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.
Philip Alexander Gibney is an American documentary film director and producer. In 2010, Esquire magazine said Gibney "is becoming the most important documentarian of our time."
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).
Skateistan is an international non-profit organization that uses skateboarding and education to empower children. Over 2,500 children, aged 5–17, attend Skateistan's programs in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa. 50% of students are girls. Through their innovative programs, Outreach, Skate and Create, Back-to-School, Dropping In and Youth Leadership, Skateistan aims to give children the opportunity to become leaders for a better world. Skateistan has Skate Schools in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; and Johannesburg, South Africa. The international headquarters is in Berlin, Germany.
Skateistan: To Live and Skate Kabul is a short film that follows the lives of a group of young skateboarders in Afghanistan. Operating against the backdrop of war and bleak prospects, the Skateistan charity project is the world's first co-educational skateboarding school, where a team of international volunteers work with girls and boys between the ages of 5 and 17. The short documentary film follows the lives of young skateboarders in Afghanistan, directed by UK filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel. The film team includes cinematographer Franklin Dow and editor Peta Ridley.
Grain Media is a British film, television and commercials production company in South London, established in 2006 by Jon Drever and Orlando von Einsiedel.
Orlando von Einsiedel is a British film director. He directs mostly documentary films that investigate global social issues, and has filmed in various places around the world, including Africa, Asia, America and the Arctic. von Einsiedel became known for his award winning film Virunga, produced with the cooperation of Virunga National Park director Prince de Merode.
Bing Liu is a Chinese-American director and cinematographer. He is best known for directing the documentary Minding the Gap, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards.
The 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 2019 and took place on February 9, 2020, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, beginning at 5:00 p.m. PST / 8:00 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, the AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Stephanie Allain and Lynette Howell Taylor and was directed by Glenn Weiss. Three months earlier in a ceremony at the Ray Dolby Ballroom of the Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood held on October 27, 2019, the Academy held its 11th Annual Governors Awards ceremony.
St. Louis Superman is a 2019 American short documentary film about activist, battle rapper, and former politician Bruce Franks Jr. It was directed by Sami Khan and Smriti Mundhra. It was released by MTV Documentary Films.
Walk Run Cha-Cha is a 2019 American documentary short film directed by Laura Nix of The New York Times, which distributed the film.
In the Absence(Korean: 부재의기억) is a 2018 South Korean–American short documentary film that depicts the sinking of the MV Sewol in 2014, in which three hundred people – mostly school children from Danwon High School – lost their lives.
Carol Dysinger is the co-director of Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone , for which she and Elena Andreicheva won the Best Documentary Short Subject at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020.
Elena Andreicheva is a Ukrainian-born producer and filmmaker. She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 11, and later studied physics at Imperial College London, graduating with a Bachelor of Science and then a Masters in Science Communication. She worked in TV film production beginning in 2006.
Smriti Mundhra is an Indian-American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her production company, Meralta Films, specializes in documentary films and non-fiction content.
Sami Khan is a Canadian filmmaker. He is most noted as co-director with Smriti Mundhra of the film St. Louis Superman, which was an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020.
Lisa Rinzler is an American cinematographer who works on both feature films and documentaries. She has worked with Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, the Hughes Brothers and Tamra Davis.
Foothill Productions is an American film company that funds and produces independent films and documentaries. It was founded in 2018 by Jamie Wolf and produced films such as The Truffle Hunters, What Would Sophia Loren Do?, and the Oscar-nominated Walk Run Cha-Cha.
