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 |
| 2024 | No Other Land | Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor |
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.
A. No Other Land won the Best Documentary Feature Film Oscar in 2025.
