The Conversation: 2015 Oscar Predix: Far From Undercover…CitizenFour Will Win Best Documentary

The Nominations: Best Documentary Film
CitizenFour
Finding Vivian Maier
Last Days In Vietnam
The Salt Of The Earth
Virunga

Shoulda Been a Contender: “The Overnighters”
For some of us, Jesse Moss’s intimately textured portrait of North Dakota’s oil-fueled modern boom town was one of the very best features of the year, non-fiction or not. To have it completely disregarded by the Academy seems almost shameful.

Should Win: “CitizenFour”
Being that The Overnighters isn’t an option, Laura Poitras deserves to pocket a statue not only for taking a slow burn chamber piece interview and molding it into a historic political thriller, but for risking her own freedom in the process and forging the way for the future of cinematic journalism.

Could Win: “Virunga”
Backed by their deep-pocketed distributor, Netflix, and armed with a cache of awards collected on the festival circuit, Orlando von Einsiedel’s exposé of the environmental struggle underway within Congo’s Virunga National Park is sleek, incisive, and certainly deserves all the attention its received.

Will Win: “CitizenFour”
It’s no secret that this film will be remembered more for its cinematic record of a watershed moment in history than for the filmmaking in and of itself, yet that’s not to say that CitizenFour doesn’t deserve recognition for shining light on a slew of terrifying governmental transgressions and highlighting the importance of journalistic cinema in the process. It cleaned up at the Cinema Eye Honors Awards and was a winner at the BAFTA, Directors Guild of America, Gotham Awards, Best Feature at the International Documentary Association, with a likely a win tomorrow at the Independent Spirit Awards, the round is paved in gold for Poitras.