Sami Khan is a Canadian filmmaker. [1] 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 (Short Subject) at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020. [2]
Originally from Sarnia, Ontario, Khan attended Northern Collegiate Institute and Vocational School before studying film at Columbia University. [3] He wrote and directed the short films The Bride, The Workout, Habibi and 75 El Camino before premiering his debut feature film Khoya in 2015. [4] In 2020, Khan and Michael Gassert released the feature documentary film The Last Out, for which they received a special jury mention for the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director Award at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. [5]
In addition to his work in film, Khan has also been a story editor on the Canadian television drama series Transplant . [6]
In November 2020, Sarnia's South Western International Film Festival included a retrospective program of Khan's works in its lineup, due to increased local interest in his work following the Academy Award nomination. [7]
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.
This is a list of films by year that have received an Academy Award together with the other nominations for best documentary short film. 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. Fifteen films are shortlisted before nominations are announced.
Philip Davis Guggenheim is an American screenwriter, director, and producer.
Marshall Curry is an 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).
Daniel Junge is an American documentary filmmaker. On February 26, 2012, he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film Saving Face, which he co-directed along with Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Candescent Films is an American film production company that produces and finances documentary and narrative films that explore social issues.
Motto Pictures is a documentary production company based in Brooklyn, New York, specializing in producing and executive producing documentary features. Motto secures financing, builds distribution strategies, and creatively develops films, and has produced over 25 feature documentaries and won numerous awards.
Laura Checkoway is a documentary filmmaker and writer, known for her documentary Edith+Eddie for which she received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject nomination at the 90th Academy Awards. The film also received an Emmy nomination and won numerous awards including the IDA Documentary Awards Best Short. In The New Yorker, critic Richard Brody wrote: “One of the most impressive aspects of Checkoway’s film is that, with a simple and straightforward approach, she brings the overwhelming force of abstract institutions seemingly onto the screen.” Academy Award winning filmmaker Julia Reichert called Edith+Eddie "One of the most beautiful and quietly furious films I've ever seen." Checkoway's documentary The Cave of Adullam is executive produced by Laurence Fishburne and premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2022, winning top prizes Best Documentary Feature, Best Editing, and the Audience Award. In an interview with Deadline, Fishburne said: “She has a cinematic sensitivity and a doctor’s bedside manner... Laura doesn’t impose her personality or her energy onto anything. It boils down to her humanity and her ability to see the humanity in all…” The film was released by ESPN Films. She received NYWIFT’s Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking Award in 2022.
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.
Smriti Mundhra is an American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her production company, Meralta Films, specializes in documentary films and non-fiction content.
The South Western International Film Festival was an annual film festival in Sarnia, Ontario, staged from 2015 to 2022. Launched in 2015, the festival programs a lineup of Canadian and international films in November each year, at the city's Imperial Theatre and Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery.
Mr. Soul! is a 2018 American documentary film produced, written and directed by documentary filmmaker Melissa Haizlip. The film was co-produced by Doug Blush and co-directed by Sam Pollard. The film tells the story of Ellis Haizlip, the producer and host of SOUL!, the music-and-talk program that aired on public television from 1968 to 1973 and aimed at a Black audience. It was released in 2018 and has since received 21 filmmaking awards. Attorney Chaz Ebert, record executive Ron Gillyard, producer and director Stan Lathan, producer Rishi Rajani, producer Stephanie T. Rance, actor Blair Underwood and screenwriter, producer and actress Lena Waithe are the executive producers of the film.
Stateless is a Canadian documentary film, directed by Michèle Stephenson and released in 2020. The film centres on the crisis of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, many of whom have been left stateless by the Dominican Republic's 2013 decision to strip citizenship from Haitian immigrants and their descendants.
Ascension is a 2021 American documentary film directed and produced by Jessica Kingdon. It follows the pursuit of the Chinese dream through the social classes, prioritizing productivity and innovation.
Jon Shenk is an Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary film director and director of photography, known for his films Lead Me HomeAthlete A, An Inconvenient Sequel, Audrie & Daisy,The Island President, Lost Boys of Sudan. He is the co-founder, with his wife Bonni Cohen, of Actual Films, a documentary film company based in San Francisco, CA. He co-directed and photographed Lead Me Home which premiered in 2021 at the Telluride Film Festival, was acquired by Netflix, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2022.
The Queen of Basketball is a 2021 American documentary short film by Ben Proudfoot about basketball legend Lusia Harris. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 10, 2021 and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese American director and producer. She was nominated for the 2022 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for directing the documentary Ascension.
Michael Zimbalist is an American filmmaker. He is a three-time Emmy Award and a Peabody Awards winner.
Retrograde is a 2022 American documentary film directed by Matthew Heineman that covers events that took place during the final nine months of America's 20-year war in Afghanistan. It had its U.S. premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on September 3, 2022, and had its Canadian debut at the Vancouver International Film Festival on October 2, 2022. It was released in select theaters in the United States starting November 11, 2022, by National Geographic Documentary Films and Picturehouse and was later made available on various streaming platforms.