The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film 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.
Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward is an American retired actress. She made her career breakthrough in the 1950s and earned esteem and respect playing complex women with a characteristic nuance and depth of character. Her accolades include an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She is the oldest living Best Actress Oscar-winner.
Lee Grant is an American actress, documentarian, and director. For her film debut in 1951 as a young shoplifter in William Wyler's Detective Story, Grant earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and won the Best Actress Award at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival. Grant won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as Warren Beatty's older lover in Shampoo (1975).
Josh Ralph, known professionally as J. Ralph, is an American composer, producer, singer/songwriter and social activist who focuses on creating awareness and change through music and film.
Barbara Kopple is an American film director known primarily for her documentary work. She is credited with pioneering a renaissance of cinema vérité, and bringing the historic french style to a modern American audience. She has won two Academy Awards, for Harlan County, USA (1977), about a Kentucky miners' strike, and for American Dream (1991), the story of the 1985–86 Hormel strike in Austin, Minnesota, making her the first woman to win two Oscars in the Best Documentary category.
Sean Fine is an American cinematographer, producer and film director whose film Inocente won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary. He directs his films with his wife, Andrea Nix Fine. The Fines' first feature-length film War/Dance about child soldiers was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2007. In 2013 their film, Life According to Sam won both a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary filmmaking. The Fines launched a boutique film studio Change Content to develop documentaries that affect way audiences feel about critical issues. Change Content's first film LFG (film) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was instrumental in the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team achieving equal pay.
Ava Marie DuVernay is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. She is a recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, two NAACP Image Award, a BAFTA Film Award, and a BAFTA TV Award, as well as a nominee of an Academy Award and Golden Globe. In 2011, she founded her independent distribution company ARRAY.
Leslie Iwerks is an American producer, director, and writer. She is daughter of Disney Legend Don Iwerks and granddaughter of Disney Legend Ub Iwerks, the animator and co-creator of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. She has directed films including Recycled Life which was nominated for an Academy Award and The Pixar Story which was nominated for an Emmy for best nonfiction special.
Shine Global Inc, is a non-profit media company that was founded in 2005 by Susan MacLaury, and Albie Hecht. Susan MacLaury is the Executive Director of Shine Global. Shine Global has produced projects including War/Dance, a 2008 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary and Inocente, the Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2013.
Pina is a 2011 German 3D documentary film directed by Wim Wenders that is about German dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. On 30 June 2009, during the preparation for the film, Bausch died unexpectedly, so Wenders cancelled the project, but the dancers of Bausch's company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, convinced him to proceed as planned, as a way of memorializing Bausch and some of her choreography.
Susan MacLaury is the co-founder and executive director of the non-profit media company Shine Global, a licensed social worker, and a retired educator. She is also an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated producer.
The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306 is a 2008 documentary short film created to honor the 40th annual remembrance of the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. Directed by Adam Pertofsky, the film received a 2008 Oscar nomination in the "Best Documentary Short Subject" Category at the 81st Academy Awards.
Buzkashi Boys is a 2012 film directed by Sam French, and co-produced in Afghanistan and the United States. It was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
Redemption is a 2012 short documentary film directed by Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill. The film, which details the lives of New York City's "canners," people who survive by redeeming bottles and cans for money, was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Open Heart is a 2012 short documentary film directed by Kief Davidson about eight Rwandan children who leave their families to receive heart surgery. The film was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Mondays at Racine is a 2012 short documentary film directed by Cynthia Wade, about two sisters who open their Long Island hair salon to women diagnosed with cancer, every third Monday of the month. The film was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Kings Point is a 2012 short documentary film about five seniors living in a retirement resort in Kings Point, Florida, directed by Sari Gilman. The film was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Andrea Nix Fine is an American documentary film director whose film Inocente won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2013. She directs her films with her husband, Sean Fine. The Fines were also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2007 for War/Dance, a story about the power of music to heal and transform the lives of children living in Uganda's war zone, and their 2013 HBO documentary Life According to Sam was honored with a Peabody and Emmy award. Nix is a 1991 graduate of Colby College. The Fines launched a boutique film studio Change Content to develop documentaries that affect way audiences feel about critical issues. Change Content's first film LFG (film) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was instrumental in the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team achieving equal pay.
Karen Goodman is an American film and television director and producer, best known for her work on various documentaries. She has been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary category four times for The Children's Storefront (1988), Chimps: So Like Us (1990), Rehearsing a Dream (2007), and Strangers No More (2010). Goodman won once for producing and directing Strangers No More at the 83rd Academy Awards. The win was shared with Kirk Simon, with whom she worked on Chimps: So Like Us and Rehearsing a Dream as well. She has further received four Primetime Emmy nominations, winning once for Masterclass in 2014.
Sandy McLeod is an independent filmmaker. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and has been nominated for an Academy Award.
