(Left to right, top to bottom): Queendom, Sugarcane, Union, and Black Box Diaries.
The Oscar Shortlists for ten categories, including documentary and shorts, were released on December 17 before the March 2, 2025, Academy Awards ceremony. We are excited to have four IDA Enterprise Grantees shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature at the 2025 Oscars.
Congratulations to the 2022 IDA Enterprise Grantees Black Box Diaries, Queendom, Sugarcane, and 2020 and 2022 IDA Enterprise Grantee Union.
Fifteen films will advance in the Documentary Feature Film category for the 97th Academy Awards—169 films were eligible in the category. Members of the Documentary Branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.
IDA recently hosted the 40th Annual IDA Documentary Awards. Seven of the ten nominated films for IDA’s Best Feature Documentary category are shortlisted for the Oscars. Eleven of the fifteen Oscar-shortlisted films participated in the IDA FallDocs screening series.
Here are the films listed in alphabetical order by title:
The Bibi Files
Black Box Diaries
Dahomey
Daughters
Eno
Frida
Hollywoodgate
No Other Land
Porcelain War
Queendom
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Sugarcane
Union
Will & Harper
Congratulations also go out to Instruments of a Beating Heart, the IDA Documentary Award winner for Best Short Documentary. The film has been selected for the Oscars 2025 Shortlist under Documentary Short Film. Ema Ryan Yamazaki, the director of Instruments of a Beating Heart, is also the Editor of Black Box Diaries.
Fifteen films will advance in the Documentary Short Film category for the 97th Academy Awards—104 films qualified in the category.
Congratulations to all!