The 2021 Oscar nominations for Best Documentary are eclectic, both in the themes they address and in the style with which they address them. There is an overwhelming exposure of a corrupt government. There is an interesting story about learning from an octopus. A film is a gentle comedy about the elderly that is also kind of a spy thriller. One is a stimulating history of the disability activist movement. And one is an impressive personal story of a family that strives to stay together, even in the face of endless bureaucratic incarceration and exhaustion.
Taken collectively, the nominees show how non-fiction film production methods have become richly diverse. Truth is always stranger than fiction, but filmmakers who transform the truth in cinema rely on art and imagination to engage, surprise and delight audiences.
Here is a guide to the five Oscar nominees for Best Documentary in 2021 and how you can watch them.
Collective
In 2015, a fire at a nightclub in Bucharest, Romania, killed 27 people – and in the following weeks, another 37, the result of shockingly inadequate hospital conditions that led to infections in the survivors. Collective, partly under the name of nightclub, is an observational documentary that outlines the conditions and exposes the huge deficiencies in Romania’s healthcare system that have directly led to this additional loss of life. Documentary filmmaker Alexander Nanau captures the lies that government officials told during the aftermath of the fire; their actions ended up resulting in the fall of the government, although it was short-lived.
Collective it unfolds like a cold and slow train disaster, a study on how a government spends its citizens to accept conditions that would be preventable were it not for greed and corruption. In its second half, the film focuses on a new, young health minister – Vlad Voiculescu, who is trying to affect change – while showing the difficult battle and the eventual futility of his struggle.
How to watch: Collective is streaming on Hulu and available to rent or buy digitally on platforms like iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu.
Crip Camp
Crip Camp it starts out as a film about a place: Camp Jened, an almost magical-looking “summer camp for the physically challenged” by hippies, as the film’s co-director (and Jened’s former camper) Jim Lebrecht explains at the beginning. It soon becomes the chronicle of a movement unleashed by young people whose lives have been changed by the time they spent in that place.
Crip Camp shows how the vision of young Jened participants at the camp – that the world could be open to them too – led them to become activists and community organizers. The film is exciting and inspiring, a story of people working together in the midst of hardship and opposition to change the world.
How to watch: Crip Camp is streaming on Netflix.
The mole agent
You could call The mole agent a spy movie, but it’s unusual – and unusually moving, too. Documentary filmmaker Maite Alberdi lets us into a subterfuge, as Sergio, an older Chilean, is “cast” as a new resident of the nursing home by Detective Romulo, who was hired to investigate the facility.
Sergio’s job is to infiltrate the house on behalf of Rômulo’s client and check if the client’s mother is being abused; meanwhile, the documentary filmmakers follow Sergio and observe the residents of the house, who do not know the whole truth about why Sergio is there. The result is a sweet and surprising film, an interesting mix of fact and fiction that also explores the lives, desires and desires of older people.
How to watch: The mole agent is broadcasting on Hulu. It is also available for rental or digital purchase on platforms such as iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu.
My octopus teacher
Craig Foster was an exhausted filmmaker in 2010 when he found an unlikely remedy for his tiredness: snorkeling in an underwater algae forest near Cape Town, South Africa. Under water, he started to feel alive again as he watched animals and plants. He started to bring his cameras to film them. And then he met an octopus.
At the My octopus teacher, Foster tells his story to directors Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed, narrating his extraordinary experience against the background of the footage he shot below the reef. He follows the octopus for a year and makes a kind of friendship with him, watching as he is attacked by predators, feeding on wild animals and approaching him with curiosity. In the end, she mates, lays eggs and dies – a natural process – but in her life, Foster finds meaning and understanding of our fragility as a creature on Earth. It is a simple film, but for underwater enthusiasts it is special.
How to watch: My octopus teacher is streaming on Netflix.
Time
Touching and passionate, Time it is the chronicle of a deferred love and the impulse to continue that hope can provide. The film, which gave Garrett Bradley the directorial award at Sundance, follows Fox Rich, a woman who has spent 21 years doggedly calling for her husband Rob to be released from prison.
Since 1997, Rob has served a 60-year prison sentence for a crime he committed as a young man, in which he and Fox were involved. In the meantime, she is raising her six children and becoming a strong advocate for change in her community – all the while making home videos that together feel like a diary of your pain and endurance. Time details his struggle, demonstrating how mass incarceration persistently separates black families in America, as well as bureaucracy and centuries of officialism narratives hide the truth and the pain of these separations.
How to watch: Time is broadcasting on Amazon Prime.
O 2021 Oscars will air live on ABC Los Angeles on Sunday, April 25.