Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
Things have been undeniably bleak for a while in the documentary space, but at the moment, it does feel like the genre is on an upswing. Given how the Sundance Film Festival has long been the primary launchpad for Best Documentary Feature Oscar contenders (four out of the last five winners premiered at the annual January event,) it was reassuring to see so many of the documentaries that screened there be so well-received by audiences and secure distribution along the way.
In addition to winning the Audience Award for the U.S. Documentary section, “Daughters” won overall Festival Favorite at Sundance this year. The film, directed by newcomers Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, was promptly acquired by Netflix.
The pioneering streaming service actually acquired a bunch of Sundance titles, from the mesmerizing, death-defying “Skywalkers: A Love Story” to the heart-wrenching Norwegian film “Ibelin,” about a terminally ill young man who developed a fruitful life within the game “World of Warcraft.” Netflix has won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature three times since acquiring its first original documentary “The Square” in 2013 (which also received an Oscar nod), so it does not look like the studio faces the same issues with the Documentary Branch of the Academy as it does with other branches. Still, its streaming-centric distribution model does not exactly help quell the issue of documentaries not being seen as viable theatrical releases anymore.
Running counter to that are boutique labels like A24 and Neon dipping more into the documentary space in recent years. The former studio actually won the Oscar category in 2016 for Asif Kapadia’s “Amy,” and the latter studio has gotten very close in recent years with films like “Flee” and “All the Beauty and Bloodshed.” Both A24’s “Look Into My Eyes” and Neon’s “Seeking Mavis Beacon” also premiered at Sundance, and have been praised for feeling less staid than the average documentary — a benefit during a time where voters avoid seeming like traditionalists.
And while there are more films to come from documentarians that have been in the Oscars race before, Sundance set the tone for this to be a year celebrating a lot of first-time filmmakers. “Sugarcane,” which was picked up by National Geographic Documentary Films, won the Grand Jury Directing Award for what is both Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s feature directorial debut. Longtime documentary editor Carla Gutiérrez also received the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award for her directorial debut “Frida,” which was distributed by Amazon Studios.
Amazon also has “I Am: Celine Dion,” widely seen as one of the better films to capture a celebrity, especially with that subgenre of documentary being so saturated. Warner Bros. Pictures similarly is getting ready to promote “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” as its top documentary this year, and has the TV rights to Sundance breakout “Luther: Never Too Much,” which is officially getting theatrical distribution as well through Giant Pictures.
While films like “American Symphony” and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” which followed high-profile celebrities like Grammy winner Jon Batiste and honorary Oscar winner Michael J. Fox, they did not make the cut for the most recent Oscar nominations. That calls into question if voters want to completely avoid honoring celebrity profiles, regardless of the wider themes they may have. (Those films did still make the shortlist, giving hope to this year’s crop, which also includes Netflix’s “Will & Harper.”)
The fall festivals will still bring plenty more contenders, whether it is a second wind coming for Mati Diop’s Golden Bear winner “Dahomey,” Focus Features’ inventive animated documentary “Piece by Piece,” or Apple Studios’ “The Last of the Sea Women,” which was announced as part of the TIFF 2024 Documentary Selection lineup.
It being a presidential election year in the United States also puts political documentaries top of mind, including the Sundance premiere “War Game,” Sundance Jury Prize winner “Porcelain War,” Berlin breakout “No Other Land,” or TIFF premiere “The Last Republican,” which all deal with the current political landscape, whether it is the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, or the widening ideological divide between American politicians.
Contenders for the shortlist of 15 are listed in alphabetical order below. No documentary will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen the film.
Frontrunners:
“A New Kind of Wilderness”
“Daughters”
“Frida”
“Hollywoodgate”
“Ibelin”
“Look Into My Eyes”
“Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa”
“Porcelain War”
“Skywalkers: A Love Story”
“Sugarcane”
Contenders:
“Black Box Diaries”
“Bread and Roses”
“Dahomey”
“Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
“Gaucho Gaucho”
“I Am: Celine Dion”
“The Last of the Sea Women”
“The Last Republican”
“Luther: Never Too Much”
“Men of War”
“No Other Land”
“Nocturnes”
“Piece by Piece”
“Seeking Mavis Beacon”
“Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story”
“2073″
“Union”
“War Game”
“Will & Harper”
