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Last year, the Academy documentary branch had to grapple with a record 170 documentary feature submissions for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. This year, it’s not so bad: only 166 were entered. The short list of 15 will be announced, along with eight others for the first time on a single date this year: December 17.

All year, branch members have been getting lists of secure online screeners available to watch on the Academy website, increasing in volume until last month, when they received a batch of 77, with more to come. It’s a burden to watch them all, so the ones with the most attention move to the top of the much-watch list. Give the advantage to early box office hits that were made available in the summer such as “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” “Rbg,” and “Three Identical Strangers,” as well as September’s list including critically hailed “Dark Money,...

Last year, the Academy documentary branch had to grapple with a record 170 documentary feature submissions for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. This year, it’s not so bad: only 166 were entered. The short list of 15 will be announced, along with eight others for the first time on a single date this year: December 17.

All year, branch members have been getting lists of secure online screeners available to watch on the Academy website, increasing in volume until last month, when they received a batch of 77, with more to come. It’s a burden to watch them all, so the ones with the most attention move to the top of the much-watch list. Give the advantage to early box office hits that were made available in the summer such as “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” “Rbg,” and “Three Identical Strangers,” as well as September’s list including critically hailed “Dark Money,...

A whopping 166 documentary features have been submitted to the academy for consideration at the 2019 Oscars. That is down by four from last year’s record 170 submissions. Among these contenders are all of the highest grossing documentaries of the year including “Free Solo,” “Rbg” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

To winnow the entries down to the 15 semi-finalists that will be announced on December 17, the academy is sending monthly packages of the newly eligible documentary feature screeners to all 400 or so members of the documentary branch. While all members are encouraged to watch as many of these as they can, one-fifth of the voters are assigned each title. In late November, each branch member will submit a preferential ballot listing their top 15 choices.

See 2019 Oscars: Foreign-language film entries from A (Afghanistan) to Y (Yemen)

All of these ballots will be collated to determine the 15 semi-finalists. Branch members will then be...

In a year that has seen multiple documentaries find mainstream success, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the list of 166 docs that have been submitted for Oscar consideration this year.

Among the films on the list are Michael Moore’s anti-Trump polemic “Fahrenheit 11/9,” as well as CNN Films’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg biography “Rbg” and Focus’ Mister Rogers retrospective “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

Other films considered frontrunners include “Three Identical Strangers,” the wild story of triplets who were separated at birth by a bizarre experiment, “Free Solo,” which documents the first ever attempt to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan without any climbing gear, and “Dark Money,” an investigative report into the influence of billionaires on American democracy through the lens of a Montana congressional race.

Also Read: Sorry, Oscar Documentary Voters: Your Workload Just Doubled

The contender field is slightly less than last year’s record field of 170 but does include,...

When criminals wear masks, it lends them a stylized, otherworldly quality. Since we can’t see their faces, we tend to think of their identity as more abstract. The movies have always understood this, and so have the leaders of terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan or Al Qaeda, who project a hooded-horror iconography — let’s call it a dark kind of showbiz — to express the fearsome power of their ideologies. After 9/11, the black facial scarves worn by members of Al Qaeda in the group’s widely seen videos served the purpose of concealing who they were, but they were also a way of creating a warning to the West. The warning said: We’re not just your enemy — we’re a supervillain.

Or maybe, in their own eyes, a superhero.

The startling documentary “Path of Blood” is comprised almost entirely of home-movie video footage of Islamic jihadists in Saudi Arabia,...

Path of Blood Film Trailer – Coming Soon from Path of Blood on Vimeo. Fearlessly embarking on a daring mission, in an effort to spark and maintain a revolution in their country to battle, and ultimately defeat, their enemy, has long driven conflict between opposing societies. That’s certainly been the case between the Western world […]

The post Interview: Jonathan Hacker Talks Path of Blood (Exclusive) appeared first on Shockya.com.

Review by Peter BelsitoA documentary created using footage from al-Qaeda is a macabre snapshot of religious fanaticism shows an uncomfortable humanity behind inhumane acts.

Assembled from footage shot by al-Qaeda cells and local security services in Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2009, Jonathan Hacker’s documentary has been criticised for humanizing terrorists. It does, but that in no way lessens their monstrousness. If anything it intensifies it.

The affability and ineptitude of the training camps is shocking. One minute the terrorists are doing boy like wheelbarrow races in the desert and larking about as they paint camouflage markings on a truck (“It looks more like a cow!”). The next they are bombing civilians and, in a sequence that is thankfully reduced to audio, murdering an American hostage.

The lasting impression is not of radicalised robots, but of stupid, naive young men who are coerced all too easily into evil. The need to...