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.
Flags of Our Fathers is a 2006 American war film directed, co-produced, and scored by Clint Eastwood and written by William Broyles Jr. and Paul Haggis. It is based on the 2000 book of the same name written by James Bradley and Ron Powers about the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima, the five Marines and one Navy corpsman who were involved in raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and the after effects of that event on their lives.
Street Fight is a 2005 documentary film by Marshall Curry, chronicling the 2002 Newark mayoral election which pitted upstart Cory Booker against the incumbent Sharpe James for Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Other credits include Rory Kennedy, Liz Garbus, Mary Manhardt, Marisa Karplus, and Adam Etline. Street Fight screened at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival and was later aired on the PBS series P.O.V. on July 5, 2005, and CBC Newsworld in Canada on May 7, 2006. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Old Joy is a 2006 American road movie written and directed by Kelly Reichardt and based on a short story by Jonathan Raymond. The original soundtrack for the film is by Yo La Tengo and included on the compilation soundtrack album They Shoot, We Score.
In the Shadow of the Moon is a 2007 British documentary film about the United States' crewed missions to the Moon. After premiering at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Audience Award, it was given a limited release in the United States on 7 September 2007, and in Canada on 19 October.
Taxi to the Dark Side is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney, and produced by Gibney, Eva Orner, and Susannah Shipman. It won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It focuses on the December 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being held in extrajudicial detention and interrogated at a black site at Bagram air base.
For the Bible Tells Me So is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Daniel G. Karslake about homosexuality and its perceived conflict with Christianity, as well as various interpretations of what the Bible says about sexual orientation. The film premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
The Savages is a 2007 American black comedy-drama film written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. It stars Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Philip Bosco.
Manufactured Landscapes is a 2006 feature-length documentary film about the industrial landscape photography of Edward Burtynsky. It was directed by Jennifer Baichwal and is distributed by Zeitgeist Films. It was the first of three documentary collaborations between Baichwall and Burtynsky, followed by Watermark in 2013 and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch in 2018.
No End in Sight is a 2007 American documentary film about the American occupation of Iraq. The directorial debut of Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson, it premiered on January 22, 2007, at the Sundance Film Festival and opened in its first two theaters in the United States on July 27, 2007. By December of that year, it had a theatrical gross of $1.4 million. The film was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 80th Academy Awards.
Silent Light is a 2007 film written and directed by Carlos Reygadas. Filmed in a Mennonite colony close to Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua State, Northern Mexico, Silent Light tells the story of a Mennonite married man who falls in love with another woman, threatening his place in the conservative community. The dialogue is in Plautdietsch, the Low German dialect of the Mennonites. The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards, but it did not make the shortlist. The film was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 24th Independent Spirit Awards. It gained nine nominations, including all major categories, in the Ariel Awards, the Mexican national awards.
The Edge of Heaven is a 2007 Turkish-German drama written and directed by Fatih Akın. The film won the Prix du scénario at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, was Germany's entry in the category Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Oscars, but was not nominated.
The Counterfeiters is a 2007 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by Nazi Germany during World War II to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England pound notes. The film centres on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Terror's Advocate is a 2007 French feature documentary film on controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès. Produced by Rita Dagher and directed by Barbet Schroeder, it explores how Vergès assisted, from the 1960s onwards, anti-imperialist terrorist cells operating in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The film contains no narration and uses archival footage, stills and interviews to propel the plot forward. It features interviews with Vergès himself, with people involved in his life, and with people who have investigated it.
Man on Wire is a 2008 documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Petit's 2002 book, To Reach the Clouds, released in paperback with the title Man on Wire. The title of the film is taken from the police report that led to the arrest of Petit, whose performance lasted for almost an hour. The film is crafted like a heist film, presenting rare footage of the preparations for the event and still photographs of the walk, alongside re-enactments and present-day interviews with the participants, including Barry Greenhouse, an insurance executive who served as the inside man.
This Is Not a Film is an Iranian documentary film by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb. It was released on 28 September 2011 in France, distributed by Kanibal Films Distribution.
Neighboring Sounds is a 2012 Brazilian drama film directed and written by Kleber Mendonça Filho, produced by Emilie Lesclaux and starring Irandhir Santos, Gustavo Jahn and Maeve Jinkings.
Zero Days is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Alex Gibney. It was selected to compete for the Golden Bear at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival.
Abortion: Stories Women Tell is a 2016 American documentary film directed and produced by Tracy Droz Tragos. The film centers on different women on either side of the abortion debate in the state of Missouri. It had its premiere at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival on April 18.
The Mole Agent is a 2020 internationally co-produced documentary film directed by Maite Alberdi. It was screened at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. At the 93rd Academy Awards, It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and was selected as the Chilean entry for Best International Feature Film, making the shortlist of fifteen films.
