Netflix Acquires Two Oscar-Contending Documentary Shorts
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- Netflix acquired two documentary shorts ahead of awards season: "an open field," winner of Best Short Documentary at the 2025 IDFA, and "One Last Order," which earned Best Documentary and the Audience Award at the 2026 Aspen Shortsfest plus honors at Miami and Nantucket festivals.
- "an open field," directed by Teboho Edkins, centers on the Ethiopian villagers who guarded the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 (a 2019 Boeing 737 MAX 8 disaster that killed all 157 aboard); Edkins's brother Max Thabiso Edkins was among the victims, and the film contrasts "Boeing's widely criticized response" with the community's lasting compassion.
- "One Last Order," directed by Lauren DeFilippo and Sam Soko, captures Sighle Williams's final shift after 37 years at Mac's Drive-Thru in Gainesville, FL, where the owner pledged every dollar earned that day to her — prompting cars to wrap around the block and three-hour waits.
- Netflix has won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short the past two years — for "All the Empty Rooms" (2026) and "The Only Girl in the Orchestra" (2025) — making the new double acquisition a direct bid for a third consecutive statuette.
- The streamer separately picked up "The Baddest Speechwriter of All" out of Sundance, co-directed by two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot and Stephen Curry, which follows Clarence B. Jones, the adviser who helped craft Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.
Why it matters: Netflix has owned the Best Documentary Short Oscar two years running, and this double acquisition — explicitly framed for contention — targets a three-peat that would cement the streamer's dominance in a category most distributors overlook. The "an open field" pickup is particularly notable: it puts a human, community-centered account of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 Ethiopian Airlines disaster in front of a global Netflix audience at a moment when the company's aviation safety record remains under legal scrutiny.
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