Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film


This is a list of films by year that have received an Academy Award together with the other nominations for best documentary short film. Following the Academy's practice, the year listed for each film is the year of release: the awards are announced and presented early in the following year. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive. Fifteen films are shortlisted before nominations are announced.

Rules and eligibility

Per the recent rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a Short Subject Documentary is defined as a nonfiction motion picture "dealing creatively with cultural, artistic, historical, social, scientific, economic or other subjects". It may be photographed in actual occurrence, or may employ partial reenactment, stock footage, stills, animation, stop-motion or other techniques, as long as the emphasis is on fact, and not on fiction. It must have a run time of no more than 40 minutes and released during a special eligibility period which may vary from year to year, but generally begins the month of October of the prior year and ends in September of the award year. The documentary's release must also occur within two years of the film's completion, and there are also rules governing the formatting of audio and video used to produce and exhibit the picture.
In addition, to be eligible the film must meet one of the following criteria:
  • complete a commercial showing of at least 7 days in either Los Angeles County, California or anywhere in New York City before being released to other non-theatrical venues such as DVD or TV; or
  • regardless of any public exhibition or nontheatrical release the film must have won a qualifying award at a competitive film festival, as specified by the Academy; or
  • win a Gold, Silver or Bronze Medal award in the Documentary category of the Academy's Student Academy Award Competition.
The film must run daily for seven days, open to the public for paid admission, and must be advertised in one of the city's major circulars during its run, with screening times included. Additionally, the film must be shown at least once during every day of its qualifying run. Unlike the Best Documentary Feature award, whose rules mandate at least one screening starting between noon and 10 pm local time on each day of the qualifying run, there is no restriction on the start time of any screening. The film must have narration or dialogue primarily in English or with English subtitles, and must be the whole of an original work. Partial edits from larger works and episodes from serialized films are not eligible.
Eligibility rules for prior years may have differed from these.

Nomination process

The Documentary Branch of the Academy first votes to select ten pictures for preliminary nomination, after which a second round of balloting is conducted to select the five documentary nominees. The entire Academy membership will then vote for one of these five for the Oscar. A maximum of two people involved with the production of the documentary may be nominated for the award, one of whom must be the film's credited director. One producer may also be nominated, but if more than one non-director producer is credited the Academy Documentary Branch will vet the producers to select the one they believe was most involved in the creation of the film.

Winners and nominees

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple wins

Individuals with multiple wins

;3 wins
;2 wins
;4 wins
;3 wins
  • Walt Disney Productions

    Individuals with multiple nominations

;9 nominations
  • Charles Guggenheim
;4 nominations
;3 nominations
;2 nominations