Top 5 Best Documentary Oscar 2014 Nominations

March 2nd will be announced the winners of the Oscars 2014. Learn and rate Cineblog with all the candidates for the Best Documentary category. The Oscar night is coming and waiting for the March 2 ads Academy winners of the Academy Awards in 2014 , we propose a new poll on the categories in contention.

After having proposed the nominees for best set design , costumes , makeup , photography , sound , sound editor , soundtrack , original song , special effects . original screenplay , adapted screenplay , editing , animated short , live-action short film , actress supporting role , actress ,  supporting actor and actor , today it is the turn of the five nominees for the Best Documentary .

This year, vying for the best doc of the year are The Act of Killing Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn, Cutie and the Boxer Zachary Heinzerling, Dirty Wars by Richard Rowley, The Square of Jehane Noujaim and 20 Feet from Stardom Morgan Neville.

Below you will find the poll in which you can express your preference category and to follow videos and documentaries for more about the candidates.

Top 5 Best Documentary Oscar 2014 Nominations List 


The Act of Killing

- The directors Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn have already co-directed the documentary The Globalisation Tapes and "The Act of Killing" were supported by a third filmmaker who preferred to remain anonymous.

- The film, released in Italian cinemas on October 2013, is a co-production Denmark / UK / Norway which has already received a BAFTA .

The synopsis:

Anwar Congo and his friends as they danced in a musical cabaret, they have brought their hands like in a gangster film noir and galloped in the grasslands screaming like cowboys. Their foray into film was celebrated by the media and debated on TV, even if Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers.

Medan, Indonesia. When the Indonesian government was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted by small gangster addicted to ticket touting of cinema tickets to leaders of the death squads. In less than a year have helped the military to kill more than one million suspected Communists, members of the Chinese community residing in Indonesia and other intellectuals. As a responsible leader of the death squad operating in his city of residence, Anwar has killed hundreds of people with their own hands. Today, Anwar is considered one of the founding fathers of the nation and an honorary member of a paramilitary organization grew as the seed of death squads.

This organization has become so powerful that one of its affiliates are counted even government ministers, its members are so feared by being able to boast with pride of being responsible for corruption, intimidation and violence. In The Act of Killing Anwar and his friends have agreed to tell the story of their killings. However you are not limited to providing evidence for the documentary. They decided to be the protagonists of a film that was as similar as possible to those who have loved when they worked as a ticket desk at the cinema. We took the opportunity to portray the moment when a regime based on crimes against humanity and that has never been tried for such atrocities, made his entrance intentional in history.

We convinced Anwar and his friends to develop the story of the film according to their tastes, adapting them to their favorite genres: gangsters, westerns and musicals. They wrote the script, have interpreted themselves and have impersonated their victims. Their work has traveled to film-making in parallel with the dramatic arc of the film itself. The set has become the safe space where we pressed Anwar and his friends so that you began to understand that what they did was wrong. Some players have begun to repent of their actions. Others were afraid of the reactions that the film would have generated among the public. The younger members of the group thought Pancasila instead of the film, showing the terrifying violence of the protagonists, is an excellent tool for maintaining order and power. Differences increased with increasing the dramatic tension of the film.

The most dramatic consequences he lived Anwar. The process of making the film has become a cathartic journey into the depths of his unconscious emotions, trasformatesi by arrogant pride, for the first time in his life, deep remorse for the atrocities committed.

The Act of Killing is a representation of a degeneration. From a moral imagination to a moral catastrophe


Cutie and the Boxer

- The director Zachary Heinzerling for this documentary was premiered at the Directors Guild of America Awards and the Sundance Film Festival .

- The film's soundtrack includes several songs by Yasuaki Shimizu & Saxophonettes .

The synopsis:

Cutie and the Boxer is a documentary that tells the unique love story between Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, married two Japanese artists living in New York. Linked by years of silent resentment, disappointment and lost job opportunities, are locked in a relationship of love and mutual dependence.

The film begins in Brooklyn where the couple struggling to manage an incipient poverty. By examining the complicated history of each artist, the film reveals the roots of their relationship. Ushio Shinohara after achieving fame in postwar Japan for his paintings "Boxing" avant-garde, in 1969 he leaves for New York in search of international recognition. Three years later, at the age of 19 years, Noriko leaves Japan to study art in New York is still fascinated by Ushio, so as to abandon his education and support dela his wealthy family to become the wife of a husband and undisciplined, a year later, the mother of their son Alex.

Their 40 years of marriage have left Ushio and Noriko into separate spaces. At 80 years Ushio continues to pursue obsessively painting and sculpture and the success of half a century before. Fresh from a recent show in which he has not sold any work, it has become more and more desperate trying to convey his legacy in the last years of his life. Meanwhile, Noriko, 59, is finally out on her own. With a renewed passion for art is adept in the picture with his series "Cutie" which viscerally and humorously portrays her challenging past with Ushio. Through "Cutie" she channeling the unpleasant aspects of his life in a body of paintings and drawings immersed in an explosion of colors representing a woman of power, sensuality and fantasy that acts as a counterweight to the reality of Ushio. The film brings in a group exhibition to offer both artists, which provided the opportunity to Noriko long-awaited show of his new work to the public. The two worked together to prepare for installation.

Through today's scenes of Cinema Verite, film footage and animated sequences of drawings by Noriko, the documentary takes us to realize that the large difference in the art and personality of Shinohara are the basis for a deep symbiosis and challenging, rooted in a spirit creative life. Inside Cutie and the Boxer is a film that reveals universal truths about the painful life of the artist and the creative process as it intersects with reality, identity and marriage.


Dirty Wars

- The filmmaker Rick Rowley is on his first Oscar nomination and this documentary has already been awarded at the Sundance Film Festival .

The synopsis:

Dirty Wars follows investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill , author of the international bestseller "Blackwater", in the heart of the U.S. secret wars, from Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond.

Part political thriller and part detective story, Dirty Wars is a fascinating journey into one of the most important stories of our time and undervalued.

What starts as the ratio of a U.S. night raid gone terribly wrong in a remote corner of Afghanistan, quickly turns to a global survey of the can and secret Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

When Scahill dig deeper into the activities of JSOC , he finds himself in a world of covert operations carried out unknown to the public all over the world by men who do not exist on paper and should never appear before Congress. In military parlance, the JSOC teams "find, arrange and finish" their goals, which are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits to the "Kill List," including U.S. citizens.

Involved in the stories and lives of the people he meets along the way, Scahill is forced to confront the painful consequences of a war out of control, as well as its role as a journalist.

In the film we meet two parallel types of characters.

CIA agents, operators, special forces, military generals and warlords backed by the United States and who populate the dark side of American wars are taken and recorded, some for the first time.

We can also see and hear direct testimony from survivors of night raids and drone attacks, including the family of the first American citizen to be sentenced elimination and hunted by his own government.

Dirty Wars takes viewers in remote corners of the globe to discover and why wars are fought, offering a behind-the-scenes at high risk of an investigation that has left disturbing questions about freedom and democracy, war and justice.


The Square

- The Egyptian filmmaker Jehane Noujaim for this documentary has already received by Amnesty International a special prize at the Berlin Film Festival and was awarded the Directors Guild of America Awards .

- The film, released in Italian cinemas on February 20, 2014, was the first project funded through the website Kickstarter to be nominated for an Oscar.

The synopsis:

The Egyptian revolution has been a continuous roller coaster for all of the last two and a half years. Through the news you could only catch a glimpse of the bloodiest battles, an election, or a million men marching. At the beginning of July 2013 we have witnessed the deposition of the second president in three years.

The Square (the square) is an immersive experience that draws the viewer to the bottom of the intense emotional drama and the stories of many people who have been in the news. And 'the inspiring story of young citizens claiming their rights by challenging the forces of all kinds, in a struggle to create a more just society. From colorful sit-in protest in the clashes with the police, the eye Jehane Noujaim silent while in fact follows the five protagonists themselves testify, camera in hand, Utopias and the atrocities of Tahrir Square.


20 Feet from Stardom

- The director Morgan Neville , on his first Oscar nomination, has already received an award for best editing by ' American Cinema Editors and an award for best documentary for Image Awards .

The synopsis:

In millions know their voices, but no one knows their names in his gripping new film Stardom 20 Feet from the award-winning director Morgan Neville puts the spotlight on the true story of the singers that lie behind some of the greatest music legends of the 21st century. Triumphant and poignant in equal measure, the film is both a tribute to the unsung voices that have shaped and style to popular music is a reflection on the conflicts, sacrifices and rewards of a career spent in harmony with others.

These talented artists can be heard on a wide range of styles, genres and eras of popular music, but each has a unique charm and personal story to share about a life spent in the shadow of superstar. Along with rare archival footage and a soundtrack without equal, 20 Feet from Stardom features intimate conversations with Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger and Sting to name just a few. However, these names are world-famous for once overshadowed by the different number of singers whose lives and stories in the film are at the center of the scene.