# Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film

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 (along with copies of most nominees) are held by the Academy Film Archive.

## Winners and nominees

Following the Academy's practice, films are listed below by the award year (that is, the year they were released under the Academy's rules for eligibility). In practice, due to the limited nature of documentary distribution, a film may be released in different years in different venues, sometimes years after production is complete.

### 1940s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1942 (15th) | The Battle of Midway | John Ford (United States Navy) |
| 1942 (15th) | Kokoda Front Line! | Ken G. Hall (Australian News & Information Bureau) |
| 1942 (15th) | Moscow Strikes Back | Artkino |
| 1942 (15th) | Prelude to War | Frank Capra (Office of War Information) |
| 1942 (15th) | Africa, Prelude to Victory | The March of Time |
| 1942 (15th) | Combat Report | United States Army Signal Corps |
| 1942 (15th) | Conquer by the Clock | Frederic Ullman Jr. [de; fr] Slavko Vorkapich |
| 1942 (15th) | The Grain That Built a Hemisphere | Walt Disney |
| 1942 (15th) | Henry Browne, Farmer | United States Department of Agriculture |
| 1942 (15th) | High Over the Borders | National Film Board of Canada |
| 1942 (15th) | High Stakes in the East | The Netherlands Information Bureau |
| 1942 (15th) | Inside Fighting China | National Film Board of Canada |
| 1942 (15th) | It's Everybody's War | United States Office of War Information |
| 1942 (15th) | Listen to Britain | British Ministry of Information |
| 1942 (15th) | Little Belgium | Belgian Ministry of Information |
| 1942 (15th) | Little Isles of Freedom | Victor Stoloff and Edgar Loew |
| 1942 (15th) | Mr. Blabbermouth | United States Office of War Information |
| 1942 (15th) | Mr. Gardenia Jones | United States Office of War Information |
| 1942 (15th) | The New Spirit | Walt Disney |
| 1942 (15th) | The Price of Victory | William H. Pine |
| 1942 (15th) | A Ship Is Born | United States Merchant Marine |
| 1942 (15th) | Twenty-One Miles | British Ministry of Information |
| 1942 (15th) | We Refuse to Die | William C. Thomas |
| 1942 (15th) | The White Eagle | Concanen Films [de] |
| 1942 (15th) | Winning Your Wings | United States Army Air Force |
| 1943 (16th) |
| 1943 (16th) | Desert Victory | British Ministry of Information |
| 1943 (16th) | Baptism of Fire | United States Army |
| 1943 (16th) | The Battle of Russia | United States Department of War Special Service Division |
| 1943 (16th) | Report from the Aleutians | United States Army Pictorial Service |
| 1943 (16th) | War Department Report | United States Office of Strategic Services Field Photographic Bureau |
| 1944 (17th) |
| 1944 (17th) | The Fighting Lady | Edward Steichen (United States Navy) |
| 1944 (17th) | Resisting Enemy Interrogation | United States Army Air Force |
| 1945 (18th) |
| 1945 (18th) | The True Glory | The Governments of Great Britain and the United States of America |
| 1945 (18th) | The Last Bomb | United States Army Air Force |
| 1947 (20th) |
| 1947 (20th) | Design for Death | Sid Rogell, Theron Warth and Richard Fleischer |
| 1947 (20th) | Journey into Medicine | United States Department of State Office of Information and Educational Exchange |
| 1947 (20th) | The World Is Rich | Paul Rotha |
| 1948 (21st) |
| 1948 (21st) | The Secret Land | Orville O. Dull |
| 1948 (21st) | The Quiet One | Janice Loeb |
| 1949 (22nd) |
| 1949 (22nd) | Daybreak in Udi | Crown Film Unit |
| 1949 (22nd) | Kenji Comes Home | Paul F. Heard |

### 1950s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1950 (23rd) | The Titan: Story of Michelangelo | Robert Snyder |
| 1950 (23rd) | With These Hands | Jack Arnold and Lee Goodman [de] |
| 1951 (24th) |
| 1951 (24th) | Kon-Tiki | Olle Nordemar |
| 1951 (24th) | I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. | Bryan Foy |
| 1952 (25th) |
| 1952 (25th) | The Sea Around Us | Irwin Allen |
| 1952 (25th) | The Hoaxters | Dore Schary |
| 1952 (25th) | Navajo | Hall Bartlett |
| 1953 (26th) |
| 1953 (26th) | The Living Desert | Walt Disney |
| 1953 (26th) | The Conquest of Everest | John Taylor, Leon Clore and Grahame Tharp [de] |
| 1953 (26th) | A Queen Is Crowned | Castleton Knight |
| 1954 (27th) |
| 1954 (27th) | The Vanishing Prairie | Walt Disney |
| 1954 (27th) | The Stratford Adventure | Guy Glover |
| 1955 (28th) |
| 1955 (28th) | Helen Keller in Her Story | Nancy Hamilton |
| 1955 (28th) | Heartbreak Ridge | René Risacher [de] |
| 1956 (29th) |
| 1956 (29th) | The Silent World | Jacques-Yves Cousteau |
| 1956 (29th) | The Naked Eye | Louis Clyde Stoumen |
| 1956 (29th) | Where Mountains Float | The Government Film Committee of Denmark |
| 1957 (30th) |
| 1957 (30th) | Albert Schweitzer | Jerome Hill |
| 1957 (30th) | On the Bowery | Lionel Rogosin |
| 1957 (30th) | Torero! | Manuel Barbachano Ponce |
| 1958 (31st) |
| 1958 (31st) | White Wilderness | Ben Sharpsteen |
| 1958 (31st) | Antarctic Crossing | James Carr [de] |
| 1958 (31st) | The Hidden World | Robert Snyder |
| 1958 (31st) | Psychiatric Nursing | Nathan Zucker [de] |
| 1959 (32nd) |
| 1959 (32nd) | Serengeti Shall Not Die | Bernhard Grzimek |
| 1959 (32nd) | The Race for Space | David L. Wolper |

### 1960s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1960 (33rd) | The Horse with the Flying Tail | Larry Lansburgh |
| 1960 (33rd) | Rebel in Paradise | Robert D. Fraser |
| 1961 (34th) |
| 1961 (34th) | Le Ciel et la Boue (Sky Above and Mud Beneath) | Arthur Cohn and René Lafuite [de] |
| 1961 (34th) | La Grande Olimpiade (Olympic Games 1960) | dell Istituto Nazionale Luce, Comitato Organizzatore Del Giochi Della XVII Olimpiade |
| 1962 (35th) |
| 1962 (35th) | Black Fox | Louis Clyde Stoumen |
| 1962 (35th) | Alvorada (Brazil's Changing Face) | Hugo Niebeling |
| 1963 (36th) |
| 1963 (36th) | Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World | Robert Hughes |
| 1963 (36th) | Le Maillon et la Chaine (The Link and the Chain) | Paul de Roubaix [de; fr] |
| 1963 (36th) | The Yanks Are Coming | Marshall Flaum |
| 1964 (37th) |
| 1964 (37th) | Jacques-Yves Cousteau's World without Sun | Jacques-Yves Cousteau |
| 1964 (37th) | The Finest Hours | Jack Le Vien |
| 1964 (37th) | Four Days in November | Mel Stuart |
| 1964 (37th) | The Human Dutch | Bert Haanstra |
| 1964 (37th) | Over There, 1914–18 | Jean Aurel |
| 1965 (38th) |
| 1965 (38th) | The Eleanor Roosevelt Story | Sidney Glazier |
| 1965 (38th) | The Battle of the Bulge... The Brave Rifles | Laurence E. Mascott [de; fr] |
| 1965 (38th) | The Forth Road Bridge | Peter Mills |
| 1965 (38th) | Let My People Go | Marshall Flaum |
| 1965 (38th) | To Die in Madrid | Frédéric Rossif |
| 1966 (39th) |
| 1966 (39th) | The War Game | Peter Watkins |
| 1966 (39th) | The Face of a Genius | Alfred R. Kelman |
| 1966 (39th) | Helicopter Canada | Peter Jones and Tom Daly |
| 1966 (39th) | The Really Big Family | Alex Grasshoff |
| 1966 (39th) | Le Volcan Interdit (The Forbidden Volcano) | Haroun Tazieff |
| 1967 (40th) |
| 1967 (40th) | The Anderson Platoon | Pierre Schoendoerffer |
| 1967 (40th) | Festival | Murray Lerner |
| 1967 (40th) | Harvest | Carroll Ballard |
| 1967 (40th) | A King's Story | Jack Le Vien |
| 1967 (40th) | A Time for Burning | William C. Jersey [de] |
| 1968 (41st) |
| 1968 (41st) | Journey into Self | Bill McGaw |
| 1968 (41st) | A Few Notes on Our Food Problem | James Blue |
| 1968 (41st) | The Legendary Champions | William Cayton |
| 1968 (41st) | Other Voices | David H. Sawyer [de] |
| 1969 (42nd) |
| 1969 (42nd) | Arthur Rubinstein – The Love of Life | Bernard Chevry [de] |
| 1969 (42nd) | Before the Mountain Was Moved | Robert K. Sharpe |
| 1969 (42nd) | In the Year of the Pig | Emile de Antonio |
| 1969 (42nd) | The Olympics in Mexico | Comite Organizador de los Juegos de la XIX Olimpiada |
| 1969 (42nd) | The Wolf Men | Irwin Rosten |

### 1970s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1970 (43rd) | Woodstock | Bob Maurice |
| 1970 (43rd) | Chariots of the Gods | Dr. Harald Reinl |
| 1970 (43rd) | Jack Johnson | Jim Jacobs |
| 1970 (43rd) | King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis | Ely Landau |
| 1970 (43rd) | Say Goodbye | David H. Vowell |
| 1971 (44th) |
| 1971 (44th) | The Hellstrom Chronicle | Walon Green |
| 1971 (44th) | Alaska Wilderness Lake | Alan Landsburg |
| 1971 (44th) | On Any Sunday | Bruce Brown |
| 1971 (44th) | The RA Expeditions | Lennart Ehrenborg [de; sv] and Thor Heyerdahl |
| 1971 (44th) | The Sorrow and the Pity | Marcel Ophüls |
| 1972 (45th) |
| 1972 (45th) | Marjoe | Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan |
| 1972 (45th) | Ape and Super-Ape | Bert Haanstra |
| 1972 (45th) | Malcolm X | Marvin Worth and Arnold Perl |
| 1972 (45th) | Manson | Robert Hendrickson and Laurence Merrick |
| 1972 (45th) | The Silent Revolution | Eckehard Munck [de] |
| 1973 (46th) |
| 1973 (46th) | The Great American Cowboy | Kieth Merrill |
| 1973 (46th) | Always a New Beginning | John D. Goodell [pl] |
| 1973 (46th) | Battle of Berlin | Bengt von zur Muehlen |
| 1973 (46th) | Journey to the Outer Limits | Alexander Grasshoff |
| 1973 (46th) | Walls of Fire | Gertrude Ross Marks [de] and Edmund F. Penney |
| 1974 (47th) |
| 1974 (47th) | Hearts and Minds | Peter Davis and Bert Schneider |
| 1974 (47th) | Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman | Judy Collins and Jill Godmilow |
| 1974 (47th) | The Challenge... A Tribute to Modern Art | Herbert Kline |
| 1974 (47th) | The 81st Blow | Jacquot Ehrlich, David Bergman and Haim Gouri |
| 1974 (47th) | The Wild and the Brave | Natalie R. Jones and Eugene S. Jones |
| 1975 (48th) |
| 1975 (48th) | The Man Who Skied Down Everest | F. R. Crawley, James Hager and Dale Hartlebe |
| 1975 (48th) | The California Reich | Walter F. Parkes and Keith F. Critchlow |
| 1975 (48th) | Fighting for Our Lives | Glen Pearcy |
| 1975 (48th) | The Incredible Machine | Irwin Rosten |
| 1975 (48th) | The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir | Shirley MacLaine |
| 1976 (49th) |
| 1976 (49th) | Harlan County, U.S.A. | Barbara Kopple |
| 1976 (49th) | Hollywood on Trial | James Gutman and David Helpern Jr. |
| 1976 (49th) | Off the Edge | Michael Firth |
| 1976 (49th) | People of the Wind | Anthony Howarth and David Koff |
| 1976 (49th) | Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry | Donald Brittain and Robert Duncan |
| 1977 (50th) |
| 1977 (50th) | Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? | John Korty, Dan McCann and Warren L. Lockhart |
| 1977 (50th) | The Children of Theatre Street | Robert Dornhelm and Earle Mack |
| 1977 (50th) | High Grass Circus | Bill Brind, Torben Schioler and Tony Ianzelo |
| 1977 (50th) | Homage to Chagall: The Colours of Love | Harry Rasky |
| 1977 (50th) | Union Maids | Jim Klein [de], Julia Reichert and Miles Mogulescu |
| 1978 (51st) |
| 1978 (51st) | Scared Straight! | Arnold Shapiro |
| 1978 (51st) | The Lovers' Wind | Albert Lamorisse |
| 1978 (51st) | Mysterious Castles of Clay | Alan Root |
| 1978 (51st) | Raoni | Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, Barry Williams and Michel Gast |
| 1978 (51st) | With Babies and Banners: Story of the Women's Emergency Brigade | Anne Bohlen, Lyn Goldfarb and Lorraine Gray |
| 1979 (52nd) |
| 1979 (52nd) | Best Boy | Ira Wohl |
| 1979 (52nd) | Generation on the Wind | David A. Vassar |
| 1979 (52nd) | Going the Distance | Paul Cowan and Jacques Bobet |
| 1979 (52nd) | The Killing Ground | Steve Singer and Tom Priestley |
| 1979 (52nd) | The War at Home | Glenn Silber and Barry Alexander Brown |

### 1980s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1980 (53rd) | From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China | Murray Lerner |
| 1980 (53rd) | Agee | Ross Spears |
| 1980 (53rd) | The Day After Trinity | Jon H. Else |
| 1980 (53rd) | Front Line | David Bradbury |
| 1980 (53rd) | The Yellow Star: The Persecution of the Jews in Europe 1933-45 | Bengt von zur Mühlen and Arthur Cohn |
| 1981 (54th) |
| 1981 (54th) | Genocide | Arnold Schwartzman and Rabbi Marvin Hier |
| 1981 (54th) | Against Wind and Tide: A Cuban Odyssey | Suzanne Bauman, Paul Neshamkin and Jim Burroughs |
| 1981 (54th) | Brooklyn Bridge | Ken Burns |
| 1981 (54th) | Eight Minutes to Midnight: A Portrait of Dr. Helen Caldicott | Mary Benjamin, Susanne Simpson and Boyd Estus |
| 1981 (54th) | El Salvador: Another Vietnam | Glenn Silber and Tete Vasconcellos |
| 1982 (55th) |
| 1982 (55th) | Just Another Missing Kid | John Zaritsky |
| 1982 (55th) | After the Axe | Sturla Gunnarsson and Steve Lucas |
| 1982 (55th) | Ben's Mill | John Karol and Michel Chalufour |
| 1982 (55th) | In Our Water | Meg Switzgable |
| 1982 (55th) | A Portrait of Giselle | Joseph Wishy |
| 1983 (56th) |
| 1983 (56th) | He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' | Emile Ardolino |
| 1983 (56th) | Children of Darkness | Richard Kotuk and Ara Chekmayan |
| 1983 (56th) | First Contact | Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson |
| 1983 (56th) | The Profession of Arms | Michael Bryans and Tina Viljoen |
| 1983 (56th) | Seeing Red | James Klein and Julia Reichert |
| 1984 (57th) |
| 1984 (57th) | The Times of Harvey Milk | Rob Epstein and Richard Schmiechen |
| 1984 (57th) | High Schools | Charles Guggenheim and Nancy Sloss |
| 1984 (57th) | In the Name of the People | Alex W. Drehsler and Frank Christopher |
| 1984 (57th) | Marlene | Karel Dirka and Zev Braun |
| 1984 (57th) | Streetwise | Cheryl McCall |
| 1985 (58th) |
| 1985 (58th) | Broken Rainbow | Maria Florio and Victoria Mudd |
| 1985 (58th) | Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo | Susana Blaustein Muñoz and Lourdes Portillo |
| 1985 (58th) | Soldiers in Hiding | Japhet Asher |
| 1985 (58th) | The Statue of Liberty | Ken Burns and Buddy Squires |
| 1985 (58th) | Unfinished Business | Steven Okazaki |
| 1986 (59th) |
| 1986 (59th) | Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (TIE) | Brigitte Berman |
| 1986 (59th) | Down and Out in America (TIE) | Joseph Feury and Milton Justice |
| 1986 (59th) | Chile: Hasta Cuando? | David Bradbury |
| 1986 (59th) | Isaac in America: A Journey with Isaac Bashevis Singer | Kirk Simon and Amram Nowak |
| 1986 (59th) | Witness to Apartheid | Sharon I. Sopher [de] |
| 1987 (60th) |
| 1987 (60th) | The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table | Aviva Slesin |
| 1987 (60th) | Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years/Bridge to Freedom 1965 | Callie Crossley and James A. DeVinney |
| 1987 (60th) | Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima | John Junkerman and John W. Dower |
| 1987 (60th) | Radio Bikini | Robert Stone |
| 1987 (60th) | A Stitch for Time | Barbara Herbich and Cyril Christo |
| 1988 (61st) |
| 1988 (61st) | Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie | Marcel Ophüls |
| 1988 (61st) | The Cry of Reason – Beyers Naudé: An Afrikaner Speaks Out | Robert Bilheimer and Ronald Mix |
| 1988 (61st) | Let's Get Lost | Bruce Weber and Nan Bush |
| 1988 (61st) | Promises to Keep | Ginny Durrin [de] |
| 1988 (61st) | Who Killed Vincent Chin? | Renee Tajima-Peña and Christine Choy |
| 1989 (62nd) | |
| 1989 (62nd) | Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt | Rob Epstein and Bill Couturié |
| 1989 (62nd) | Adam Clayton Powell | Richard Kilberg and Yvonne Smith |
| 1989 (62nd) | Crack USA: County Under Siege | Vince DiPersio and William Guttentag |
| 1989 (62nd) | For All Mankind | Al Reinert and Betsy Broyles Breier |
| 1989 (62nd) | Super Chief: The Life and Legacy of Earl Warren | Judith Leonard and William C. Jersey [de] |

### 1990s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 1990 (63rd) | American Dream | Barbara Kopple and Arthur Cohn |
| 1990 (63rd) | Berkeley in the Sixties | Mark Kitchell |
| 1990 (63rd) | Building Bombs | Mark Mori and Susan Robinson |
| 1990 (63rd) | Forever Activists: Stories from the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade | Judith Montell |
| 1990 (63rd) | Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter's Journey | Robert Hillmann and Eugene Corr |
| 1991 (64th) |
| 1991 (64th) | In the Shadow of the Stars | Allie Light and Irving Saraf |
| 1991 (64th) | Death on the Job | Vince DiPersio and William Guttentag |
| 1991 (64th) | Doing Time: Life Inside the Big House | Alan Raymond and Susan Raymond |
| 1991 (64th) | The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler Within Germany 1933-1945 | Hava Kohav Beller |
| 1991 (64th) | Wild by Law | Lawrence Hott and Diane Garey |
| 1992 (65th) |
| 1992 (65th) | The Panama Deception | Barbara Trent and David Kasper |
| 1992 (65th) | Changing Our Minds: The Story of Dr. Evelyn Hooker | David Haugland |
| 1992 (65th) | Fires of Kuwait | Sally Dundas |
| 1992 (65th) | Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War II | Bill Miles and Nina Rosenblum |
| 1992 (65th) | Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann | Margaret Smilow [de] and Roma Baran |
| 1993 (66th) |
| 1993 (66th) | I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School | Susan Raymond and Alan Raymond |
| 1993 (66th) | The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter | David Paperny and Arthur Ginsberg |
| 1993 (66th) | Children of Fate | Susan Todd and Andrew Young |
| 1993 (66th) | For Better or For Worse | David Collier and Betsy Thompson |
| 1993 (66th) | The War Room | D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus |
| 1994 (67th) |
| 1994 (67th) | Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision | Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders |
| 1994 (67th) | Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter | Deborah Hoffmann |
| 1994 (67th) | D-Day Remembered | Charles Guggenheim |
| 1994 (67th) | Freedom on My Mind | Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford |
| 1994 (67th) | A Great Day in Harlem | Jean Bach |
| 1995 (68th) |
| 1995 (68th) | Anne Frank Remembered | Jon Blair |
| 1995 (68th) | The Battle Over Citizen Kane | Thomas Lennon and Michael Epstein |
| 1995 (68th) | Small Wonders | Allan Miller and Walter Scheuer |
| 1995 (68th) | Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream | Michael Tollin and Fredric Golding |
| 1995 (68th) | Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern | Jeanne Jordan and Steven Ascher |
| 1996 (69th) |
| 1996 (69th) | When We Were Kings | Leon Gast and David Sonenberg |
| 1996 (69th) | The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story | Susan W. Dryfoos |
| 1996 (69th) | Mandela | Jo Menell [cs; sk] and Angus Gibson |
| 1996 (69th) | Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse | Anne Belle and Deborah Dickson [de; fr] |
| 1996 (69th) | Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press | Rick Goldsmith [de; pt] |
| 1997 (70th) |
| 1997 (70th) | The Long Way Home | Marvin Hier and Richard Trank |
| 1997 (70th) | 4 Little Girls | Spike Lee and Sam Pollard |
| 1997 (70th) | Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life | Michael Paxton |
| 1997 (70th) | Colors Straight Up | Michèle Ohayon and Julia Schachter |
| 1997 (70th) | Waco: The Rules of Engagement | Dan Gifford and William Gazecki |
| 1998 (71st) |
| 1998 (71st) | The Last Days | James Moll and Kenneth Lipper |
| 1998 (71st) | Dancemaker | Matthew Diamond and Jerry Kupfer |
| 1998 (71st) | The Farm: Angola, USA | Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus |
| 1998 (71st) | Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth | Robert B. Weide |
| 1998 (71st) | Regret to Inform | Barbara Sonneborn and Janet Cole [de] |
| 1999 (72nd) |
| 1999 (72nd) | One Day in September | Arthur Cohn and Kevin Macdonald |
| 1999 (72nd) | Buena Vista Social Club | Wim Wenders and Ulrich Felsberg [de; pl] |
| 1999 (72nd) | Genghis Blues | Roko Belic and Adrian Belic |
| 1999 (72nd) | On the Ropes | Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen |
| 1999 (72nd) | Speaking in Strings | Paola di Florio and Lilibet Foster |

### 2000s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 2000 (73rd) |
| 2000 (73rd) | Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport | Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer |
| 2000 (73rd) | Legacy | Tod Lending |
| 2000 (73rd) | Long Night's Journey into Day | Deborah Hoffmann and Frances Reid |
| 2000 (73rd) | Scottsboro: An American Tragedy | Daniel Anker and Barak Goodman |
| 2000 (73rd) | Sound and Fury | Josh Aronson and Roger Weisberg [de] |
| 2001 (74th) |
| 2001 (74th) | Murder on a Sunday Morning | Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and Denis Poncet |
| 2001 (74th) | Children Underground | Edet Belzberg |
| 2001 (74th) | LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton | Deborah Dickson [de; fr] and Susan Froemke |
| 2001 (74th) | Promises | B.Z. Goldberg and Justine Shapiro |
| 2001 (74th) | War Photographer | Christian Frei |
| 2002 (75th) |
| 2002 (75th) | Bowling for Columbine | Michael Moore and Michael Donovan |
| 2002 (75th) | Daughter from Danang | Gail Dolgin and Vicente Franco |
| 2002 (75th) | Prisoner of Paradise | Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender |
| 2002 (75th) | Spellbound | Jeffrey Blitz and Sean Welch |
| 2002 (75th) | Winged Migration | Jacques Perrin |
| 2003 (76th) |
| 2003 (76th) | The Fog of War | Errol Morris and Michael Williams |
| 2003 (76th) | Balseros | Carles Bosch [es; ca] and Josep Maria Domenech |
| 2003 (76th) | Capturing the Friedmans | Andrew Jarecki and Marc Smerling |
| 2003 (76th) | My Architect | Nathaniel Kahn and Susan R. Behr |
| 2003 (76th) | The Weather Underground | Sam Green and Bill Siegel |
| 2004 (77th) |
| 2004 (77th) | Born into Brothels | Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski |
| 2004 (77th) | The Story of the Weeping Camel | Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni [de] |
| 2004 (77th) | Super Size Me | Morgan Spurlock |
| 2004 (77th) | Tupac: Resurrection | Karolyn Ali and Lauren Lazin |
| 2004 (77th) | Twist of Faith | Kirby Dick and Eddie Schmidt |
| 2005 (78th) |
| 2005 (78th) | March of the Penguins | Luc Jacquet and Yves Darondeau |
| 2005 (78th) | Darwin's Nightmare | Hubert Sauper |
| 2005 (78th) | Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room | Alex Gibney and Jason Kliot |
| 2005 (78th) | Murderball | Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro |
| 2005 (78th) | Street Fight | Marshall Curry |
| 2006 (79th) |
| 2006 (79th) | An Inconvenient Truth | Davis Guggenheim |
| 2006 (79th) | Deliver Us from Evil | Amy Berg and Frank Donner |
| 2006 (79th) | Iraq in Fragments | James Longley and John Sinno |
| 2006 (79th) | Jesus Camp | Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady |
| 2006 (79th) | My Country, My Country | Jocelyn Glatzer [de] and Laura Poitras |
| 2007 (80th) |
| 2007 (80th) | Taxi to the Dark Side | Alex Gibney and Eva Orner |
| 2007 (80th) | No End in Sight | Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs |
| 2007 (80th) | Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience | Richard Robbins |
| 2007 (80th) | Sicko | Michael Moore and Meghan O'Hara |
| 2007 (80th) | War/Dance | Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine |
| 2008 (81st) |
| 2008 (81st) | Man on Wire | Simon Chinn and James Marsh |
| 2008 (81st) | The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) | Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath |
| 2008 (81st) | Encounters at the End of the World | Werner Herzog and Henry Kaiser |
| 2008 (81st) | The Garden | Scott Hamilton Kennedy |
| 2008 (81st) | Trouble the Water | Carl Deal and Tia Lessin |
| 2009 (82nd) |
| 2009 (82nd) | The Cove | Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens |
| 2009 (82nd) | Burma VJ | Anders Østergaard [da; de] and Lise Lense-Møller [de] |
| 2009 (82nd) | Food, Inc. | Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein [de] |
| 2009 (82nd) | The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers | Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith |
| 2009 (82nd) | Which Way Home | Rebecca Cammisa |

### 2010s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 2010 (83rd) | Inside Job | Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs |
| 2010 (83rd) | Exit Through the Gift Shop | Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz |
| 2010 (83rd) | Gasland | Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic [de; no; pt] |
| 2010 (83rd) | Restrepo | Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger |
| 2010 (83rd) | Waste Land | Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley [no; pt] |
| 2011 (84th) |
| 2011 (84th) | Undefeated | T. J. Martin, Daniel Lindsay and Rich Middlemas |
| 2011 (84th) | Hell and Back Again | Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner |
| 2011 (84th) | If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front | Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman |
| 2011 (84th) | Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory | Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky |
| 2011 (84th) | Pina | Wim Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel |
| 2012 (85th) |
| 2012 (85th) | Searching for Sugar Man | Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn |
| 2012 (85th) | 5 Broken Cameras | Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi |
| 2012 (85th) | The Gatekeepers | Dror Moreh, Philippa Kowarsky [de; pt], and Estelle Fialon [de] |
| 2012 (85th) | How to Survive a Plague | David France and Howard Gertler |
| 2012 (85th) | The Invisible War | Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering |
| 2013 (86th) |
| 2013 (86th) | 20 Feet from Stardom | Morgan Neville, Gil Friesen and Caitrin Rogers |
| 2013 (86th) | The Act of Killing | Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen |
| 2013 (86th) | Cutie and the Boxer | Zachary Heinzerling and Lydia Dean Pilcher |
| 2013 (86th) | Dirty Wars | Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill |
| 2013 (86th) | The Square | Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer |
| 2014 (87th) |
| 2014 (87th) | Citizenfour | Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky |
| 2014 (87th) | Finding Vivian Maier | John Maloof and Charlie Siskel [de; pt] |
| 2014 (87th) | Last Days in Vietnam | Rory Kennedy and Kevin McAlester |
| 2014 (87th) | The Salt of the Earth | Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and David Rosier |
| 2014 (87th) | Virunga | Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara |
| 2015 (88th) |
| 2015 (88th) | Amy | Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees |
| 2015 (88th) | Cartel Land | Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin |
| 2015 (88th) | The Look of Silence | Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen |
| 2015 (88th) | What Happened, Miss Simone? | Liz Garbus, Amy Hobby and Justin Wilkes |
| 2015 (88th) | Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom | Evgeny Afineevsky and Den Tolmor |
| 2016 (89th) |
| 2016 (89th) | O.J.: Made in America | Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow |
| 2016 (89th) | Fire at Sea | Gianfranco Rosi and Donatella Palermo |
| 2016 (89th) | I Am Not Your Negro | Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety [de; pt] and Hébert Peck |
| 2016 (89th) | Life, Animated | Roger Ross Williams and Julie Goldman |
| 2016 (89th) | 13th | Ava DuVernay, Spencer Averick and Howard Barish |
| 2017 (90th) |
| 2017 (90th) | Icarus | Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogan |
| 2017 (90th) | Abacus: Small Enough to Jail | Steve James, Mark Mitten and Julie Goldman |
| 2017 (90th) | Faces Places | Agnès Varda, JR and Rosalie Varda |
| 2017 (90th) | Last Men in Aleppo | Feras Fayyad, Kareem Abeed and Søren Steen Jespersen |
| 2017 (90th) | Strong Island | Yance Ford and Joslyn Barnes |
| 2018 (91st) |
| 2018 (91st) | Free Solo | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Evan Hayes, and Shannon Dill |
| 2018 (91st) | Hale County This Morning, This Evening | RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, and Su Kim |
| 2018 (91st) | Minding the Gap | Bing Liu and Diane Quon |
| 2018 (91st) | Of Fathers and Sons | Talal Derki, Ansgar Frerich [de], Eva Kemme [de], and Tobias N. Siebert [de] |
| 2018 (91st) | RBG | Betsy West and Julie Cohen [de; fr; pt] |
| 2019 (92nd) |
| 2019 (92nd) | American Factory | Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert and Jeff Reichert |
| 2019 (92nd) | The Cave | Feras Fayyad, Kirstine Barfod [de] and Sigrid Dyekjær [da; de] |
| 2019 (92nd) | The Edge of Democracy | Petra Costa, Joanna Natasegara, Shane Boris and Tiago Pavan [pt] |
| 2019 (92nd) | For Sama | Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts |
| 2019 (92nd) | Honeyland | Ljubo Stefanov, Tamara Kotevska and Atanas Georgiev |

### 2020s

| Year | Film | Nominees |
| 2020/21 (93rd) | My Octopus Teacher | Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed and Craig Foster |
| 2020/21 (93rd) | Collective | Alexander Nanau and Bianca Oana [de] |
| 2020/21 (93rd) | Crip Camp | Nicole Newnham, Jim LeBrecht and Sara Bolder |
| 2020/21 (93rd) | The Mole Agent | Maite Alberdi and Marcela Santibáñez [de] |
| 2020/21 (93rd) | Time | Garrett Bradley, Lauren Domino [de] and Kellen Quinn |
| 2021 (94th) |
| 2021 (94th) | Summer of Soul | Questlove, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent [de] and David Dinerstein [de] |
| 2021 (94th) | Ascension | Jessica Kingdon, Kira Simon-Kennedy and Nathan Truesdell |
| 2021 (94th) | Attica | Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry [de] |
| 2021 (94th) | Flee | Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sørensen and Charlotte De La Gournerie |
| 2021 (94th) | Writing with Fire | Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh |
| 2022 (95th) |
| 2022 (95th) | Navalny | Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller and Shane Boris |
| 2022 (95th) | All That Breathes | Shaunak Sen, Aman Mann and Teddy Leifer |
| 2022 (95th) | All the Beauty and the Bloodshed | Laura Poitras, Howard Gertler, John Lyons, Nan Goldin and Yoni Golijov |
| 2022 (95th) | Fire of Love | Sara Dosa, Shane Boris and Ina Fichman |
| 2022 (95th) | A House Made of Splinters | Simon Lereng Wilmont and Monica Hellström |
| 2023 (96th) |
| 2023 (96th) | 20 Days in Mariupol | Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner and Raney Aronson-Rath |
| 2023 (96th) | Bobi Wine: The People's President | Moses Bwayo, Christopher Sharp and John Battsek |
| 2023 (96th) | The Eternal Memory | Maite Alberdi |
| 2023 (96th) | Four Daughters | Kaouther Ben Hania and Nadim Cheikhrouha |
| 2023 (96th) | To Kill a Tiger | Nisha Pahuja, Cornelia Principe and David Oppenheim |
| 2024 (97th) |
| 2024 (97th) | No Other Land | Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, and Yuval Abraham |
| 2024 (97th) | Black Box Diaries | Shiori Itō, Eric Nyari, and Hanna Aqvilin |
| 2024 (97th) | Porcelain War | Brendan Bellomo, Slava Leontyev, Aniela Sidorska, and Paula DuPré Pesmen |
| 2024 (97th) | Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat | Johan Grimonprez, Daan Milius, and Rémi Grellety |
| 2024 (97th) | Sugarcane | Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie, and Kellen Quinn |

## Shortlisted finalists

Finalists for Best Documentary Feature are selected by the Documentary Branch based on a preliminary ballot. A second preferential ballot determines the five nominees. Prior to the 78th Academy Awards, there were twelve films shortlisted.

## Superlatives

For this Academy Award category, the following superlatives emerge:
* Most awards:
Arthur Cohn – 3 awards (resulting from 4 nominations); Simon Chinn – 2 awards; Jacques-Yves Cousteau – 2 awards; Walt Disney – 2 awards (resulting from 7 nominations; Disney has an additional 2 wins in the Documentary Short Subject category); Rob Epstein – 2 awards; Marvin Hier – 2 awards; Barbara Kopple – 2 awards Mark Jonathan Harris – 2 awards

## Process controversies

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, at the time the highest-grossing documentary film in movie history, was ruled ineligible because Moore had opted to have it played on television prior to the 2004 election. Previously, the 1982 winner Just Another Missing Kid had already been broadcast in Canada and won that country's ACTRA award for excellence in television at the time of its nomination.
In 1990, a group of 45 filmmakers filed a protest to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences over a potential conflict of interest involving Mitchell Block. They noted that Block was a member of the Documentary Steering Committee, which selects films as nominees, but he had a conflict of interest because his company Direct Cinema owned the distribution rights to three of the five films (including eventual winner Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) selected that year as nominees for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. They noted that Michael Moore's Roger & Me (distributed by Warner Brothers) was omitted from the nominees, although it had been highly praised by numerous critics and was ranked by many critics as one of the top ten films of the year.
The controversy over Hoop Dreams' exclusion was enough to have the Academy Awards begin the process to change its documentary voting system. Roger Ebert, who had declared it to be the best 1994 movie of any kind, looked into its failure to receive a nomination: "We learned, through very reliable sources, that the members of the committee had a system. They carried little flashlights. When one gave up on a film, he waved a light on the screen. When a majority of flashlights had voted, the film was switched off. Hoop Dreams was stopped after 15 minutes."
The Academy's executive director, Bruce Davis, took the unprecedented step of asking accounting firm Price Waterhouse to turn over the complete results of that year's voting, in which members of the committee had rated each of the 63 eligible documentaries on a scale of six to ten. "What I found," said Davis, "is that a small group of members gave zeros (actually low scores) to every single film except the five they wanted to see nominated. And they gave tens to those five, which completely skewed the voting. There was one film that received more scores of ten than any other, but it wasn't nominated. It also got zeros (low scores) from those few voters, and that was enough to push it to sixth place."
In 2000, Arthur Cohn, the producer of the winning One Day in September boasted "I won this without showing it in a single theater!" Cohn had hit upon the tactic of showing his Oscar entries at invitation-only screenings, and to as few other people as possible. Oscar bylaws at the time required voters to have seen all five nominated documentaries; by limiting his audience, Cohn shrank the voting pool and improved his odds. Following protests by many documentarians, the nominating system was subsequently changed.
Hoop Dreams director Steve James said "With so few people looking at any given film, it only takes one to dislike a film, and its chances for making the shortlist are diminished greatly. So they've got to do something, I think, to make the process more sane for deciding the shortlist." Among other rule changes taking effect in 2013, the academy began requiring a documentary to have been reviewed by either The New York Times or Los Angeles Times, and be commercially released for at least one week in both of those cities. Advocating the rule change, Michael Moore said "When people get the award for best documentary and they go on stage and thank the Academy, it's not really the Academy, is it? It's 5% of the Academy."
The awards process has also been criticized for emphasizing a documentary's subject matter over its style or quality. In 2009, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman wrote about the documentary branch members' penchant for choosing "movies that the selection committee deemed good because they're good for you... a kind of self-defeating aesthetic of granola documentary correctness."
In 2014, following the announcement of the shortlist of eligible feature documentary nominees, Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard publicly criticized Academy documentary voters after they excluded SPC's Red Army from the shortlist. "It's a sign of some really old people in the documentary area of the Academy. There's a lot of people who are really up in their years. It's shocking to me that that film (Red Army) didn't get in," Bernard said. Additionally, in his reporting of the Oscar documentary shortlist exclusions that year, The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Feinberg reacted to Red Army's omission: "...no matter which 15 titles the doc branch selected, plenty of other great ones would be left on the outside. That is the case, most egregiously, with Gabe Polsky's Red Army (Sony Classics), a masterful look at the role of sports in society and Russian-American relations". (Icarus, another documentary related to sports and Russian-American relations, later won the Oscar.)
In 2017, following the win of the eight-hour O.J.: Made in America in this category, the Academy announced that multi-part and limited series would be ineligible for the award in the future, even if they are not broadcast after their Oscar-qualifying release (as was O.J.: Made in America).
Various other acclaimed documentaries have not been nominated such as:
* Dont Look Back (1967)
* Salesman (1969)
* Gimme Shelter (1970)
* Grey Gardens (1975)
* Gates of Heaven (1978)
* Stop Making Sense (1984)
* Shoah (1985)
* The Thin Blue Line (1988)
* Roger & Me (1989)
* Paris Is Burning (1990)
* Crumb (1994)
* Hoop Dreams (1994)
* The Celluloid Closet (1995)
* American Movie (1999)
* Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
* Grizzly Man (2005)
* Stories We Tell (2013)
* Blackfish (2013)
* Life Itself (2014)
* Going Clear (2015)
* Cameraperson (2016)
* Jane (2017)
* Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)
* They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)
* Apollo 11 (2019)
* Boys State (2020)

## Documentaries with wins or nominations in other categories

Though Academy rules do not expressly preclude documentaries from being nominated in other competitive categories, documentaries are typically considered ineligible for nominations in categories that presume the work is fictitious, including Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, and acting. To date, no documentaries have been nominated for Best Picture, or Best Director. The Quiet One was nominated for Best Story and Screenplay.
No documentary feature has yet been nominated for Best Picture, although Chang was nominated in the "Unique and Artistic Production" category at the 1927/28 awards.
At the 3rd Academy Awards, prior to the introduction of a documentary category, With Byrd at the South Pole won the award for Best Cinematography, becoming the first documentary both to be nominated for and win an Oscar. 1952's Navajo would become the first film nominated for both Best Documentary and Best Cinematography.
Woodstock was the first documentary to be nominated for Best Film Editing while Hoop Dreams was the second (although it was, controversially, not nominated for Best Documentary Feature). Woodstock is also the only documentary to receive a nomination for Best Sound.
Honeyland became the first documentary to be nominated for both Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature. The following year, Collective would accomplish the same double nomination. Prior to this, Waltz with Bashir became the first documentary and first animated film nominated for Best International Feature Film, although it was not nominated for Best Documentary Feature. The Danish-language animated documentary Flee was later nominated for Best International Feature, Best Documentary Feature, and Best Animated Feature, the first film to accomplish this feat.
Nine documentaries have received nominations for Best Original Song: Mondo Cane (for Riz Ortolani and Nino Oliviero's "More"), An Inconvenient Truth (for Melissa Etheridge's "I Need to Wake Up", the only nominee from a documentary to win), Chasing Ice (for J. Ralph's "Before My Time"), Racing Extinction (for Ralph and Anhoni's "Manta Ray"), Jim: The James Foley Story (for Ralph and Sting's "The Empty Chair"), Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me (for Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond's "I'm Not Gonna Miss You"), The Hunting Ground (for Lady Gaga and Diane Warren's "Til It Happens To You"), RBG (for Warren's "I'll Fight") and American Symphony (for Batiste's "It Never Went Away").
Documentaries nominated for their scores include This is Cinerama, White Wilderness (which also won for Documentary Feature), Let It Be, and Birds Do It, Bees Do It.
Five documentary filmmakers have received honorary Oscars: Pete Smith, William L. Hendricks, D. A. Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman, and Agnès Varda.