During a recent appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Will Ferrell playfully told Oscar documentary branch voters to “suck it” for snubbing “Will & Harper” in the best doc feature race. Although Ferrell was joking, he voiced a sentiment held by a number of doc branch members.
Netflix acquired “Will & Harper” for a reported eight figures after the film’s acclaimed premiere at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. The doc centers on a road trip Ferrell took with Harper Steele after she came out as transgender 30 years into their friendship. Although it covers a controversial, timely subject matter – gender transition – the film was, thanks in large part to Ferrell’s celebrity status, a success. But that success, depending on who you speak to in the doc branch, could be one reason why the film was not nominated.
Over the last several years, some of the most critically acclaimed, populist doc titles have not received Oscar recognition — which mean that some of the top non-fiction titles on streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple aren’t showing up at the Dolby Theatre. They include Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Steve James’ “Life Itself,” Matthew Heineman’s “American Symphony,” Davis Guggenheim’s “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” and Brett Morgen’s “Jane.” While “Will & Harper” made the doc shortlist, two highly praised, crowd-pleasing 2024 docs – “Luther: Never Too Much” about the late Luther Vandross and “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story” about the late Christopher Reeve – did not.
Various members of the doc branch spoke to Variety anonymously about this year’s Oscar nominations and shared their opinions about the fact that celebrity titles aren’t picking up prizes, while streamers gravitate to more commercial subjects and away from political and topical fare.
Like last year, the 2025 crop of nominated feature docs tackle urgent and timely international stories. Two of the nominated films — Shiori Ito’s “Black Box Diaries” and Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s “Sugarcane” — have streamer backing via MTV and Nat Geo, respectively. Fellow nominee Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” was released by Kino Lorber. Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, and Yuval Abraham’s “No Other Land” and Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev’s “Porcelain War” do not have U.S. distribution. (“Porcelain War” had a service deal with Picturehouse.)
“‘Will & Harper’ is a movie about a really important subject that is really hard for a lot of people to grapple with,” said a branch filmmaker based on the East Coast. “But through that movie, the trans issue and compassion for trans people got out into the world in a way that it hasn’t been able to in previous docs that fewer people watch. A lot of non-doc, non-film people came up to me and said, ‘Did you see that film? It was really amazing. It really changed the way I thought about trans people.’ So, I would have liked to see it rewarded for that.”
A branch member based outside the U.S. says that when it comes to the doc race, commercial films are not at any disadvantage if they’re good. “Celebrity-focused docs, even if they’re great, are at a disadvantage, and this can be quite unfair,” the member said.
This marks the fourth consecutive year that Netflix has not received a nomination in the feature doc category, which is surprising given the streamer’s history of buying and producing significant titles.
Beginning in 2018, Netflix received seven Oscar nominations and won three Academy Awards in the documentary feature category over the course of four years. It started with “Icarus,” which Netflix acquired at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 for $5 million, an unprecedented amount at the time for a doc. That sale was followed by the film’s Oscar win, which helped make docs a cornerstone of Netflix’s business model. Apple, Disney, and Amazon quickly followed suit.
The influx of streaming funding made doc features and series as ubiquitous and prestigious as premium scripted fare. With more buyers in the marketplace on the development side, the money available to filmmakers for budgets ballooned. Titles like “Knock Down the House,” about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and “Boys State,” about a teen mock-government conference in Texas, were acquired for $10 million dollars and up. The significant jump in paydays gave a number of documentarians the safety net they needed to continue their work.
But by 2021, Hollywood had stopped making social issue docs widely accessible. Algorithms took over, and streamers seemed to value nonfiction primarily about four things: true crime, cults, sports, and celebrities.
Once again, the majority of doc filmmakers were struggling, and budgets tightened. A handful of doc directors, largely considered the industry’s one percent, were still making real money. But overall, the indie doc market was no longer a profitable industry. That said, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Disney still wanted to be part of the documentary Oscar race and poured millions into wining and dining the Oscar doc branch.
But so far, they haven’t been responsive.
“The doc-branch mentality is often if a film has big streamer support, then they have enough love,” says an Oscar-nominated branch member.
According to insiders, online groups devoted to informing branch members about films without big budgets can play a role, which might be why the streamers’ opulent Oscar doc campaigns turn some voters off.
“What you have to remember is that the vast majority of us in the doc branch are struggling for funds. Even people like me who have done some pretty commercial things and have gotten some things done, it’s always a huge, huge struggle both to make your film and have the distributor put the muscle behind it to get it out there in the world,” says a prominent filmmaker. “So, the campaigning from the streamers, which they tend to borrow from their real Hollywood campaigning, can definitely make us feel resentful.”
Branch members have historically been against opening voting up to the entire Academy after the shortlist is announced, presumably because that would advance only the most popular title. However, several branch members who spoke with Variety are open to the idea.
“I think an opt-in system, following the shortlist being created – which should remain the sole responsibility of the doc branch, would be ok,” says a branch member recently nominated for an Oscar. “It may lead to smaller films – with less significant marketing budgets – not eventually being nominated, but more people who are genuinely interested in watching all 15 docs could be a good thing.”
There is a growing concern among the doc community that the sector’s biggest contributors will stop indie doc spend entirely.
“On the one hand, I feel great about this year’s nominations,” says a well-known filmmaker. “But on the other hand, I am worried. If the big distributors and the streamers don’t feel like they can’t get enough love and recognition when they put money into making or acquiring docs that are important and also have some real commercial appeal and really can get spread widely, then that’s worrying for the future of the doc business.”
But another branch member counters, “Boo hoo. The streamers broke the independent film financing and distribution systems by entering the market aggressively, shutting everyone else out – before retreating – leaving almost nothing behind. One could argue that their only ongoing interest in independent film (of which documentary is a part) is driven by the desire for awards. Hoping for their return to the market in a meaningful way doesn’t seem likely. They’ve done so much damage, I think we need to move on.”
Numerous branch members that Variety spoke with expressed concern about the future of American documentaries, particularly under the Trump administration. Since taking office, Trump’s team has moved to slash PBS funding, while changing funding rules for the National Endowment for the Arts so they now require applicants to adhere to topic-related proposals about the “nation’s rich artistic heritage.”
“Holy fucking shit,” one voter based on the West Coast says of the administration’s moves. “This is a catastrophe.”
On a corporate level, Amazon’s move to cancel cancel culture by hiring Brett Ratner to make a $40 million dollar documentary about Melania Trump, has the doc community questioning the future viability of social issue docs, particularly given the current political climate. Will streamers and studios still have an appetite for movies that hold a mirror to these polarized times?
“Trump doesn’t have any problem weaponizing the tools of government against the media,” another veteran voter says. “It’s really terrifying people,”
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