Contenders Documentary Kicks Off Today With 8 Nonfiction Films In The Awards-Season Race

deadline.com:

In some years, a single film seemingly dashes unimpeded to the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature — Summer of Soul in 2022, for instance, or Citizenfour in 2015.

This is not one of those years. In a notably wide-open race, 169 feature documentaries have qualified for Academy Awards consideration in 2024, all vying for a place on the shortlist, the key step before moving on to a nomination.

There are some favorites, of course, including Sugarcane, directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie. The film from National Geographic is among the documentaries we’re spotlighting today at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary awards-season event, which gets underway at 9 a.m.

PT and serves as an essential guide to navigating a diverse and dynamic field of Academy Award hopefuls. Sugarcane is both timely and timeless — a story of family reconciliation set in the context of the abusive Indian Residential School system that operated in Canada and the U.S.