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.
Todd Haynes is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His films span four decades with themes examining the personalities of well-known musicians, dysfunctional and dystopian societies, and blurred gender roles.
Sarah Ellen Polley is a Canadian filmmaker, political activist and retired actress. She first garnered attention as a child actress for her role as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books. This subsequently led to her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea (1990–1996). She has starred in many feature films, including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Exotica (1994), The Sweet Hereafter (1997), Guinevere (1999), Go (1999), The Weight of Water (2000), No Such Thing (2001), My Life Without Me (2003), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Splice (2009), and Mr. Nobody (2009).
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. For many years, he worked extensively with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, his domestic as well as professional partner, and with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. All three were principals in Merchant Ivory Productions, whose films have won seven Academy Awards; Ivory himself has been nominated for four Oscars, winning one.
Noam Gonick, is a Canadian filmmaker and artist. His films include Hey, Happy!, Stryker, Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight and To Russia with Love. His work deals with homosexuality, social exclusion, dystopia and utopia.
Freida Lee Mock is an American filmmaker, director, screenwriter and producer. She is a co-founder of the American Film Foundation with Terry Sanders. Her documentary, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision (1994) won an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 1995.
Sean Paul Lockhart is an American film actor and director, known for Milk (2008), Judas Kiss (2011), and Triple Crossed (2013).
Rose Troche is an American film and television director, television producer, and screenwriter.
François Sagat is a French male gay pornographic film actor, model and director.
Tim Conigrave was an Australian actor, activist and author of the internationally acclaimed memoir, Holding the Man.
Phyllis Nagy is an American theatre and film director, screenwriter and playwright. In 2006, Nagy was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for writing and directing Mrs. Harris (2005), her screen debut. In 2016, Nagy received an Academy Award nomination, among numerous other accolades, for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2015 film Carol.
Mighty Times: The Children's March is a 2004 American short documentary film about the Birmingham, Alabama civil rights marches in the 1960s, highlighting the bravery of young activists involved in the Children's Crusade. It was directed by Robert Houston and produced by Robert Hudson. In 2005, the film won an Oscar at the 77th Academy Awards for Documentary Short Subject. The film was co-produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center and HBO.
Diane "Dee" Mosbacher is an American filmmaker, lesbian feminist activist, and practicing psychiatrist. In 1993, she founded Woman Vision, a nonprofit organization.
Cynthia Wade is an American television, commercial and film director, producer and cinematographer based in New York City. She has directed documentaries on social issues including Shelter Dogs in 2003 about animal welfare and Freeheld in 2007 about LGBT rights as well as television commercials and web campaigns. She has won over 40 film festival awards, won an Oscar in 2008, and was nominated for her second Oscar in 2013.
Frances Reid is an American filmmaker, producer and cinematographer known for her documentaries. She has been in filmmaking for three decades. In 1994, she was nominated alongside director Dee Mosbacher for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for Straight from the Heart, which explored relationships between straight parents and their gay children. She was again nominated for an Oscar for producing and directing Long Night's Journey into Day (2000).
Venkiteswaran Chittur Subramanian is an Indian film critic, professor, documentary filmmaker, writer and occasional subtitler from Chalakudi, Kerala, India, who writes predominantly in English and Malayalam. He won the National Film Award for Best Film Critic in 2009.
Thomas McKay Martin Jr., known professionally as T. J. Martin, is an American filmmaker. Martin's film Undefeated (2011), for which he was co-director, co-editor, and co-cinematographer, won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, making Martin the first film director of African-American descent to win an Academy Award for a feature-length film.
Laura Muscardin is an Italian film director and screenwriter.
Graham Moore is an American screenwriter, author and director known for his 2010 novel The Sherlockian, as well as his screenplay for the historical film The Imitation Game, which topped the 2011 Black List for screenplays and won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Vivian Kleiman is a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker. She has received a National Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Research and executive produced an Academy Award nominated documentary.
