2018 Oscar Nominations

10 documentaries are contending for Academy Awards this year.

Nominees for the 90th Academy Awards were announced this morning, and there weren’t too many surprises in the documentary categories. The one really big shocker is that seemed frontrunner Jane was not named among the contenders for Best Documentary Feature.

Also unfortunate is the lack of docs in other categories. Occasionally nonfiction films find their way into the Best Original Song nominees, but not this year. However, if we could take director Jordan Peele’s joke suggestion that Get Out is a documentary, than it’d be the first ever up for Best Picture.

Some interesting notes about the actual nominees:

This is Knife Skills helmer Thomas Lennon’s fourth time recognized by the Academy, third with a short doc, and he previously won in 2007 for The Blood of Yingzhou District; the rest of the shorts all come from first-timers.

Steve James, who was infamously snubbed in the Best Documentary Feature category in the past with Hoop Dreams and The Interrupters (though he was nominated for Best Editing for Hoop Dreams) finally made it in with Abacus.

All of this year’s feature category nominees are first timers, in fact, save for producer Julie Goldman, who was recognized just last year for Roger Ross Williams’s Life, Animated.

And now here are all of this year’s nonfiction nominees (not counting biopics and other dramas based on true stories, of course):

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