Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
Country	United States
First awarded	March 4, 1943; 83 years ago (1943-03-04) (for films released in 1942)
Currently held by	David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin, Helle Faber and Alžběta Karásková Mr Nobody Against Putin (2025)

The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is a special prize given to amazing documentary films. These films tell true stories about real people, places, or events. The awards started in 1941 with "Special Awards" for two documentaries, Kukan and Target for Tonight. Since then, except for one year (1946), this award has been given out every year to celebrate the best documentary films. The Academy Film Archive keeps copies of almost all the winning and nominated films.

Academy Award for Best Documentary Film
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Academy Award for Best Documentary Film

What is a Documentary Film?

A documentary film is like a non-fiction book, but in movie form! It shows real-life events, people, or ideas. Documentaries can teach us about history, nature, science, or important social issues. They help us understand the world better by sharing true stories.

How Winners are Chosen

The films that win this award are chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). First, a group of experts watches many documentaries and makes a "shortlist" of the best ones. Then, they vote again to pick the five films that will be nominated. Finally, all the members of the Academy vote to decide which film wins the Oscar!

A Look at Recent Winners (2020s)

Here are the amazing films that have won or been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar in recent years:

Year	Film	Nominees
2020/21 (93rd)	My Octopus Teacher	Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed and Craig Foster
	Collective	Alexander Nanau and Bianca Oana [de]
	Crip Camp	Nicole Newnham, Jim LeBrecht and Sara Bolder
	The Mole Agent	Maite Alberdi and Marcela Santibáñez [de]
	Time	Garrett Bradley, Lauren Domino [de] and Kellen Quinn
2021 (94th)	Summer of Soul	Questlove, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent [de] and David Dinerstein [de]
	Ascension	Jessica Kingdon, Kira Simon-Kennedy and Nathan Truesdell
	Attica	Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry [de]
	Flee	Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sørensen and Charlotte De La Gournerie
	Writing with Fire	Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh
2022 (95th)	Navalny	Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller and Shane Boris
	All That Breathes	Shaunak Sen, Aman Mann and Teddy Leifer
	All the Beauty and the Bloodshed	Laura Poitras, Howard Gertler, John Lyons, Nan Goldin and Yoni Golijov
	Fire of Love	Sara Dosa, Shane Boris and Ina Fichman
	A House Made of Splinters	Simon Lereng Wilmont and Monica Hellström
2023 (96th)	20 Days in Mariupol	Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner and Raney Aronson-Rath
	Bobi Wine: The People's President	Moses Bwayo, Christopher Sharp and John Battsek
	The Eternal Memory	Maite Alberdi
	Four Daughters	Kaouther Ben Hania and Nadim Cheikhrouha
	To Kill a Tiger	Nisha Pahuja, Cornelia Principe and David Oppenheim
2024 (97th)	No Other Land	Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham
	Black Box Diaries	Shiori Itō, Eric Nyari and Hanna Aqvilin
	Porcelain War	Brendan Bellomo, Slava Leontyev, Aniela Sidorska and Paula DuPré Pesmen
	Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat	Johan Grimonprez, Daan Milius and Rémi Grellety
	Sugarcane	Julian Brave NoiseCat, Emily Kassie and Kellen Quinn
2025 (98th)	Mr Nobody Against Putin	David Borenstein, Pavel Talankin, Helle Faber and Alžběta Karásková
	The Alabama Solution	Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman
	Come See Me in the Good Light	Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave, Tig Notaro and Stef Willen
	Cutting Through Rocks	Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni
	The Perfect Neighbor	Geeta Gandbhir, Alisa Payne, Nikon Kwantu and Sam Bisbee

Documentaries Through History

Many incredible documentaries have won this award over the years, telling stories from different times and places. For example, in the early days, films like The Battle of Midway (1942) and Desert Victory (1943) showed important events from World War II. Later, Walt Disney won for nature films like The Living Desert (1953) and The Vanishing Prairie (1954), which explored the wonders of the natural world. Famous ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau also won for his underwater adventures like The Silent World (1956) and World Without Sun (1964). These films helped people see and understand parts of the world they might never experience otherwise.

Special Achievements and Records

Some filmmakers have won this award multiple times! Arthur Cohn has won 3 awards, and others like Simon Chinn, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Walt Disney, Rob Epstein, Marvin Hier, Barbara Kopple, and Mark Jonathan Harris have each won 2 awards.

Documentaries usually focus on true stories, so they don't often get nominated for awards like Best Actor or Best Costume Design, which are for fictional movies. However, some documentaries have been recognized in other cool ways:

With Byrd at the South Pole was the first documentary to win an Oscar for Best Camera Work way back in 1930!
Woodstock, a film about a famous music festival, was nominated for Best Film Editing and Best Sound.
Honeyland and Collective made history by being nominated for both Best Documentary Feature and Best International Film.
The animated documentary Flee achieved a unique feat, being nominated for Best International Film, Best Documentary Feature, and Best Animated Film!
Several documentaries have had their original songs nominated for Best Original Song. Only one, "I Need to Wake Up" from An Inconvenient Truth, has won this award.

Five amazing documentary filmmakers have also received special honorary Oscars for their lifetime contributions to film.

Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film facts for kids

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