This is part two of a series covering the Oscar® 2026 race. Each week before the shortlist voting commences on Dec 8th we will preview a short film category and its eligible films. Last week, we covered Animated Shorts.

Documentary is a tough category to cover. It is the most legible and navigable community of the three Academy-awarded shorts categories, with myriad professional organizations playing curatorial roles and a host of mainstream buyers, so there is a lot of guidance for analyzing the awards race. On the other hand, you worry that this elite gatekeeping creates groupthink and forecloses whatever slim dream there might be of meritocratic competition.

Additionally, how and on what grounds that competition should be waged is also up for debate. Here at Short of the Week, we seek out novelty, formal innovation, and engaging storytelling, and put less weight on traditional Documentary values around journalism and activism. We also have a slight distaste for excessive melodrama, so it’s difficult to know what axis critics are responding to with a project.

The pool is also too big to cover in its entirety. This year, 117 shorts have been submitted and approved. Considering runtimes that frequently push the 40-minute Academy limit for short film classification, this might be the longest of the three in pure runtime. Therefore, I will not apologize for this post being a “guided journey” to your own exploration of the category, rather than a definitive endorsement. If your film is given short shrift here, we probably haven’t seen it, and you only have yourself to blame, as less than half of you submitted to Short of the Week! Before we begin, you can browse the 117 contending films in a fresh Shortverse collection.

Click to visit the collection. Use Shortverse filters to isolate films by country or technique, online status, and more.

What You Can Watch Right Now

A healthy 26 of the shorts are streaming at this moment, and several more are coming online this week. As always, you can use Shortverse filters to isolate films ready to watch. Some of these are on paid streaming platforms, but the majority are on YouTube/Vimeo. Naturally, we stand by the films that have graced our pages as official selections:

• Shanti Rides Shotgun – From purveyor of online shorts par excellence, a fun and energetic profile doc with a lot of character
• Voices From the Abyss – A sports/subculture documentary about cliff divers in Mexico, the team shoots and directs the B&W short like a moody, arthouse film.
• We Were The Scenery – Alum Chris Radcliff’s impressive direction blends several modes of storytelling, distinguishing this story of Vietnamese refugees cast as extras in Apocalypse Now.

Still from All The Empty Rooms

The Gatekeeper Favorites

As alluded to up top, Documentary has a host organizations that structure the race. I look to a handful of nominee lists when sizing things up, including Doc NYC’s Shortlist, the Critics’ Choice Awards, the Cinema Eye Honors, and the IDA Awards. These are the films that feature on two or more of the lists and which conveniently include Netflix and HBO’s strongest contenders.

• All the Empty Rooms – Josh Seftel was nominated at the 95th awards for Stranger at the Gate. I expect he’ll be back with this tear-jerking short that photographs the bedrooms of kids lost to school shootings. Netflix acquired the short out of Telluride, and it looks to be their big play this year.
• The Devil is Busy – Alum, Geeta Ghandhir’s documentary short is on HBO right now, but it might not be her best shot at Oscar, as Netflix will be pushing her Sundance-winner, The Perfect Neighbor, in the feature category.
• Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud – The audience-winner at SXSW, this story of a war correspondent killed in Ukraine is HBO’s second big contender.
• We Were the Scenery – The documentary jury winner out of Sundance, you can read my recent review. The artistry brought to bear impresses me more with each watch.
• Their Eyes – It’s not out yet, but this will be Op/Docs’ bet this year. Recipient of a Berlinale premiere earlier in the year, the film is an intriguing look at the overseas workers responsible for tagging and decoding the oceans of footage from self-driving cars.
• Mama Micra – The German studio Fabian&Fred is well-known to us, with several S/W selections to its name. Known primarily for animation, it was a pleasant surprise to see them pop up in this category with an animated doc.

What About the Publishers?

The biggest trend of the past decade in the category has undoubtedly been established media companies teaming up with shorts for free online releases. It’s been a mutually beneficial partnership—while it hasn’t always been great for pure viewership numbers, the publications lend the shorts their prestige and platform, and the films provide comparatively cheap video content for subscribers (along with the hope for awards glory). Some publishers have slipped away (Time Magazine), but new upstarts arrive to take their place (Switchboard Magazine).

• The NyTimes – Covered in the Gatekeeper section, Their Eyes is the Gray Lady’s horse.
• The New Yorker – Sarah Lash, the longtime architect of Condé Nast’s short film strategy has exited the company, but, after breaking through with a win in the Live-Action category last year, the releases are still coming fast and furious: The Ban, Last Days on Lake Trinity, The Reality of Hope, Cashing Out, The Guy Who Got Cut Wrong, and Rovina’s Choice.
• The LA Times – Borrowing from its East Coast rival, the LA Times launched a shorts strand a few years ago and experienced almost immediate success, partnering with Ben Proudfoot and his winning short, The Last Repair Shop, two years ago. This year’s list has star power too with Ondi Timoner’s California fire doc, All the Walls Came Down, as well as Songs of Black Folk, and the gorgeous outdoorsman profile, Arctic Alchemy.
• Switchboard Magazine – The debutante this year, the new shorts-centric online magazine from Celia Aniskovich has three docs in contention and already earned a surprise win with a Critic’s Choice Award for Saving Superman. They also have the guitar craft doc, Freeman Vines, and Rat Rod.

Still from the short doc, Tiger

Festival Darlings

Pretty much all of the qualified films played festivals, and most qualified by winning an Oscar-recognized festival, so this category is necessarily a bit arbitrary. Still, I wanted to highlight films with a lot of selections and a lot of wins from major festivals that we track. These films also distinguish themselves as succeeding at artistic heavyweight fests that are not always kind to more mainstream docs.

• Tiger – This energetic and stylish film covers the ups and downs of a celebrated Native American fashion brand. Coming to Short of the Week in the new year, the film did the American sweep of Sundance, SXSW, and Palm Springs, and is streaming for subscribers on Criterion Channel now.
• perfectly a strangeness – A rare Cannes official selection, this Canadian short stretches documentary definitions.
• Who Loves the Sun – Premiering at Venice (where it won the Best Short Film award), playing TIFF, and nominated for a Canadian Screen Award.
• Southern Brides – After playing Critics’ Week at Cannes, this film almost pulled off a rare double—winning France’s equivalent to Oscar, the César, while being nominated for Spain’s, the Goya.

Does An Animated Documentary Stand a Chance?

Animation has established itself as a core tool within Documentary practice, and despite us adoring many animated short docs over the years, one has never, to the best of my knowledge, won an Oscar. Can that change?

• Mama Micra – Highlighted above as a gatekeeper favorite, this has the pedigree to win.
• Inside, the Valley Sings – The thematic connection between subject and form is strong in this issue piece around solitary confinement.
• The Sacred Society – Not only is it animated, but done so in an unusual way! This sand animation film is about the men who clean and dress bodies for burial in the Jewish tradition.
• Hoops, Hopes & Dreams – Acquired by Andscape, the black-focused publication owned by Disney, this short about MLK Jr., the civil rights movement, and basketball, has been one of the more buzzed-about titles in the trades since its Sundance premiere.

Still from The Flowers Stand, Silently Witnessing

Topical Subjects: Trans Identity and Palestine

Documentary as activism, education, and a vehicle for “impact” is a potent tradition within the form, and a lot of these 117 films seek to draw attention to societal concerns. Voters have been eager to reward these sorts of hard, “issue” docs in the past, too. This year, popular topics are environmental degradation, topics around incarceration, and the impact of the Trump administration’s policies. However, few subjects have spurred political discourse in America over the past year as transgender rights and the war in Palestine. Should an issue doc take home the Oscar, my hunch is it would be one of these.

• The Flowers Stand, Silently Witnessing – If this unusual and essayistic documentary won, I would actually be surprised! But it’s hard to deny that this Scottish-Palestinian co-production has two of the biggest festival wins in this lineup—the overall jury prize at Sundance, and the Best Short Film award at IDFA.
• Children No More: Were and Are Gone – Shot in Tel Aviv, this Israeli doc spotlights the vigils held in the city for children killed in Gaza and the city’s varied reactions to this internal protest against the war. Eminence grise of the Doc world, Sheila Nevins, produces, so it’ll be sure to be on radars.
• I Hope This Email Finds You Well – I’m looking forward to checking this one out. A video collage-slash-diary from a Palestinian climber popular on social media, the description promises something, younger, irreverent, but undoubtedly illuminating.
• Amma’s Pride – Exploring Trans rights in Southern India, the film follows a mother’s unwavering support for her trans daughter as she navigates the trials and tribulations of falling in love, getting married, and fighting for state recognition.
• Tessitura – This year’s winner at Frameline, this short profiles three trans opera singers and contemporizes the history of gender-fluid performances in the art form.
• Hello Stranger – A Canadian short we loved at SXSW 2024, the film brings a style and charisma we appreciate to a profile doc that relates the transition journey of a young trans woman.

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Thanks for following us through another long post! Next week, we tackle the chaotic Live-Action category!