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In an Oscar stunner, two films considered a lock for nominations failed to be recognized Tuesday morning in the Best Documentary Feature category: American Symphony and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.
Instead, a group of five internationally focused documentaries earned nominations: National Geographic’s Bobi Wine: The People’s President, The Eternal Memory, Four Daughters, To Kill a Tiger, and 20 Days in Mariupol.
Documentary branch voters, who determine the nominees, shunned American Symphony, the film directed by Matthew Heineman about Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste and his wife Suleika Jaouad. In a consolation, “It Never Went Away,” the song from the film written by Batiste and Dan Wilson, earned a nomination for Best Original Song.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, directed by Davis Guggenheim, may have been dinged for winning four Emmys earlier this month, including the TV Academy’s equivalent of best picture, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special. Deadline picked up talk that some doc branch voters were not keen on rewarding Still after it had won so many Emmys just days before nomination voting began.
The international contingent within the doc branch flexed its muscle, giving love to Bobi Wine, the film about the titular Ugandan pop star who ran for president of his country against a dictator who has been in power for going on 40 years. The film is directed by Ugandan natives Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp. This is the first Oscar nomination for Bwayo and Sharp. They are also nominated for a DGA Award for Bobi Wine.
Chile’s Maite Alberdi earned the second Oscar nomination of his career, recognized this morning for The Eternal Memory. Her film tells the love story of Augusto Góngora and Paulina Urrutia, two prominent figures in Chile, whose bond endured event after Augusto was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 62. Alberdi’s previous nomination came for 2020’s The Mole Agent, also set in Chile.
Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania also earned the second Oscar nomination of her career, the latest coming for Four Daughters (Les Filles d’Olfa) which last year shared the top prize for documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. The film centers on Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian woman who raised four girls, and then dealt with anguish after her two eldest daughters joined the fanatical ISIS Islamist movement in Libya. Ben Hania, who has worked in fiction and nonfiction previously, incorporated actors to portray the missing daughters, and well as Olfa.
Ben Hania’s previous Oscar recognition came for the 2020 narrative The Man Who Sold His Skin, which earned a nomination for Best International Film.
As Deadline has reported, the ranks of the Academy’s documentary branch have swelled in recent years to include vastly more international-based filmmakers than ever before, under an initiative spearheaded by former doc branch governor Roger Ross Williams (Williams’ film documentary feature Stamped From the Beginning was shortlisted this year, but didn’t earn a nomination this morning).
To Kill a Tiger, set in a village in India, continued the international theme of this year’s doc feature nominees. Nisha Pahuja, a Canadian filmmaker born in India, directed the story of a family that fought for justice against long odds after their daughter was the victim of a brutal sexual assault by three young men. Among the film’s executive producers are Dev Patel, Mindy Kaling, and Canadian poet Rupi Kaur.
20 Days in Mariupol, which documents the devastating attack on civilians in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, also secured a nomination. Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photojournalist Mstyslav Chernov directed the documentary, which is produced by the PBS program Frontline and the Associated Press.
The Oscars will be presented on March 10 in a ceremony telecast by ABC and hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.
This piece will be updated with reaction from today’s nominees…
