Best Documentary is the most plagued and controversial award of the Academies. Many of the most influential and critically acclaimed documentaries not only didn't win the award, but often weren't even nominated, including most notably Thin Blue Line, Roger and Me, and Hoop Dreams. The controversy over Hoop Dreams was enough to actually force the Academy Awards to change their documentary voting system.

Whether the new rules are successful is still debated, since 2005's Grizzly Man—a documentary strong enough to appear on many critics top 10 lists—wasn't nominated, and didn't even make their internally distributed top 15 list.

There is continued debate on what role television dispribution should play and the nature of what is produced for the mediums of televsion and film. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, at the time the highest grossing documentary film, was famously ineligible because Moore had opted to have it played on television prior to the 2004 Election. On the opposite end the 1982 winning film Just Another Missing Kid directed by John Zaritsky was created by editing together footage he originally shot for the Canadian investigative journalism show The Fifth Estate.

Winners

Following the Academy's practice, films are listed by the "award year", which is also the year in which the film was released under the Academy's rules for eligibility. Due to the limited nature of documentary distribution, a film may be released in different years in different venues, sometimes years after production is complete.

For 1942 there was one Documentary category and four winners

1940s

From 1943 there were two separate documentary categories

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

Also nominated:

Also nominated:

Also nominated:

Also nominated:

Also nominated:

Academy Awards | Documentaries

Oscar/Bester Dokumentarfilm | Dokumental onenaren Oscar Saria | Film Dokumenter Terbaik (Oscar) | アカデミー長編ドキュメンタリー映画賞

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Academy Award for Documentary Feature".

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