In our annual Awards Season coverage, Capital Cinema follows major critics and guild awards in film and tracks their “matchup rates” with the related Oscar category over the past ten years. Get ready for some numbers!
Considered “the world’s most prestigious event dedicated to the documentary genre,” the 39th International Documentary Association Awards (or the IDA Awards) were held on December 12, 2023. The IDA association, based in Los Angeles, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to promoting nonfiction filmmakers through their missions of Advocacy, Filmmaker Services, Education, and Public Programs and Events.
This is the first major “guild” award of this awards season, even though the IDA is a nonprofit association and not a guild. Still, the IDA is a group of documentarians working in the industry, voting on the best short and feature-length documentaries—and that has to be worth something, right?
Today, we’ll take a look at the winners for Best Feature Documentary and Best Short Documentary at IDA, and what that means for your Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary – Short Subject predictions for the 96th Oscars.
What won Best Feature Documentary at IDA?
The winner for Best Feature Documentary at IDA was Bobi Wine: The People’s President. This documentary from Uganda, directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp, depicts the Ugandan opposition leader, activist, and musical star Bobi Wine as he fights the regime led by Yoweri Museveni and runs in the 2021 presidential election.
With this win, Bobi Wine: The People’s President becomes a frontrunner in the race for an Oscar nomination, though not necessarily a win.
It is worth noting, when predicting the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, that there is no “surefire” award that predicts a win—which makes predicting Best Documentary much trickier than predicting Picture, Director, or the acting categories (though it’s by no means the hardest Oscar category to predict).
The BAFTA for Best Documentary Feature tends to line up with the Oscar the most of any other documentary award, but it’s not the most reassuring statistics. Over the past ten years, the BAFTA has only matched with the Oscar 6/10 times. Meanwhile, the PGA for Best Documentary has a matchup rate of 5/10. There’s a bit of hope for predictors though—over the past three years, the BAFTA and the PGA have accurately predicted the Oscar and been in agreement, which might indicate a trend for future seasons (including this one).
In that case, how important is the IDA to your Oscar predictions for Best Documentary Feature?
Over the past ten years, only 2 of the IDA award winners for Best Feature Documentary have taken home the related Oscar prize. Those films were Citizenfour in 2014 and O.J.: Made in America in 2016—both of which swept both critics season and the BAFTAs in their respective years (although, Citizenfour did not win the PGA). So we can safely say that it is only in cases where a film absolutely dominates a season that the IDA will go with the flow. Otherwise, IDA tends to pick “dark horse” favorites that aren’t necessarily frontrunners through critics season.
However, the winner of the IDA is almost always nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars, so if you’re predicting nominations, you’re in luck! Over the past ten years, IDA winners The Square, The Look of Silence, Minding the Gap, For Sama, Crip Camp, Flee, and All That Breathes were all nominees for Best Documentary Feature. Keeping the winners in mind, that’s a 9/10 chance Bobi Wine will receive an Oscar nomination, though it’s too early to tell if it can pull off a win.
Bobi Wine: The People’s President is currently up against critics season frontrunners Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie and Menus-Plaisirs – Los Troisgro.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie recalls the rise of Michael J. Fox (star of Back to the Future) in the 1980s, and how the course of his life was altered by his development of Parkinson’s disease, for which he is now a tireless activist. It’s no surprise that Still, a moving, touching portrait of one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors, has a shot at an Oscar this year. Still won the Critics Choice Documentary Award and National Board of Review awards for best feature-length documentary, both of which have a 3/10 matchup rate with the Oscar win (though the Critics Choice Documentary awards only began in 2016).
Meanwhile, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgro, from the acclaimed and prolific Frederick Wiseman, depicts the Troisgros family as their patriarch, Michel, turns his 3 Michelin star restaurant over to his son César. This immersive, mouth-watering four hour experience depicts their food as it travels from farm to table. Menus-Plaisirs took home the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award. New York Film Critics has not predicted an Oscar win since Citizenfour and O.J.: Made in America (which, again, dominated their respective seasons) and they’re sitting at a 2/10 match with the Oscar. Los Angeles Film Critics has a slightly better matchup rate with the Oscar of around 4/10 over the past ten years, having predicted Citizenfour, Amy, American Factory, and Summer of Soul.
So, there are currently 3 frontrunners for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, all of which occupy a unique niche. Still is likely the “popular favorite,” a story that resonates with a broad audience and will likely take a lot of the awards with bigger, more diverse voting pools. Meanwhile, Menus-Plaisirs is the “critical favorite,” a more niche and high-brow, innovative pick, which doesn’t have quite as much popular appeal. And, of course, Bobi Wine is the “guild favorite,” the one the documentarians stand by as the best of the year. If you’re one for predicting Oscar nominations, these three titles should for sure be secured on your list.
Also nominated for Best Feature Documentary at the International Documentary Association were:
- Against the Tide (India, dir. Sarvnik Kaur)
- ANHELL69 (Colombia, dir. Theo Montoya)
- Apolonia, Apolonia (Denmark, Poland, France, dir. Lea Glob)
- Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (US, dir. Michèle Stephenson)
- In the Rearview (Poland, dir. Maciek Hamela)
- Milisuthando (South Africa, dir. Milisuthando Bongela)
- Q (US, dir. Jude Chehab)
- The Mother of All Lies (Morocco, dir. Asmae El Moudir)
- While We Watched (UK, India, dir. Vinay Shukla)
Of the other nominees, one to watch is The Mother of All Lies, another critical favorite that has popped up throughout awards season and is considered a quiet frontrunner for a nomination. The film took home Best Director at IDA for Asmae El Moudir.
What won Best Documentary – Short Subject at IDA?
The winner for Best Short Documentary at IDA was “Incident.” This U.S. short directed by Bill Morrison reconstructs the 2018 killing of Harith Augustus by police in Chicago, Illinois. The film constructs the events and its aftermath through surveillance, CCTV, dashboard, and body-cam footage in an innovative synchronized, split-screen montage.
Out of the major awards and guild awards, only the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, the IDA, and the Cinema Eye Honors provide an award for Best Documentary – Short Subject, and none of them are particularly adept at “predicting” an Oscar win. IDA has the best shot at 2/10 over the past ten years, while Critics Choice Documentary is at 1/10, and Cinema Eye Honors has a flat 0/10.
That being said, momentum at these critics awards is useful for predicting nominations. The IDA winner has been nominated for Best Documentary – Short Subject 5/10 times over the past ten years. The Cinema Eye Honors winner has only picked up a nomination 1/10 times, with Three Songs for Benazir in 2021. Critics Choice Documentary, having only begun in 2019, only has 4 examples to look at, but it only predicted a nomination once with The Queen of Basketball in 2021, where it also matched with the win. So, to even things out, we’ll give it a 1/10.
So, while “Incident” might not win the Oscar this year, you’ll want to put it on your nominations list. Given its innovative, groundbreaking visuals and the urgent call for justice of its harrowing subject matter, I personally see it as a strong contender for a win, but at this point, it’s difficult to say.
At Critics Choice Documentary, “The Last Repair Shop,” directed by Kris Bowers and Katya Richardson, took home the prize for Best Short Documentary, so it’s worth keeping that film in mind also. “The Last Repair Shop” follows a group of craftspeople who maintain more than 80,000 student musical instruments in a Los Angeles warehouse, the largest of its kind. This is another film to keep in mind come predicting nominations!
My advice for predicting any of the short subject Oscars is that they’re impossible to predict without, well, watching the shorts and judging which one is objectively the best. Most other awards you can get away with not having seen the films (shh) and just looking at momentum, but you’re setting yourself up for failure if you refuse to watch the short subjects, since there really is no “momentum” to speak of.
And, to be honest, watching the shorts might be the best part of all of film awards season. Hot take, but it’s true—there are tons of good shorts out there!
“Incident” is not currently available online. My advice is to see if it’s available at a theater or festival near you, or follow Bill Morrison on Twitter for potential updates about screenings. Meanwhile, “The Last Repair Shop” is available on YouTube as part of L.A. Short Docs from the Los Angeles Times (and embedded below!).
Also nominated for the IDA Award for Best Short Documentary were:
- “How to Carry Water” (U.S., dir. Sasha Wortzel)
- “Liturgy of Anti-Tank Obstacles” (U.S., dir. Dmytro Sukholytkyy Sobchuk)
- “Marungka Tjalatjunu (Dripped in Black)” (Australia, dir. Derik Lynch, Matthew Thorne)
- “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó (Grandma & Grandma)” (U.S., dir. Sean Wang)
- “Neighbour Abdi” (Netherlands, dir. Douwe Dijkstra)
- “Raat: Night Time in Small Town India)” (India, dir. Arti Ahirwar, Ashraf Hussain, Rajkumari Ahirwar, Vikas Khatri, Tabassum Ansari, Kulsum Khatoon, Khushi Bano, Parmeshwar Mandrawaliya, Santra Chaurthiya, Rajkumari Prajapati, Manisha Chanda, Anita Sen, Rani Devi, Ajfarul Shaikh)
- “Suddenly TV” (Sudan, dir. Roopa Gogineni)
- “The Unicorn in Snowpants Suddenly Ran Off” (Germany, dir. Philipp Schaeffer)
- “The Veiled City” (U.K., dir. Natalie Cubides-Brady)
When are the next awards for documentaries?
The big one you want to look out for is the National Society of Film Critics, whose awards ceremony is on January 6. This is the last “big” award for American critics, before the London Film Critics Circle, so you’ll want to follow it for your picture, director, and actor predictions as well! For documentary feature, it has a matchup rate of 3/10 over the past ten years (for Citizenfour, Amy, and O.J.: Made in America) and while that isn’t a super promising matchup rate, they are useful in tracking a film’s momentum. Momentum stacks!
For Best Documentary – Short Subject, catch the Cinema Eye Honors awards, where there will also be an award for documentary feature, on January 12!
Want to know the dates of all film awards this season? Visit our 2023-2024 Awards Season Calendar for a streamlined, bare bones version of all the awards you need to follow if you’re making Oscar predictions. And make sure to follow Capital Cinema’s Awards Season coverage for insight into every category, from Best Picture to Best Live Action Short!
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