Powerful Documentaries Lead Oscar Race Even Without U.S. Distribution

Last month, seemingly out of nowhere, Julia Loktev’s documentary “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow” became a frontrunner in the Oscar race for best documentary feature. The film, which focuses on independent journalists working in Russia who have been declared “foreign agents” by president Vladimir Putin’s regime, debuted at the 2024 New York Film Festival. It’s one of 15 films that secured a spot on the Oscar documentary shortlist last month.

It’s also one  of several docs on the Oscar shortlist without U.S. distribution. Other front-runners include Brandon Kramer’s “Holding Liat,” Amber Fares’s “Coexistence My Ass!” and David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin’s “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.”

In December, the 324-minute feature, which does not have U.S. distribution, was named the best documentary/nonfiction film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the New York Film Critics Circle. It also won the best documentary prize at the Gotham Awards and was nominated for the Film Independent Spirit Awards.

Although the film is a critical favorite, the inclusion of “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow” on the doc feature shortlist comes as a bit of a surprise. The film is divided into chapters and is the first part of what is intended to be a two-part series. (Loktev says that she is currently working on part two.) In 2017, after Ezra Edelman’s eight-hour doc “O.J.: Made in America” won the Oscar, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences barred multi-part and limited series from the best documentary feature category. In 2024, the AMPAS doc branch executive committee ruled “My Undesirable Friends” eligible after the film screened in its entirety at various film festivals and theaters. (AMPAS declined to comment on the specifics of their decision.)

In “Holding Liat,” Kramer follows an elderly American-Israeli couple, Yehuda and Chaya Beinin, as they fight for the release of their daughter and her husband, who were kidnapped and taken into captivity in Gaza after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. The film won the top nonfiction prize at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. Fares’ “Coexistence, My Ass!,” which centers on Israeli comedian and activist Noam Shuster Eliassi, won the Golden Alexander in the international competition section of the 27th Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival in March. In “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” co-director Talankin, a teacher from the small town of Karabash, secretly films his school’s grim transformation following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Denmark selected the acclaimed doc as its entry for the international feature Oscar, but it didn’t make that shortlist.

Also seeking distribution in America are shortlisted documentaries Richard Ladkani’s “Yanuni,” Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni’s“Cutting Through Rocks” and Brittany Shyne’s “Seeds.”

Four or five years ago, when the big streamers were spending millions to acquire docs and then get them nominated for an Oscar, a film without a distributor’s backing during awards season would have been disastrous. Now it’s the norm. That’s because only a handful of independently made nonfiction films are acquired each year by streamers or television distributors. That shift meant that the majority of doc filmmakers have had to follow the newish DIY distribution model, which requires raising funds to release a film. If that doc makes the shortlist, more funds need to be raised independently to compete with the major streamers during Oscar season.

Directors Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham followed that model in 2024. They ultimately proved that multi-million-dollar award campaigns are not always necessary when their film “No Other Land” won the feature doc Oscar in 2025.

This year, shortlisted docs with mid- to low-level campaign funding include Mstyslav Chernov’s “2000 Meters to Andriivka” (Frontline); Andrew Jarecki’s “The Alabama Solution” (HBO); Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “Folktales” (Magnolia); and Elizabeth Lo’s “Mistress Dispeller (Oscilloscope Laboratories).

Notably, “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” which follows a Ukrainian platoon’s mission to liberate the occupied village of Andriivka from Russian troops, is also Ukraine’s Oscar entry in the international feature category, although didn’t make that shortlist. The film is Chernov’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Frontline doc “20 Days in Mariupol.”

Jarecki’s “The Alabama Solution” is a powerful exposé of the inhumanity of the U.S. prison system, which bowed at Sundance 2025. It’s a current event doc that should appeal to voters who, in the last two years, have awarded a film about Palestinian activists’ resistance to forced displacement (“No Other Land”) and a documentary about the war in Ukraine (“20 Days in Mariupol”) with the little gold man.

Although Ewing and Grady’s “Folktales” and Lo’s “Mistress Dispeller” are not ripped-from-the-headline docs, they are both strong, feel-good contenders.

“Folktales” focuses on a trio of teenagers taking a “gap year” at a Norwegian Folk High School, while “Mistress Dispeller” follows a woman in China who is desperate to save her marriage.

For the first time in years, major streamers like Apple and Netflix have a good shot at earning a feature doc Oscar nomination.

Branch members seem to be particularly excited about Apple TV’s “Come See Me in the Good Light,” about poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley. Directed by Ryan White, the feature doc debuted at Sundance last year, where it won the Festival Favorite Award.

Another Sundance 2025 entry that members of the doc branch are celebrating is Geeta Gandbhir’s “The Perfect Neighbor.” Netflix picked up the film after Gandbhir won the Sundance directing award. Recently, it garnered a PGA nod and five Critics Choice Assn. awards, including one for best documentary feature. But winning the top CCA kudo could have cursed the film. In the last eight years, only one winner of the CCA best doc award — “Summer of Soul” — went on to receive an Oscar nomination after making the Academy’s shortlist.

In all, Netflix has three docs on the shortlist — Gandbhir’s “The Perfect Neighbor,” Oscar-winner Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s “Cover-Up” and Petra Costa’s “Apocalypse in the Tropics.”

“Cover-Up,” a portrait of the fearless, dogged, deep-dive reporting done by Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, debuted at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and won the prestigious National Board of Review kudo. Costa’s Brazilian political feature “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” debuted at Venice in 2024 and has been a festival darling for over a year.

It’s unlikely that all three Netflix docs will garner Oscar nods. Although the streamer won three Academy Awards in a four-year period between 2018 and 2021 — for “Icarus,” “American Factory” and “My Octopus Teacher” — that streak came to a grinding halt, arguably after the streamer stopped chasing and spending seven figures on independently made, politically minded docs in favor of more commercial fare. Fair or not, the streamer is often blamed for the current state of the doc industry, characterized by steadily shrinking budgets and a dramatic, arguably terrifying, decline in distribution.

While there is still plenty of resentment in the doc community toward Netflix for what they see as coming in hot and ducking out quickly after establishing its library, the streamer’s recent interest in films like “The Perfect Neighbor,” “Cover Up,” and “Apocalypse in the Tropics” proves that there is a glimmer of hope that the conglomerates still have an appetite, albeit it an Ozempic appetite, for social issue fare.