Celebrity-Focused Docs Fall Short in the Awards Race: “A Giant F***-You to Netflix”

The International Documentary Association (IDA), Cinema Eye Honors and Gotham Awards have delivered their verdicts on the top feature docs of the year. And, for the streamers, it’s a grim result. 

Absent from the Gothams’ doc feature selections, the Cinema Eye’s top feature and director noms and the IDA’s 17-title shortlist are titles from Netflix, Prime Video and Apple TV+.

The lists read, in the words of one leading awards publicist, “like a giant fuck-you to Netflix.” And with Oscar campaigning in high gear, they pose the question: Is a streamer backlash brewing?

The Gotham noms are mostly non-U.S. productions, including Kino Lorber’s Four Daughters, PBS’ 20 Days in Mariupol and Cinema Guild’s Our Body. Likewise, the IDA’s shortlisted titles included Morocco’s The Mother of All Lies, Colombia’s Anhell69, South African artist portrait Milisuthando, the CBC-backed Twice Colonized and the BBC-backed, India-set fishing doc Against the Tide. 

The IDA lists are drawn from independent committees comprising 280 filmmakers, curators, critics and industry experts. “We had really robust debates among the panelists,” says Ken Ikeda, the IDA’s interim executive director. “Our sense is that we did not get as strong an intake of major studio films this year. It was not an explicit intention of the group [to exclude the streamers], but I think they were very clear that, even with the opportunity to advance several more films to the shortlist, they opted not to.”

Streamers have dominated the doc race in recent years. In March, HBO Max and now-defunct CNN+’s Navalny won the Oscar for doc feature. The previous year, Hulu and Disney+ had Questlove’s Summer of Soul. Netflix, meanwhile, scored back-to-back wins in 2020 and 2021 with American Factory and My Octopus Teacher, respectively. The streamer has earned at least one doc Oscar nom every year since its first a decade ago with Jehane Noujaim’s The Square. 

But this year, Netflix parted ways with its long-serving head of documentaries, Lisa Nishimura, in a March reorg. A huge figure in the doc space, she’s been credited with building Netflix’s nonfiction brand from the ground up. Her departure, after 16 years, was both a shock and a statement. 

The streamer also has significantly cut back on its spending for both acquisitions and commissions. As part of a broader retrenchment, it announced plans this month to halve the overall number of original films it produces.

Crucially, Netflix’s recent run of rejection may represent blowback from an increasingly contentious documentary trend: a shift by the big streamers away from serious, current affairs-focused films in favor of vanidocs — celebrity-focused productions in which the subjects, not the filmmakers, are controlling the narrative. 

Examples include docuseries like Prime Video’s Rooney, about soccer superstar Wayne Rooney; Apple TV+’s The Super Models, created under the gaze of Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista; and Disney+’s Stan Lee, a portrait of the comic icon co-produced by Marvel and the firm that owns the rights to Lee’s likeness and IP.

But by far the biggest culprit has been Netflix. While the streamer scored its earliest Oscar recognition with hard-hitting current affairs films The White Helmets, Virunga, The Edge of Democracy and Winter on Fire, the past 24 months have seen a marked change in tone. The docuseries Robbie Williams was co-produced with the star’s own indie shingle, RPW Productions. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone both served as EPs on their respective portraits, the three-parter Arnold and feature doc Sly. And then there’s Beckham, a four-part vanidoc on the soccer icon and his pop star wife that drew considerable criticism for both its soft touch and historical elasticity.

The result has been a snowballing effect. Stars increasingly recognize that they can secure respected documentarians — like Oscar winners Roger Ross Williams and Barbara Kopple (The Super Models) or Fisher Stevens (Beckham) — to produce work that they’ll have a heavy hand in the making of, if not complete creative control. Streamers, meanwhile, see the ratings on such fluff and are hungry for more. And few documentarians are in a position — either financially or in stature — to turn down the profile and paycheck that comes with such work. 

In the war for the unvarnished truth, documentarians are losing. Is it any wonder they might try to send a message? And, of course, if this is a statement from the doc community, might it be one echoed by the Academy’s documentary branch when it announces its own documentary feature shortlist on Dec. 21? 

This story first appeared in the Nov. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.