# BAFTA Award for Best Documentary

The BAFTA Award for Best Documentary is a film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) at the British Academy Film Awards. It was formerly known as the Robert Flaherty Documentary Award.
In the following lists, the titles and names in bold with a gold background are the winners and recipients respectively; those not in bold are the nominees. The years given are those in which the films under consideration were released, not the year of the ceremony, which always takes place the following year.

## History

is a British organisation that hosts annual awards shows for film, television, and video games (and formerly also for children's film and television). A theatrical documentary award was presented by the Academy between 1948 and 1990. Documentaries have continued to be honoured with British Academy Television Awards since then and have been eligible in all relevant categories at the Film Awards. In 2012, the Academy re-introduced this category in recognition of the number of high-quality theatrical documentaries released in cinemas in the UK each year.

## Winners and nominees
### 1940s

| Year | Film | Director |
| 1948 (2nd) | Louisiana Story | Robert J. Flaherty |
| 1948 (2nd) | Farrebique | Georges Rouquier |
| 1948 (2nd) | Is Everybody Listening? | Jackson Beck |
| 1948 (2nd) | Shadow of the Ruhr | Sergei Nolbandov |
| 1948 (2nd) | Those Blasted Kids | Astrid Henning-Jensen and Bjarne Henning-Jensen |
| 1948 (2nd) | Three Dawns to Sydney | John Eldridge |
| 1949 (3rd) | Daybreak in Udi | Terry Bishop |
| Circulation ||
| 1949 (3rd) | The Cornish Engine | Bill Mason and Philip Armitage |
| 1949 (3rd) | Drug Addict | Robert Anderson |
| 1949 (3rd) | Island of the Lagoon (Isole Nella Laguna) | Luciano Emmer and Enrico Gras |
| 1949 (3rd) | The Liver Fluke in Great Britain | John Shearman |
| Report on the Refugee Problem ||

### 1950s

| Year | Film | Director |
| 1950 (4th) | The Undefeated | Paul Dickson |
| 1950 (4th) | Inland Waterways | R.K. Neilson-Baxter |
| 1950 (4th) | Kon-Tiki | Thor Heyerdahl |
| 1950 (4th) | Green is the Mountain (La Montagne est Verte) | Jean Lehérissey |
| 1950 (4th) | Seal Island | James Algar |
| 1950 (4th) | The Vatican | Hans M. Nieter |
| 1950 (4th) | Life Begins Tomorrow (La Vie Commence Demain) | Nicole Védrès |
| 1951 (5th) | Beaver Valley | James Algar |
| 1951 (5th) | Visit to Picasso (Bezoek aan Picasso) | Paul Haesaerts |
| 1951 (5th) | David | Paul Dickson |
| 1951 (5th) | A Family Affair | Margaret Thomson |
| 1951 (5th) | Family Portrait | Humphrey Jennings |
| 1951 (5th) | Oil for the Twentieth Century | Peter Bradford |
| 1951 (5th) | Out of True | Philip Leacock |
| 1952 (6th) | Royal Journey | David Bairstow, Gudrun Parker and Roger Blais |
| Fishermen of Negombo ||
| 1952 (6th) | Highlights of Farnborough 1952 | Peter De Normanville |
| 1952 (6th) | Journey into History | John Taylor |
| 1952 (6th) | Le Mans 1952 | Bill Mason |
| 1952 (6th) | Nature's Half Acre | James Algar |
| 1952 (6th) | Ocean Terminal | J.B. Holmes |
| 1952 (6th) | The Open Window | Henri Storck |
| 1952 (6th) | Opera School | Gudrun Parker |
| 1952 (6th) | Rig 20 | David Villiers and Ronald H. Riley |
| 1952 (6th) | The Streamlined Pig | Jørgen Roos |
| 1953 (7th) | The Conquest of Everest | George Lowe |
| 1953 (7th) | White Mane (Crin Blanc) | Albert Lamorisse |
| 1953 (7th) | Elizabeth is Queen | Terry Ashwood |
| 1953 (7th) | Pictures of the Middle Ages (Images Medievales) | William Novik |
| 1953 (7th) | Kumak, The Sleepy Hunter | Alma Duncan |
| 1953 (7th) | Mille Miglia | Bill Mason |
| 1953 (7th) | Operation Hurricane | Ronald Stark |
| 1953 (7th) | A Queen Is Crowned | Christopher Fry |
| 1953 (7th) | Teeth of the Wind | Michael Hankinson |
| 1953 (7th) | Life in the Arctic (Vo l'dakh Okeana) | Aleksandr Zguridi |
| 1953 (7th) | Water Birds | Ben Sharpsteen |
| 1953 (7th) | World Without End | Basil Wright and Paul Rotha |
| 1954 (8th) | The Great Adventure (Det Stora Äventyret) | Arne Sucksdorff |
| 1954 (8th) | Back of Beyond | John Heyer |
| 1954 (8th) | Lekko! | Herman van der Horst |
| 3-2-1-Zero ||
| 1954 (8th) | Thursday's Children | Guy Brenton and Lindsay Anderson |
| 1955 (9th) | The Vanishing Prairie | James Algar |
| 1955 (9th) | Gold | Colin Low |
| 1955 (9th) | Miner's Window | John Ferno |
| 1955 (9th) | The Rival World | Bert Haanstra |
| 1956 (10th) | On the Bowery | Lionel Rogosin |
| 1956 (10th) | Foothold in Antarctica | Derek Williams |
| 1956 (10th) | Generator 4 | F. R. Crawley |
| 1956 (10th) | The Silent World (Le Monde Du Silence) | Jacques Cousteau and Louis Malle |
| 1956 (10th) | Under the Same Sky | Kurt Weber |
| 1957 (11th) | Journey into Spring | Ralph Keene |
| 1957 (11th) | City of Gold | Colin Low and Wolf Koenig |
| 1957 (11th) | Every Day Except Christmas | Lindsay Anderson |
| Holiday ||
| The USA in the Thirties ||
| 1958 (12th) | Glass (Glas) | Bert Haanstra |
| 1958 (12th) | The Forerunner | John Heyer |
| 1958 (12th) | Jabulani Afrika | Jamie Uys |
| 1958 (12th) | LS Lowry | John Read |
| 1958 (12th) | Secrets of the Reef | Murray Lerner, Lloyd Ritter and Robert M. Young |
| 1958 (12th) | Wonders of Chicago | Harry Foster |
| 1959 (13th) | The Savage Eye | Joseph Strick, Sidney Meyers and Ben Maddow |
| 1959 (13th) | This is the BBC | Richard Cawston |
| 1959 (13th) | We Are the Lambeth Boys | Karel Reisz |
| 1959 (13th) | White Wilderness | James Algar |

### 1960s

| Year | Film | Recipient(s) |
| 1960 (14th) | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1961 (15th) | Le Rendezvous du diable | Haroun Tazieff |
| 1962 (16th) | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1963 (17th) | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1964 (18th) | Nobody Waved Good-bye | Don Owen |
| 1964 (18th) | The Human Dutch | Bert Haanstra |
| The Life of Billy Walker ||
| 1964 (18th) | Portrait of Queenie | Michael Orrom |
| 1965 (19th) | Tokyo Olympiad | Kon Ichikawa |
| 1965 (19th) | Brute Force and Finesse | Max Morgan-Witts |
| 1965 (19th) | Deckie Learner | Michael Grigsby |
| 1965 (19th) | Stravinsky | Roman Kroitor and Wolf Koenig |
| 1966 (20th) | Goal! The World Cup | Abidine Dino and Ross Devenish |
| 1966 (20th) | Buster Keaton Rides Again | John Spotton |
| 1966 (20th) | I'm Going to Ask You to Get Up Out of Your Seat | Richard Cawston |
| 1966 (20th) | Matador | Kevin Billington |
| 1967 (21st) | To Die in Madrid | Frédéric Rossif |
| 1967 (21st) | Famine | Jack Gold |
| 1967 (21st) | The Things I Cannot Change | Tanya Ballantyne |
| 1968 (22nd) | In Need of Special Care | Jonathan Stedall |
| 1968 (22nd) | Inside North Vietnam | Felix Greene |
| 1968 (22nd) | Music! | Michael Tuchner |
| 1968 (22nd) | A Plague On Your Children | Adrian Malone |
| 1969 (23rd) | Prologue | Robin Spry |

### 1970s

| Year | Film | Recipient(s) |
| 1970 (24th) | Sad Song of Yellow Skin | Michael Rubbo |
| 1971 (25th) | The Hellstrom Chronicle | Walon Green |
| 1971 (25th) | Death of a Legend | Bill Mason |
| 1972 (26th) | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1973 (27th) | Grierson | Roger Blais |
| 1974 (28th) | Cree Hunters of Mistassini | Boyce Richardson and Tony Ianzelo |
| 1974 (28th) | Compañero: Victor Jara of Chile | Stanley Forman and Martin Smith |
| Leprosy ||
| 1975 (29th) | The Early Americans | Alan Pendry |
| 1975 (29th) | Seven Green Bottles | Eric Marquis |
| 1976 (30th) | Los Canadienses | Albert Kish |
| 1976 (30th) | White Rock | Tony Maylam |
| 1977 (31st) | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1978 (32nd) | The Silent Witness | David Rolfe |
| 1979 (33rd) | The Tree of Wooden Clogs | Ermanno Olmi |

### 1980s

| Year | Film | Recipient(s) |
| 1980 (34th) | Not awarded | Not awarded |
| 1981 (35th) | Soldier Girls | Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill |
| 1981 (35th) | Best Boy | Ira Wohl |
| 1981 (35th) | The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter | Connie Field |
| 1981 (35th) | Return Journey | Ian Potts |
| 1982 (36th) | Burden of Dreams | Les Blank |
| 1982 (36th) | The Atomic Café | Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty |
| 1982 (36th) | Not a Love Story | Bonnie Sherr Klein |
| 1982 (36th) | The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time! | Jim Brown |
| 1983 (37th) | Schindler | Jon Blair |
| 1983 (37th) | Forty Minutes: Female Circumcision | Louise Panton |
| 1983 (37th) | The Visit: Part 3 - The Boy David | Alex McCall |
| 1983 (37th) | Wildlife on One: Night Life | Dilys Breese |
| 1984 (38th) | 28 Up | Michael Apted |
| 1984 (38th) | GI Brides | Lavinia Warner |
| 1984 (38th) | South Bank Show: Alan Bennett | David Hinton |
| 1984 (38th) | Afghanistan Reports: Allah Against The Gunships | Sandy Gall |
| 1985 (39th) | Omnibus: Leonard Berstein's West Side Story | Christopher Swann |
| 1985 (39th) | Marilyn Monroe: Say Goodbye to the President | Christopher Olgiati |
| 1985 (39th) | David Lean: A Life in Film | Nigel Wattis |
| 1985 (39th) | The Frozen Ocean: Part 1 - Kingdom of the Ice Bear | Mike Salisbury and Hugh Miles |
| 1986 (40th) | Shoah | Claude Lanzmann |
| 1986 (40th) | Viewpoint '86: Afghanistan: The Agony of a Nation | Sandy Gall |
| 1986 (40th) | Omnibus: The Mission | Robin Lough |
| 1986 (40th) | Forty Minutes: The Fishing Party | Paul Watson |
| 1986 (40th) | Equinox: Prisoner of Consciousness | John Dollar |
| 1986 (40th) | British Cinema: Personal View - A Turnip Head's Guide to the British Cinema | Alan Parker |
| 1987 (41st) | Baka: The People of the Rainforest | Phil Agland |
| 1987 (41st) | Man-Eating Tigers/Saving the Tiger | Naresh Bedi |
| 1987 (41st) | Fourteen Days in May | Paul Hamann |
| 1987 (41st) | Forty Minutes: Home from the Hill | Molly Dineen |
| 1988 (42nd) | This Week: Death on the Rock | Chris Oxley |
| 1988 (42nd) | The Duty Men: East Enders | Paul Hamann |
| 1988 (42nd) | In from the Cold: A Portrait of Richard Burton | Tony Palmer |
| 1988 (42nd) | Viewpoint Special: The Men Who Killed Kennedy | Nigel Turner |
| 1989 (43rd) | First Tuesday: Four Hours in My Lai | Kevin Sim |
| 1989 (43rd) | Viewpoint '89: Cambodia - Year 10: A Special Report by John Pilger | David Munro |
| 1989 (43rd) | Lost Children of the Empire | Joanna Mack and Mike Fox |
| 1989 (43rd) | Everyman: Romania - State of Fear | John Blake |

### 2010s

| Year | Film | Recipient(s) |
| 2011 (65th) | Senna | Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, James Gay-Rees, Asif Kapadia and Manish Pandey |
| 2011 (65th) | George Harrison: Living in the Material World | Olivia Harrison, Martin Scorsese and Nigel Sinclair |
| 2011 (65th) | Project Nim | Simon Chinn and James Marsh |
| 2012 (66th) | Searching for Sugar Man | Malik Bendjelloul and Simon Chinn |
| 2012 (66th) | The Imposter | Bart Layton and Dimitri Doganis |
| 2012 (66th) | McCullin | David Morris and Jacqui Morris |
| 2012 (66th) | Marley | Kevin Macdonald, Steve Bing and Charles Steel |
| 2012 (66th) | West of Memphis | Amy J. Berg |
| 2013 (67th) | The Act of Killing | Joshua Oppenheimer |
| 2013 (67th) | The Armstrong Lie | Alex Gibney |
| 2013 (67th) | Blackfish | Gabriela Cowperthwaite |
| 2013 (67th) | Tim's Vermeer | Teller, Penn Jillette and Farley Ziegler |
| 2013 (67th) | We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks | Alex Gibney |
| 2014 (68th) | Citizenfour | Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky |
| 2014 (68th) | 20 Feet from Stardom | Morgan Neville, Caitrin Rogers and Gil Friesen |
| 2014 (68th) | 20,000 Days on Earth | Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard |
| 2014 (68th) | Finding Vivian Maier | John Maloof and Charlie Siskel |
| 2014 (68th) | Virunga | Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara |
| 2015 (69th) | Amy | James Gay-Rees and Asif Kapadia |
| 2015 (69th) | Cartel Land | Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin |
| 2015 (69th) | He Named Me Malala | Davis Guggenheim, Laurie MacDonald and Walter Parkes |
| 2015 (69th) | Listen to Me Marlon | John Battsek, George Chignell, R. J. Cutler and Stevan Riley |
| 2015 (69th) | Sherpa | Bridget Ikin, Jennifer Peedom and John Smithson |
| 2016 (70th) | 13th | Ava DuVernay, Spencer Averick, Howard Barish |
| 2016 (70th) | The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years | Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Scott Pascucci and Nigel Sinclair |
| 2016 (70th) | The Eagle Huntress | Otto Bell and Stacey Reiss |
| 2016 (70th) | Notes on Blindness | Peter Middleton and James Spinney |
| 2016 (70th) | Weiner | Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg |
| 2017 (71st) | I Am Not Your Negro | Raoul Peck |
| 2017 (71st) | City of Ghosts | Matthew Heineman |
| 2017 (71st) | Icarus | Bryan Fogel and Dan Cogan |
| 2017 (71st) | An Inconvenient Sequel | Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk |
| 2017 (71st) | Jane | Brett Morgen and Bryan Burk |
| 2018 (72nd) | Free Solo | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Shannon Dill and Evan Hayes |
| 2018 (72nd) | McQueen | Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui |
| 2018 (72nd) | RBG | Julie Cohen and Betsy West |
| 2018 (72nd) | They Shall Not Grow Old | Peter Jackson and Clare Olssen |
| 2018 (72nd) | Three Identical Strangers | Tim Wardle, Grace Hughes-Hallett and Becky Read |
| 2019 (73rd) | For Sama | Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts |
| 2019 (73rd) | American Factory | Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert |
| 2019 (73rd) | Apollo 11 | Todd Douglas Miller |
| 2019 (73rd) | Diego Maradona | Asif Kapadia, James Gay-Rees and Paul Martin |
| 2019 (73rd) | The Great Hack | Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim |

### 2020s

| Year | Film | Recipient(s) |
| 2020 (74th) | My Octopus Teacher | Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed and Craig Foster |
| 2020 (74th) | David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet | Alastair Fothergill, Jonnie Hughes and Keith Scholey |
| 2020 (74th) | Collective | Alexander Nanau |
| 2020 (74th) | The Dissident | Bryan Fogel, Thor Halvorssen, Mark Monroe and Jake Swantko |
| 2020 (74th) | The Social Dilemma | Jeff Orlowski and Larissa Rhodes |
| 2021 (75th) | Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) | Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent and Joseph Patel |
| 2021 (75th) | Becoming Cousteau | Liz Garbus and Dan Cogan |
| 2021 (75th) | Cow | Andrea Arnold and Kat Mansoor |
| 2021 (75th) | Flee | Jonas Poher Rasmussen and Monica Hellström |
| 2021 (75th) | The Rescue | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, John Battsek and P. J. van Sandwijk |
| 2022 (76th) | Navalny | Daniel Roher, Diane Becker, Shane Boris, Melanie Miller and Odessa Rae |
| 2022 (76th) | All That Breathes | Shaunak Sen, Teddy Leifer and Aman Mann |
| 2022 (76th) | All the Beauty and the Bloodshed | Laura Poitras, Howard Gertler, Nan Goldin, Yoni Golijov and John Lyons |
| 2022 (76th) | Fire of Love | Sara Dosa, Shane Boris and Ina Fichman |
| 2022 (76th) | Moonage Daydream | Brett Morgen |
| 2023 (77th) | 20 Days in Mariupol | Mstyslav Chernov and Raney Aronson-Rath |
| 2023 (77th) | American Symphony | Matthew Heineman, Lauren Domino and Joedan Okun |
| 2023 (77th) | Beyond Utopia | Madeleine Gavin, Rachel Cohen and Jana Edelbaum |
| 2023 (77th) | Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie | Davis Guggenheim, Jonathan King and Annetta Marion |
| 2023 (77th) | Wham! | Chris Smith |
| 2024 (78th) | Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story | Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui, Lizzie Gilliett, and Robert Ford |
| 2024 (78th) | Black Box Diaries | Shiori Itō, Eric Nyari, and Hanna Aqvilin |
| 2024 (78th) | Daughters | Natalie Rae, Angela Patton, Lisa Mazzotta, Justin Benoliel, James Cunningham, Sam Bisbee, Kathryn Everett, and Laura Choi Raycroft |
| 2024 (78th) | No Other Land | Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor |
| 2024 (78th) | Will & Harper | Josh Greenbaum, Rafael Marmor, Christopher Leggett, Will Ferrell, and Jessica Elbaum |