Sundance 2024 Continues to Feed the Oscar Documentary Pipeline

Sundance documentaries are alive and well. And it looks like there’s some acquisition action this year, too. Which Sundance documentaries have the best shot at landing in Oscar contention this year? It helps to get bought early or to have an international footprint.

A rickety theatrical market for non-fiction features and a dwindling number of active documentary buyers meant that many Sundance 2023 films did not get picked up for distribution, or met serious delays before companies came through. As the top American film festival for docs, Sundance usually supplies as many as four out of the final five Oscar nominees each year. (This year, it was two.)

And usually, by late summer, Oscar promotion is well underway. But last year, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” which was rumored to be an HBO Documentary Films pickup for months, wasn’t announced until August 29, when other Sundance grads had been campaigning all summer.

One Sundance World Cinema entry built a following during the year: Pulitzer Prize-winner Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing war journalist story “20 Days in Mariupol,” which won the Audience Award and went on to an Oscar nomination. It also boasted the international advantage, as the Academy’s international membership now represents more than 20 percent of the total voters. Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi was nominated for a second time for her moving Sundance entry “Eternal Memory” (MTV Documentary Films), which…