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Oscar-Nominated Doc Features Shine a Light on Dark Topics, International Stories and Global Politics
The 2025 crop of Oscar nominated doc features all tackle urgent and timely international stories that resonate in today's geopolitical climate.
Based on the feature documentaries nominated for an Academy Award over the last two years, it’s clear that if streaming services like Amazon, Apple and Netflix want to be real competitors in the race for The Little Gold Man, they need to start buying or commissioning bold, political titles. This year’s feature nominees are Shiori Ito’s “Black Box Diaries” (MTV Documentary Films); Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham’s “No Other Land” (no U.S. distribution); Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev’s “Porcelain War” (Picturehouse service deal); Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” (Kino Lorber); and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s “Sugarcane” (Nat Geo). Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” which premiered at Sundance in 2024, is an impressionistic essay film that looks back at the hopeful rise of Patrice Lumumba, who became the first prime minister of the newly independent Congo in 1960, only to be deposed a few months later and executed the following year.
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