First animated film to be Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary Feature

Writer/director Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee (Denmark/France/Norway/Sweden, 2021) scored a Best Animated Feature Film nomination alongside another for Best Documentary Feature when the shortlist for the 94th Academy Awards were announced on 8 February 2022. Flee’s third nomination of the year was for Best International Feature Film. No movie in the history of the Academy Awards has been nominated for animation, documentary and international awards simultaneously.

Explaining the film’s unique cocktail of Oscar nods, Steve McIntosh, the BBC’s entertainment reporter, said: “This unusual triptych is due to the nature of the movie – most documentaries are, by their nature, not animated. However, it proved to be a helpful treatment for Flee, which follows the story of a gay Afghan refugee. Animating meant his real identity could be kept concealed, and also solved the problem of how to depict events from his past.”

Honeyland (North Macedonia, 2019) and Collective (Romania/Luxembourg, 2019) were previously nominated for Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film at the 92nd and 93rd Academy Awards (2019 and 2020), respectively, while Waltz with Bashir (Germany/France/Israel, 2008) was eligible for the documentary, international and animation awards in 2009 but was only recognised for Best International Feature Film (then known as Best Foreign Language Film).