Your Guide to the Nominated Documentaries

Though it might have been easy to miss amid a certain pink-hued outcry, this year’s Oscar nominees for best documentary feature went through their own round of controversy when the nominations were announced on January 23. With films about starry subjects like Michael J. Fox and Jon Batiste left out in favor of an entirely international slate of projects, some people in the documentary world fretted that the Oscar lineup would make viewers start ignoring documentaries entirely: “So many of us have worked so hard to make great films that break out of the little ghetto documentaries used to be kept in for so long. While I love many of these films, as a group they put us right back in that ghetto.”

But what that anonymous documentary producer and many other viewers have ignored is the sheer power of these five nominees, with stories ranging from love in the face of a terminal illness to a fight against a 40-year dictatorship. For anyone looking to catch up on this category ahead of next week’s Academy Awards ceremony (and possibly to help with any Oscar pool picks), here is a guide to the five worthwhile and highly topical films, and where to watch them.

By PBS/Everett Collection.

20 Days in Mariupol

Director: Mstyslav Chernov

Mstyslav Chernov’s first feature film is a heart-wrenching look inside the first 20 days of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022. Chernov is an award-winning Ukrainian video journalist who, together with a courageous group of journalists and fellow countrymen trapped in Mariupol, produced daily news dispatches and personal footage of their own country at war for the Associated Press. “We had no idea if we would make it out alive,” Chernov said in his director’s statement about the film. “We were the last journalists in Mariupol. Now there are none.” In addition to the Oscar nomination, a DGA for outstanding directorial achievement in a documentary, and many other honors, Chernov’s reporting in Mariupol earned the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

The film’s most harrowing scenes also helped alert the world to the ongoing atrocities of the Russian invasion. On the day Chernov was awarded the DGA he announced to the audience that his hometown of Kharkiv was now under attack. “Today my hometown was bombed, seven people were killed, three of them children.…So it’s a sad day,” he said, but added that “the power of cinema” can still be a balm for those in peril, “because when these children, people, run from the bombs, they sit in a basement and to cope with their fear, they watch films.”

Where to watch:

By Lookman Kampala.

Bobi Wine: The People’s President

Director: Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo

Capturing a seven-year, unpredictable labor of love and political rebellion, Bobi Wine is directed by Ugandans Christopher Sharp and Moses Bwayo. The project follows the efforts of music star-turned-activist and opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, stage name Bobi Wine, in his fight for their home country’s freedom from President Museveni’s oppressive 38-year dictatorship.

The filmmakers initially thought the film would be an uplifting story about a socially conscious musician, but as Bobi Wine’s popularity and political influence grew, so did a series of brutal attacks on and violence against everyone in his circle. “We weren’t able to include most of the horrific violence we witnessed,” Sharp and Bwayo said. “We didn’t include the numerous torture victims we interviewed.”