Women Dominate Notoriously Unpredictable Doc Category

Raising awareness for any film is always a good bet where the Oscars are concerned. Getting any buzz whatsoever can help raise a film’s profile and thus, maybe help it make some money, or give the director some PR clout to take with him or her the next time around. There doesn’t seem to be any gender push-back in the documentary category where women are concerned. Debra Granik says it best in this Variety story about women directors in the documentary genre, “The gender thing gets removed for me when it comes to the documentary world.  There are completely very different standards. You aren’t dealing with whether someone is beautiful or attractive enough or worthy enough or financeable enough. With all of those impediments to moving forward taken away, it’s freeing.”

Granik directed Winter’s Bone, the film that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career and earned a Best Picture nod,  yet she never got carried into the golden city on the shoulders of giants out of that success. Instead, she languished trying to make the next thing happen. Finally, she turned to making the doc Stray Dog, one of the 100 some odd documentaries contenders headed into the Oscar race. From those riches, only five will be selected. The interesting thing about this year is that there appear to be not only more women than ever, but more high profile docs directed by women than ever.

As Addie Morfoot points out at Variety, there have been 17 women nominated for documentary directing. There have been roughly 11 or so women who have won since 1970 but in the last ten years only one woman has won, Laura Poitras.

Thanks to Marshall Flores for compiling this list of directors attached to the docs being submitted for Documentary feature.  I went by name but I could be totally wrong about which ones are female or male.  First guess at first pass shows a pretty good mix of women, men and women and men working together. You can’t tell me it wouldn’t be great to see the feature film category equally diversified between genders.

The Academy’s choices for the five documentaries are usually, I have found, PR proof. That is, they can’t really be convinced to choose anything, even if — especially if — it’s popular. Popularity doesn’t matter to them. Money doesn’t matter to them. So they’re hard to crack. The rule changes over the past few years have limited the number of films that could qualify for the category. There are many high profile names on this list, like Ethan Hawke, Colin Hanks, Michael Moore, Alex Gibney, Laurie Anderson, etc. Some have made the festival rounds, others haven’t.

Generally, we in the punditry field go for the most well known docs for our predictions, which doesn’t always pay off in the end. Even given that, though, many of the films on my radar are films directed by women.

A Brave Heart, Meru, What Happened, Miss Simone? Prophet’s Prey, India’s Daughter, Brand: A Second Coming, Armor of Light, The Wolfpack and my favorite documentary of the year, Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog were all directed by or co-directed by women.  That’s probably why it’s more important now than ever to have those names attached to press releases put out by the Academy. Just seeing those names alongside their male counterparts is a mini revolution on its own.

“Above and Beyond”, Roberta Grossman
“All Things Must Pass”, Colin Hanks
“Amy”, Asif Kapadia
“The Armor of Light”, Abigail Disney, Kathleen Hughes
“Ballet 422”, Jody Lee Lipes
“Batkid Begins”, Dana Nachman
“Becoming Bulletproof”, Michael Barnett
“Being Evel”, Daniel Junge
“Beltracchi – The Art of Forgery”, Arne Birkenstock
“Best of Enemies”, Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon
“The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution”, Stanley Nelson Jr.
“Bolshoi Babylon”, Nick Read, Mark Franchetti
“Brand: A Second Coming”, Ondi Timoner
“A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story”, Sara Hirsh Bordo
“Call Me Lucky”, Bobcat Goldthwait
“Cartel Land”, Matthew Heineman
“Censored Voices”, Mor Loushy
“Champs”, Bert Marcus
“CodeGirl”, Lesley Chilcott
“Coming Home”, Viko Nikci
“Dark Horse”, Louise Osmond
“Deli Man”, Erik Greenberg Anjou
“Dior and I”, Frédéric Tcheng
“The Diplomat”, David Holbrooke
“(Dis)Honesty – The Truth about Lies”, Yael Melamede
“Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll”, John Pirozzi
“Dreamcatcher”, Kim Longinotto
“dream/killer”, Andrew Jenks
“Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon”, Douglas Tirola
“Eating Happiness”, Genlin
“Every Last Child”, Tom Roberts
“Evidence of Harm”, Randall Moore
“Farewell to Hollywood”, Henry Corra, Regina Nicholson
“Finders Keepers”, Bryan Carberry, J. Clay Tweel
“The Forecaster”, Marcus Vetter, Karin Steinberger
“Frame by Frame”, Alexandria Bombach, Mo Scarpelli
“Gardeners of Eden”, Anneliese Vandenberg, Austin Peck
“A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile”, Sophie Deraspe
“Godspeed: The Story of Page Jones”, Luann Barry
“Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”, Alex Gibney
“He Named Me Malala”, Davis Guggenheim
“Heart of a Dog”, Laurie Anderson
“Hitchcock/Truffaut”, Kent Jones
“How to Change the World”, Jerry Rothwell
“Human”, Yann Arthus-Bertrand
“The Hunting Ground”, Kirby Dick
“I Am Chris Farley”, Brent Hodge, Derik Murray
“In Jackson Heights”, Frederick Wiseman
“In My Father’s House”, Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern
“India’s Daughter”, Leslee Udwin
“Ingrid Bergman – In Her Own Words”, Stig Björkman
“Iraqi Odyssey”, Samir
“Iris”, Albert Maysles
“Janis: Little Girl Blue”, Amy J. Berg
“Karski & the Lords of Humanity”, Slawomir Grunberg
“Killing Them Safely”, Nick Berardini
“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”, Brett Morgen
“Lambert & Stamp”, James D. Cooper
“A Lego Brickumentary”, Daniel Junge, Kief Davidson
“Listen to Me Marlon”, Stevan Riley
“Live from New York!”, Bao Nguyen
“The Look of Silence”, Joshua Oppenheimer
“Meet the Patels”, Ravi Patel, Geeta Patel
“Meru”, Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
“The Mind of Mark DeFriest”, Gabriel London
“Misery Loves Comedy”, Kevin Pollak
“Monkey Kingdom”, Mark Linfield, Alastair Fothergill
“A Murder in the Park”, Christopher S. Rech
“My Italian Secret”, Oren Jacoby
“My Voice, My Life”, Ruby Yang
“1971”, Johanna Hamilton
“Of Men and War”, Laurent Bécue-Renard
“One Cut, One Life”, Ed Pincus, Lucia Small
“Only the Dead See the End of War”, Bill Guttentag, Michael Ware
“The Outrageous Sophie Tucker”, William Gazecki
“Peace Officer”, Brad Barber, Scott Christopherson
“The Pearl Button”, Patricio Guzmán
“Pink & Blue: Colors of Hereditary Cancer”, Alan M. Blassberg
“Poached”, Timothy Wheeler
“Polyfaces”, Isaebella Doherty & Lisa Heenan
“The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers”, Richard Trank
“Prophet’s Prey”, Amy J. Berg
“Racing Extinction”, Louie Psihoyos
“The Resurrection of Jake the Snake”, Steve Yu
“Ride the Thunder – A Vietnam War Story of Victory & Betrayal”, Fred Koster
“Rosenwald”, Aviva Kempner
“The Russian Woodpecker”, Chad Gracia
“Searching for Home: Coming Back from War”, Eric Christiansen
“Seeds of Time”, Sandy McLeod
“Sembene!”, Samba Gadjigo, Jason Silverman
“The Seven Five”, Tiller Russell
“Seymour: An Introduction”, Ethan Hawke
“Sherpa”, Jennifer Peedom
“A Sinner in Mecca”, Parvez Sharma
“Something Better to Come”, Hanna Polak
“Song from the Forest”, Michael Obert
“Song of Lahore”, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, Andy Schocken
“Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine”, Alex Gibney
“Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans”, Gabriel Clarke, John McKenna
“Stray Dog”, Debra Granik
“Sunshine Superman”, Marah Strauch
“Sweet Micky for President”, Ben Patterson
“Tab Hunter Confidential”, Jeffrey Schwarz
“The Tainted Veil”, Ovidio Salazar, Nahia Al Fahad, Mazen al Khayrat’s
“Tap World”, Dean Hargrove
“(T)error”, David Felix Sutcliffe, Lyric R. Cabral
“Thao’s Library”, Elizabeth Van Meter
“Those Who Feel the Fire Burning”, Morgan Knibbe
“3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets”, Marc Silver
“The Touch of an Angel”, Marek Tomasz Pawlowski
“TransFatty Lives”, Patrick O’Brien
“The True Cost”, Andrew Morgan
“Twinsters”, Samantha Futerman, Ryan Miyamoto
“Very Semi-Serious: A Partially Thorough Portrait of New Yorker Cartoonists”, Leah Wolchok
“The Wanted 18”, Amer Shomali, Paul Cowan
“We Are Many”, Amir Amirani
“We Come as Friends”, Hubert Sauper
“The Neorealism: We Were Not Just Bicycle Thieves. ”, Carlo Lizzani, Gianni Bozzacchi
“Welcome to Leith”, Michael Beach Nichols, Christopher K. Walker
“What Happened, Miss Simone?”, Liz Garbus
“What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy”, David Evans
“Where to Invade Next”, Michael Moore
“Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom”, Evgeny Afineevsky
“The Wolfpack”, Crystal Moselle