Oscar Shortlisted Documentaries
… were announced three days ago. 15 films that later will be taken down to 5 nominations that are made by January 10. 126 films qualified to be considered. Have chosen to take text clips from Variety to mention the titles in question plus inform about the new selection process implemented by governor, as he is called, Michael Moore.
The films: Alison Klayman’S “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” Lee Hirsch’s “Bully,” Jeff Orlowski’s “Chasing Ice,” Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s “Detropia”, Rory Kennedy’s “Ethel”, Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s “5 Broken Cameras” (photo), Dror Moreh’s “The Gatekeepers,” Eugene Jarecki’s “The House I Live In,” David France’s “How To Survive a Plague”, Bart Layton’s “The Imposter”, Kirby Dick’s “The Invisible War,” Alex Gibney’s “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,” Malik Bendjelloul’s “Searching for Sugar Man,” Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi’s “This Is Not a Film” and Peter Nicks’ “The Waiting Room”.
Variety: ”This year’s process, which involved narrowing a record 126 official submissions to the 15 semifinalists, came with controversy over rules changes that solved some problems while creating others.
Most notably, instead of using committees, each person in the 160-member documentary branch (of the Academy) weighed in on the selections, a method that was theoretically more fair and more likely to keep worthy selections from being ignored, but inevitably tested voters’ abilities to see every project in consideration.
Academy governor Michael Moore, who helped instigate the changes, later expressed public regret over the mountain of entries. The Academy later revealed that each branch member was assigned 10 movies that they were to guarantee watching, to make sure every film project had some audience.”
“On Twitter following the announcement, Moore called today’s shortlisted docs “a strong and incredible group of films”.”
