Oscar Nominations: Documentaries

The nominations were announced for the Oscars yesterday. I’ve been seeing fewer feature films lately, but I do manage to catch more documentaries. Of the five nominees, I’ve only seen two so far, but I plan to try to see all of them if I can before the Academy Awards are handed out on February 25.

The nominees for Best Documentary are:

It’s nice to see that documentary film is serving some of its most important purposes in these films: to bear witness, and to kick us in the conscience. It’s interesting to note that two films deal with Christianity (both deal with forms of toxic Christianity, in my opinion), two deal with the Iraq war, and one with a global crisis. No uplifting films, this year, sadly. Times are tough.

If you’ve seen any of these, what did you think? Who’s your bet to win? My money is on Al Gore’s sobering PowerPoint presentation on climate change. Not the most creatively filmed, but certainly the most urgent, and it managed to present information in an entertaining and mostly guilt-free way that made me want to make some changes to the way I live.

UPDATE: In a bit of cross-blog linkery, I’ve listed the losers in this category for the past few years over at Runner-Up! Check ’em out!