The case for Cartel Land to make the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature.

Tom Roston considers this year's Best Documentary Oscar contenders with his tried-and-true method for predicting which film will win.

He's already been robbed of one. After decades of making documentaries, Steve James has earned the right to be recognized with an Oscar.

Let’s be totally reductive for a moment, and say that there are two kinds of documentary-lovers: those who enjoy watching the Oscars and those who don’t. I am very much the former, and often when I bring up my interest in the Academy Awards, I am slapped around for my interest in such commercial puffery. […]

The Best Documentary Short award is probably the least watched, least understood and least appreciated category at the Academy Awards. Okay, maybe it’s tied with Best Sound Editing. Still, that’s too bad. Fortunately, some of the winners have made the most of this underdog status in their speeches, such as when Jessica Yu joked in […]

It’s head-scratching season again, which is to say: it’s Oscar time. Last week, the shortlist of 15 documentaries being considered for the five Academy Award nominations was announced. And, sure enough, there were some head-scratchers out there. The most confounding was the exclusion of Michael Moore‘s Capitalism. Sure, this further confirms what I said a […]

Academy Award forecasting is such fun. I wish I could put together a chart with the various factors that I see determining the film with the best odds of winning the doc Oscar this year. Without a graphics department on my side, I’ll just mention the main variables: quality of film (yes, that matters!), popularity […]