The Academy Award for Documentary Feature is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Special Awards to Kukan and Target for Tonight. They have since been bestowed competitively each year, with the exception of 1946. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive.
This is a list of films by year that have received an Academy Award together with the other nominations for best documentary short subject. Following the Academy's practice, the year listed for each film is the year of release: the awards are announced and presented early in the following year. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive. Ten films are shortlisted before nominations are announced.
Albert Lamorisse was a French filmmaker, film producer, and writer of award-winning short films which he began making in the late 1940s. He also invented the strategic board game Risk in 1957.
The Casting Society of America (CSA), founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1982, is a professional society of about 700 casting directors for film, television, and theatre in Australia, Canada, India, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The society is not to be confused with an industry union. The Teamsters represent most of the major casting directors in Hollywood. Members use the post-nominal letters "CSA".
The Knife were a Swedish electronic music duo from Gothenburg, formed in 1999. The group consisted of siblings Karin and Olof Dreijer, who together also run their own record company, Rabid Records. The group gained a large international following in response to their 2003 album Deep Cuts.
Passion Pictures is a British animation production company established by Andrew Ruhemann in 1987. The company has studios in London, Melbourne, Paris, Toronto and New York City.
Sigurjón Sighvatsson, also known as Joni Sighvatsson, is an Icelandic Hollywood film producer and businessman.
Lauren Greenfield is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
Jon Gustafsson is an Iceland born film director and photographer. The Icelandic spelling of his name is Jón Gústafsson. Best known for directing the Canadian documentary film Wrath of Gods, starring Gerard Butler, Wendy Ord, Sarah Polley, Paul Stephens and Sturla Gunnarsson. He grew up in Iceland where he started his career as a television performer before studying filmmaking at Manchester Polytechnic and directing for film and theatre at CalArts where he was mentored by the legendary Ealing Studios director Alexander Mackendrick. Wrath of Gods was his second documentary for CBC Newsworld, the first one was The Importance of Being Icelandic. He immigrated to Canada where he directed the low-budget feature film Kanadiana and the music video Brighter Hell for the Canadian rock band The Watchmen. In 2011 Jon Gustafsson produced the award winning short film In A Heartbeat, directed by Karolina Lewicka, through his production company Artio Films. He co-wrote and co-directed the feature film Shadowtown with Karolina Lewicka.
Michael Sporn was an American animator who founded his New York City-based company, Michael Sporn Animation in 1980, and produced and directed numerous animated TV specials and short spots.
Marshall Curry is an Oscar-winning American documentary director, producer, cinematographer and editor. His films include Street Fight, Racing Dreams, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, Point and Shoot, and A Night at the Garden. His first fiction film was the Academy Award-winning short film The Neighbors' Window (2019).
T. J. Martin is an Oscar and Emmy award winning American filmmaker. Martin's film Undefeated (2011), for which he was co-director, co-editor, and co-cinematographer, won the 2012 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. His film LA 92 (2017), for which he was co-director and co-editor, won the 2017 Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.
Karolina Lewicka is a Polish-Canadian director, writer and producer for Artio Films. Karolina graduated from The Poznan University of Economics in Poland. She also studied business at The University of Toronto in Canada. She co-wrote and co-produced an award-winning documentary Wrath of Gods directed by Jon Gustafsson. The film is an Icelandic–Canadian co-production and was financed with participation of the Icelandic Film Fund and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The documentary was screened at numerous film festivals around the world, including USA, Portugal, UK and Poland, and received six awards. It was broadcast on RUV in Iceland and CBC Television in Canada. In 2008, Karolina was chosen to participate at the Berlinale Talent Campus. In 2011, she directed her first short film is entitled In a Heartbeat. In a Heartbeat has been invited to eighty film festivals in numerous countries and has won several awards, including Best Short Film in Uruguay and India and Best Original Music in Spain. In a Heartbeat was nominated for the Icelandic Film and Television Academy Awards in 2011. Karolina Lewicka co-wrote and co-directed the feature film Shadowtown with Jon Gustafsson
Christopher Leggett is an American producer of films, television, documentaries, music videos, and commercials. In 2013, Leggett joined as a partner at Delirio Films, a boutique film and commercial production company with a focus on prestige documentary, both features and series. Leggett began his producing career at NBC / Universal Sports.
Lynn-Maree Milburn is an Australian writer, director, editor and film producer. Milburn directed the feature-length documentary In Bob We Trust and co-directed the feature-length documentary Autoluminescent,
Vishal Punjabi is a Ghanaian Indian film director and producer who predominantly works in Bollywood and Hindi cinema. Punjabi is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mumbai film production company, The Wedding Filmer. In 2013, Vishal Punjabi's documentary film Heartbeats became India’s first wedding film to enter an international film festival.
RYOT is an American immersive media company founded in 2012 by Bryn Mooser, David Darg, Molly DeWolf Swenson and Martha Rogers, based in Los Angeles. It specializes in documentary film production, commercial production, virtual reality and augmented reality.
Nick Ryan is a film director and producer from Dublin, Ireland. Ryan directed A Lonely Sky (2006), The German (2008), Electric Picnic: The Documentary (2008), and the award-winning documentary The Summit(2012); In 2016 he produced the award winning Feature I Am Not A Serial Killer directed by Billy O'Brien starring Max Records and Christopher Lloyd ; he was also the producer for Ruairi Robinson's short films The Silent City, BlinkyTM, and Corporate Monster. In 1995 he and two others founded Image Now Films, where they worked on commercials and graphic design. In 2018 he established Titan II Films
Impact Partners is an American film production and television production company founded in 2007, by Dan Cogan and Geralyn Dreyfous. The company primarily produces documentary films focusing on social issues.
