Documentaries at the Oscars: A History of Breaking Out of Their Category — and What It Means for ‘You Can See Everything’

A documentary is a film, too. But at the Oscars, it still hasn’t been fully embraced as one.

One of the breakout hits of the awards season is A24’s insanely entertaining “You Can See Everything” from directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, which had a surprise world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in September and opened in theaters Oct. 16, grossing nearly $80 million at the domestic box office through its fourth weekend. Many professional pundits and awards enthusiasts are predicting the film will make history as the first documentary feature to land a best picture nomination. So we looked at the history of nonfiction films at the Academy Awards to see which movies have been embraced by the various branches and categories (some now defunct) over the years and what that history says about the film’s chances.

Across 98 ceremonies, feature docs have earned a total of 33 nominations in categories other than documentary feature, according to the Academy’s own statistics. Three of them won statuettes.
Of the 14 nominations nonfiction films have collected outside their own race since 2013 (the 85th ceremony), 10 have come in best original song.

The documentary feature category is decided by members of the Documentary Branch, which was formed in 2001 and, according to the Academy’s most recent figures, has 719 voting members, making it the third-largest branch behind Actors (1,202) and Executives (759). Preliminary voting runs Dec. 7-11, narrowing the field to a 15-film shortlist that will be announced Dec. 15. Members of the branch will then vote from that list in January to determine the five nominees, which will be revealed Jan. 21.

The Academy has 19 branches, and each nominates within its own discipline. At the same time, the entire voting membership chooses best picture nominees. Although Academy rules do not expressly prohibit documentaries from competing in other categories, nonfiction films rarely factor into races that presume fictional storytelling, including production design, costume design and acting. This year, A24 is pushing “You Can See Everything” in 11 categories, including best picture, director, supporting actress and documentary feature. Its awards site initially listed the film in the artisan races of production design (Alex DiGerlando and Rebecca Meis), cinematography (David Bolen), costume design (Katina Danabassis), film editing (Adam Locke-Norton), makeup and hairstyling (Stephanie Pasicov and Kerrie Smith), sound (Paul Hsu and Richard Carlos) and original score (Ari Balouzian). However, an updated version of the site no longer lists production design, costume design, makeup and hairstyling or sound. As Variety previously reported, Seyfried’s acting turn is eligible for the Oscars and Critics Choice but not for BAFTA, SAG (The Actor Awards) and the Golden Globes Awards.

No documentary has ever been nominated for best picture or best director. The closest came at the inaugural Oscars, when “Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness” (1927), the jungle drama shot on location in Siam by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (the duo who would later make 1933’s “King Kong”), was nominated for unique and artistic picture, one of two top prizes handed out that night.

Two years later, “With Byrd at the South Pole” (1930), an account of Richard E. Byrd’s 1928-30 Antarctic expedition, won cinematography for Joseph T. Rucker and Willard Van Der Veer, becoming the first documentary to win an Oscar more than a decade before the Academy created a category for the form. A documentary category was introduced at the 1942 ceremony, with features and shorts competing together. The two were split into separate categories in 1944.

The writers branch took notice in the late 1940s, nominating Robert and Frances Flaherty’s story for “Louisiana Story” (1948), about a young Cajun boy and his pet raccoon and the story and screenplay of Sidney Meyers’ “The Quiet One” (1949), which blends real-life locations with staged scenes to tell the story of Donald Peters, a 10-year-old Black boy from Harlem grappling with severe emotional trauma. They remain the only two documentaries ever nominated for writing, with “The Quiet One” competing in the category then known as writing (story and screenplay).

Norman Foster’s “Navajo” (1952), about a young Navajo boy caught in a clash of cultures, made history as the first film nominated for both documentary feature and cinematography, with Virgil E. Miller cited in the black-and-white category.

The music branch embraced nonfiction scores early on and continued to do so for more than three decades.

Louis Gruenberg’s music for “The Fight for Life” (1940) opened the door, followed by Disney’s wartime hybrid “Victory Through Air Power” (1943) by Edward H. Plumb, Paul J. Smith and Oliver G. Wallace; the Cinerama showcase “This Is Cinerama” (1953) by Louis Forbes; Disney’s True-Life Adventures entries “Perri” (1957) by Paul Smith and “White Wilderness” (1958) by Oliver Wallace; the U.K. import “The Bolshoi Ballet” (1958) by Yuri Faier and G. Rozhdestvensky; and, finally, Gerald Fried’s work on “Birds Do It, Bees Do It” (1975), the last time a documentary score was recognized, more than 50 years ago.

The lone winner of score in that era was “Let It Be” (1970), which took home the original song score for the Beatles, giving the band its first and only Oscar.

Michael Wadleigh’s three-hour music chronicle “Woodstock” (1970) remains the gold standard for crossover recognition. Wadleigh’s concert landmark won documentary feature and earned nominations for film editing (Thelma Schoonmaker, years before her three wins for Martin Scorsese) and sound (Dan Wallin and Larry Johnson). Its three total nominations are still tied with “Flee” for the most ever received by a documentary.

The second editing nomination came 24 years later, when Steve James’ “Hoop Dreams” (1994) was famously shut out of the documentary feature category at the 67th Oscars, even as the editors branch nominated Frederick Marx, James and Bill Haugse. The snub became one of the most notorious in Academy history and helped force a rethink of how the documentary branch selected its nominees.
The craft branches have largely closed their doors to nonfiction films since. No documentary has been nominated in cinematography since 1953, in sound since 1971 or in film editing since 1995.

If there is a side door for nonfiction today, it’s the original song category. Twelve documentaries have received nominations for best original song: “Mondo Cane” (1963), for Riz Ortolani and Nino Oliviero’s “More”; “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006), for Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up,” the only song from a documentary to win; “Chasing Ice” (2012), for J. Ralph’s “Before My Time”; “Glen Campbell … I’ll Be Me” (2014), for Glen Campbell and Julian Raymond’s “I’m Not Gonna Miss You”; “The Hunting Ground” (2015), for Diane Warren and Lady Gaga’s “Til It Happens to You”; “Racing Extinction” (2015), for Ralph and Anohni’s “Manta Ray”; “Jim: The James Foley Story” (2016), for Ralph and Sting’s “The Empty Chair”; “RBG” (2018), for Warren’s “I’ll Fight”; “American Symphony” (2023), for Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson’s “It Never Went Away”; “Elton John: Never Too Late” (2024), for Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt and Bernie Taupin’s “Never Too Late”; “Diane Warren: Relentless” (2025), for Warren’s “Dear Me”; and “Viva Verdi!” (2025), for Nicholas Pike’s “Sweet Dreams of Joy.”

Etheridge’s win came more than four decades after “Mondo Cane” opened the door, and “An Inconvenient Truth” also took documentary feature that night. Davis Guggenheim’s climate film remains the only documentary feature winner to also win an Oscar in another category, and it is the last documentary of any kind to win outside its own race.

The more telling number is this one: 10 of the 12 documentary song nominees came from films the documentary branch passed over. Only “An Inconvenient Truth” and “RBG” were nominated in both categories. For distributors of music-driven or celebrity-centered docs, the math is plain. The song campaign is often the more realistic path to the Dolby Theatre than the documentary race itself, as “American Symphony,” “Elton John: Never Too Late” and “Viva Verdi!” (a portrait of Milan’s Casa Verdi retirement home, with its nominated aria sung by Puerto Rican soprano Ana María Martínez) all demonstrated.

The other modern avenue runs through international feature, where a film needs its country’s official submission before Academy voters can weigh in.

Ari Folman’s animated documentary “Waltz With Bashir” (2008) broke through first, nominated for foreign language film for Israel at the 81st Oscars, though it missed documentary feature. A decade later, three straight years of history followed. North Macedonia’s “Honeyland” (2019) became the first film nominated for both documentary feature and international feature at the 92nd ceremony. Alexander Nanau’s “Collective” (2020) repeated the feat the following year and gave Romania its first Oscar nomination ever. Then Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Danish feature “Flee” (2021) became the first film nominated in documentary feature, animated feature and international feature in the same year.

None of the three won anything.

“Honeyland” lost to “American Factory” (2019) and “Parasite” (2019), “Collective” fell to “My Octopus Teacher” (2020) and “Another Round” (2020), and “Flee” went 0-for-3 against “Summer of Soul” (2021), “Encanto” (2021) and “Drive My Car” (2021). Four ceremonies have passed since “Flee” without another documentary in the international lineup.

So what does nearly a century of history tell us about “You Can See Everything?”

For starters, the doors that have opened for nonfiction have mostly been in craft and music races and those are precisely the categories where A24 has trimmed and focused its campaign. The film has already swept the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, winning all five categories in which it was nominated. But the Academy has been a tougher nut to crack.

Best picture is a different animal. The documentary branch doesn’t decide it. The full voting membership, now more than 10,000 industry professionals, does. That cuts both ways. A film the documentary branch might view with suspicion, as it once did “Hoop Dreams,” can still find support among actors, executives and craftspeople who simply loved the movie. The music branch has already shown that pattern 10 times over, nominating songs from documentaries the doc branch passed over. It isn’t far-fetched to imagine “You Can See Everything” landing in best picture while missing documentary feature altogether, a scenario already being floated this season.

Variety’s latest Oscar predictions have “You Can See Everything” earning three nominations: best picture, supporting actress for Seyfried and film editing. Notably absent is documentary feature, a category in which many pundits believe its omission would rank among the branch’s most significant snubs, alongside such overlooked films as “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” (2018), “Jane” (2017), “Stories We Tell” (2012), etc. But even a fraction of that predicted crossover haul would rewrite the Oscar record books.

The first major test comes Dec. 15, when the documentary shortlist is announced, followed by Oscar nominations on Jan. 21. If “You Can See Everything” breaks through in even one of the Academy’s other races, it would mark a significant milestone for A24.