DOC NYC Reveals 15-Film Oscar Short List — SkimNews
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- DOC NYC revealed its 15-film Short List alongside its main lineup of 118 features (26 world premieres, 27 U.S. premieres, 89 shorts), running November 11–19 at IFC Center, SVA Theatre, and Village East by Angelika, with online screenings through November 29.
- The festival's predictive track record underwrites the list: in 14 of the last 15 years, DOC NYC screened the Oscar-winning documentary, and 64 of the last 75 Oscar-nominated docs were shown there — last year 4 of 5 Oscar nominees came from the list.
- Ava DuVernay's '14th' (Netflix) — a film essay on the 14th Amendment that follows her Oscar-nominated '13th' — sits on the Short List alongside Alex Gibney's four-hour Elon Musk biodoc 'Musk' (Bleecker/HBO) and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's 'You Can See Everything' (A24).
- Five films overlap between DOC NYC's Short List and the Critics Choice Documentary Awards nominees — '14th,' 'Once Upon a Time in Harlem,' 'Musk,' 'Naza,' and 'You Can See Everything' — and Laplante called overlap titles 'particularly strong future awards contenders.'
- Politically charged entries include 'American Doctor' (following U.S. physicians at a Gaza hospital under Israel's war campaign), 'Naza' (anonymous Israeli IDF soldiers reflecting on the meaning of 'genocide' and civilian casualties), and 'The Great Experiment' (2016–2020 observational filmmaking on American democracy).
- Alex Gibney ('Musk') will receive DOC NYC's Lifetime Achievement Award at the Visionaries Tribute, while co-director Stephen Maing ('The Great Experiment') takes the Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence.
- The Short List includes NYC premieres of 'To Hold a Mountain' (Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize winner, Montenegro's Oscar submission) and 'A Fox Under a Pink Moon' (Afghan woman in Iran, exec-produced by David Borenstein of 'Mr Nobody Against Putin').
Why it matters: With four of last year's five Oscar documentary nominees drawn from this list and a 14-of-15 hit rate the year prior, DOC NYC's picks effectively seed the Academy's documentary branch shortlist — and the five titles crossing over with Critics Choice nominations now stand as the de facto frontrunners. The selection's heavy politics (Gaza medicine, IDF testimony, the 14th Amendment, Musk) signals what voters will be asked to weigh in a crowded year.
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