The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is presented for documentary films. The first feature-length documentary awards were given out in 1941 as special honors to Kukan and Target for Tonight. Except for 1946, they have subsequently been awarded annually in a competitive manner.
Best Documentary Feature Film Award Winners
Given below is a list of all the documentary films to have won the award over the years:
| Year | Winner | Producer(s) |
| 1941 | Kukan | Rey Scott |
| 1941 | Target for Tonight | British Ministry of Information |
| 1943 | Desert Victory | British Ministry of Information |
| 1944 | The Fighting Lady | United States Navy |
| 1945 | The True Glory | The Governments of Great Britain and the United States of America |
| 1947 | Design for Death | Sid Rogell, Theron Warth, Richard O. Fleischer |
| 1948 | The Secret Land | Orville O. Dull |
| 1949 | Daybreak in Udi | Crown Film Unit |
| 1950 | The Titan: Story of Michelangelo | Robert Snyder |
| 1951 | Kon-Tiki | Olle Nordemar |
| 1952 | The Sea Around Us | Irwin Allen |
| 1953 | The Living Desert | Walt Disney |
| 1954 | The Vanishing Prairie | Walt Disney |
| 1955 | Helen Keller in Her Story | Nancy Hamilton |
| 1956 | The Silent World | Jacques-Yves Cousteau |
| 1957 | Albert Schweitzer | Jerome Hill |
| 1958 | White Wilderness | Ben Sharpsteen |
| 1959 | Serengeti Shall Not Die | Bernhard Grzimek |
| 1960 | The Horse with the Flying Tail | Larry Lansburgh |
| 1961 | Sky Above and Mud Beneath (Le Ciel et la Boue) | Arthur Cohn, Rene Lafuite |
| 1962 | Black Fox | Louis Clyde Stoumen |
| 1963 | Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World | Robert Hughes |
| 1964 | Jacques-Yves Cousteau's World Without Sun | Jacques-Yves Cousteau |
| 1965 | The Eleanor Roosevelt Story | Sidney Glazier |
| 1966 | The War Game | Peter Watkins |
| 1967 | The Anderson Platoon | Pierre Schoendoerffer |
| 1968 | Journey into Self | Bill McGaw |
| 1969 | Arthur Rubinstein - The Love of Life | Bernard Chevry |
| 1970 | Woodstock | Bob Maurice |
| 1971 | The Hellstrom Chronicle | Walon Green |
| 1972 | Marjoe | Howard Smith, Sarah Kernochan |
| 1973 | The Great American Cowboy | Kieth Merrill |
| 1974 | Hearts and Minds | Peter Davis, Bert Schneider |
| 1975 | The Man Who Skied Down Everest | F. R. Crawley, James Hager, Dale Hartleben |
| 1976 | Harlan County, U.S.A. | Barbara Kopple |
| 1977 | Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids? | John Korty, Dan McCann, Warren L. Lockhart |
| 1978 | Scared Straight! | Arnold Shapiro |
| 1979 | Best Boy | Ira Wohl |
| 1980 | From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China | Murray Lerner |
| 1981 | Genocide | Arnold Schwartzman, Rabbi Marvin Hier |
| 1982 | Just Another Missing Kid | John Zaritsky |
| 1983 | He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' | Emile Ardolino |
| 1984 | The Times of Harvey Milk | Robert Epstein, Richard Schmiechen |
| 1985 | Broken Rainbow | Maria Florio, Victoria Mudd |
| 1986 | Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got | Brigitte Berman |
| 1986 | Down and Out in America | Joseph Feury, Milton Justice |
| 1987 | The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table | Aviva Slesin |
| 1988 | Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie | Marcel Ophuls |
| 1989 | Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt | Robert Epstein, Bill Couturié |
| 1990 | American Dream | Barbara Kopple, Arthur Cohn |
| 1991 | In the Shadow of the Stars | Allie Light, Irving Saraf |
| 1992 | The Panama Deception | Barbara Trent, David Kasper |
| 1993 | I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School | Susan Raymond, Alan Raymond |
| 1994 | Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision | Freida Lee Mock, Terry Sanders |
| 1995 | Anne Frank Remembered | Jon Blair |
| 1996 | When We Were Kings | Leon Gast, David Sonenberg |
| 1997 | The Long Way Home | Rabbi Marvin Hier, Richard Trank |
| 1998 | The Last Days | James Moll, Ken Lipper |
| 1999 | One Day in September | Arthur Cohn, Kevin Macdonald |
| 2000 | Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport | Mark Jonathan Harris, Deborah Oppenheimer |
| 2001 | Murder on a Sunday Morning | Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Denis Poncet |
| 2002 | Bowling for Columbine | Michael Moore, Michael Donovan |
| 2003 | The Fog of War | Errol Morris, Michael Williams |
| 2004 | Born into Brothels | Ross Kauffman, Zana Briski |
| 2005 | March of the Penguins | Luc Jacquet, Yves Darondeau |
| 2006 | An Inconvenient Truth | Davis Guggenheim |
| 2007 | Taxi to the Dark Side | Alex Gibney, Eva Orner |
| 2008 | Man on Wire | James Marsh, Simon Chinn |
| 2009 | The Cove | Louie Psihoyos, Fisher Stevens |
| 2010 | Inside Job | Charles Ferguson, Audrey Marrs |
| 2011 | Undefeated | TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay, Rich Middlemas |
| 2012 | Searching for Sugar Man | Malik Bendjelloul, Simon Chinn |
| 2013 | 20 Feet from Stardom | Morgan Neville, Gil Friesen, Caitrin Rogers |
| 2014 | CitizenFour | Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, Dirk Wilutzky |
| 2015 | Amy | Asif Kapadia, James Gay-Rees |
| 2016 | O.J.: Made in America | Ezra Edelman, Caroline Waterlow |
| 2017 | Icarus | Bryan Fogel, Dan Cogan |
| 2018 | Free Solo | Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Evan Hayes, Shannon Dill |
| 2019 | American Factory | Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert, Jeff Reichert |
| 2020 | My Octopus Teacher | Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed, Craig Foster |
| 2021 | Summer of Soul | Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent, David Dinerstein |
| 2022 | Navalny | Daniel Roher, Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller, Shane Boris |
| 2023 | 20 Days in Mariupol | Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, Raney Aronson-Rath |
FAQs about Oscars
Kukan won the first Best Documentary Feature Film Oscar.
The following films have been nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film 2025: Porcelain War, No Other Land, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Sugarcane, Black Box Diaries.
20 Days in Mariupol won the Best Documentary Feature Film Oscar in 2024.
