The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today that 15 feature films have made the short list for the Best Documentary Feature category. 124 films were submitted for consideration.
Here are the films:
1.
Amy, On the Corner Films and Universal Music
From the award-winning director of Senna, and featuring raw footage of Winehouse, this "extraordinary, powerful" (Indiewire) film is the best-performing box office biographical documentary to date this year, and features never-before-seen footage of the talented singer (including collaborations with her musical idol Tony Bennett and producer Mark Ronson) along with interviews with her closest friends and family, as well as previously unreleased music recordings. Certified Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes, this intimate, shocking, and brilliant film was a Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, and was released theatrically in 2015 by A24.
2.
Best of Enemies, Sandbar
In the summer of 1968 television news changed forever. Dead last in the ratings, ABC hired two towering public intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. William F. Buckley Jr. was a leading light of the new conservative movement. A Democrat and cousin to Jackie Onassis, Gore Vidal was a leftist novelist and polemicist. Armed with deep-seated distrust and enmity, Vidal and Buckley believed each other's political ideologies were dangerous for America. Like rounds in a heavyweight battle, they pummeled out policy and personal insult—their explosive exchanges devolving into vitriolic name-calling. Live and unscripted, they kept viewers riveted. Ratings for ABC News skyrocketed. And a new era in public discourse was born.
3.
Cartel Land,
Our Time Projects and The Documentary Group
A physician in Michoacán, Mexico leads a citizen uprising against the drug cartel that has wrecked havoc on the region for years.
4.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Jigsaw Productions
The critically-acclaimed documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison Of Belief" is a look inside the controversial religion from Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney. The film profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology, exploring the psychological impact of blind faith, how the church attracts new followers and keeps hold of its A-list celebrity devotees. Following the Peabody Award-winning documentary "Mea Maxima Culpa," his investigation into the Catholic Church, Gibney dives fully into one of the most controversial and secretive religions in the world in "Going Clear," exploring what members of Scientology are willing to do in the name of religion. With exclusive interviews and never-before-seen footage featuring Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and John Travolta, the film touches on a wide range of aspects of the church from its origin, to an intimate portrait of the Church's founder L. Ron Hubbard, to its recruiting practices, to present day practices by church officials.
5.
He Named Me Malala. Parkes-MacDonald and Little Room
A look at the events leading up to the Taliban's attack on the young Pakistani school girl, Malala Yousafzai, for speaking out on girls' education and the aftermath, including her speech to the United Nations.
6.
Heart of a Dog, Canal Street Communications
An impressionistic and musical meditation on a pets death with prelude by the artist Laurie Anderson, who enjoyed a very deep relationship with her dog, with following soundtrack.
7.
The Hunting Ground, Chain Camera Pictures
From the makers of "The Invisible War" comes a startling expose of rape crimes on U.S. college campuses, their institutional cover-ups and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. Weaving together verite footage and first person testimonies, the film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue - despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath - both their education and justice.
8.
Listen to Me Marlon, Passion Pictures
Stevan Riley directs this documentary film about the life and career of American actor, director and activist Marlon Brando. Using archive footage and audio from tapes Brando recorded himself, the film provides an insight into the daily musings of the actor as he candidly reveals his true feelings about his career and personal life.
9.
The Look of Silence, Final Cut for Real
The Look of Silence is Joshua Oppenheimer's powerful companion piece to the Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing. Through Oppenheimer's work filming perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide, a family of survivors discovers how their son was murdered and the identity of the men who killed him. The youngest brother is determined to break the spell of silence and fear under which the survivors live, and so confronts the men responsible for his brother's murder – something unimaginable in a country where killers remain in power.
10.
Meru, Little Monster Films
A critical and commercial success with over $2 million in domestic box offices grosses, the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award winner follows three world-renowned climbers, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk, as they navigate nature's harshest elements and their own inner demons in their attempt to be the first to ascend Mount Meru, the most complicated and hazardous mountain in the Himalayas. Co-directed by Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the film marries the drama of the climb with the personal narrative of the athletes who take on such a daunting challenge.
In 2008, Anker, Chin and Ozturk attempted to scale Meru, the daunting 21,850-foot Himalayan mountain topped by a sheer vertical peak known as the Shark's Fin. Their planned seven-day trip quickly devolved into a 20-day odyssey in sub-zero temperatures with depleting food rations. Within 100 meters of the elusive summit, their journey - like all previous attempts - fell short of the goal. Heartbroken and defeated, the trio returned to their everyday lives, where the siren song of Meru continued to beckon. By September 2011, Anker had convinced his team to reunite and undertake the Shark's Fin once more, under even more extraordinary circumstances. Meru tells the epic story of that remarkable journey.
11.
3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, The Filmmaker Fund, Motto Pictures, Lakehouse Films, Actual Films, JustFilms, MacArthur Foundation and Bertha BRITDOC
In 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets, two lives intersected and were forever altered. On Black Friday 2012, two cars parked next to each other at a Florida gas station. A white middle-aged male and a black teenager exchanged angry words over the volume of the music in the boy's car. A gun entered the exchange, and one of them was left dead. Michael Dunn fired 10 bullets at a car full of unarmed teenagers and then fled. Three of those bullets hit 17-year-old Jordan Davis, who died at the scene. Arrested the next day, Dunn claimed he shot in self-defense. Thus began the long journey of unraveling the truth. 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets follows that journey, reconstructing the night of the murder and revealing how hidden racial prejudice can result in tragedy.
12.
We Come as Friends, Adelante Films
We Come As Frieds is a modern odyssey, a dizzying, science fiction-like journey into the heart of Africa. At the moment when the Sudan, the continent's biggest country, is being divided into two nations, an old 'civilizing' pathology re-emerges – that of colonialism, clash of empires, and yet new episodes of bloody (and holy) wars over land and resources.
The director of Darwin's Nightmare takes us on this voyage in his tiny, self-made flying machine out of tin and canvas, he leads us into most improbable locations and into people's thoughts and dreams, in both stunning and heartbreaking ways. Chinese oil workers, UN peacekeepers, Sudanese warlords, and American evangelists ironically weave common ground in this documentary.
13.
What Happened, Miss Simone?, RadicalMedia and Moxie Firecracker
A documentary about the life and legend Nina Simone, an American singer, pianist, and civil rights activist labeled the "High Priestess of Soul."
14.
Where to Invade Next, Dog Eat Dog Productions
To learn what the USA can gain from other nations, Michael Moore playfully "invades" them to see what they have to offer.
15.
Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, Pray for Ukraine Productions
A documentary on the unrest in Ukraine during 2013 and 2014, as student demonstrations supporting European integration grew into a violent revolution calling for the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich.