Everything You Need to Know About the 5 Documentaries Up For an Oscar This Year

Directed by filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and professional climber and ski-mountaineer Jimmy Chin, this documentary follows rock climber Alex Honnold as he performed the first free solo climb of Yosemite National Park's 3,000-foot-high El Capitan, which was one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind.

The film was produced by National Geographic, and this is only the third time a climbing or mountaineering film has been considered for the Oscars, after Mike Hoover's 1973 film Solo and Kevin MacDonald's 2003 film Touching the Void. Besides the incredible task performed by Honnold, the film itself was a challenge, as Vasarhelyi and Chin had to figure out how to film the climb with drone cameras and cameramen attached to ropes and harnesses in a way that wouldn't distract Honnold.

RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes (who also produced 2018's Oscar-nominated documentary Strong Island) created this documentary to tell the story of the hardships and triumphs over the social construction of race in Hale County, AL, focusing on the lives of two young black men over the course of five years. The film (which is Ross's feature debut) already won a Special Jury Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival for best documentary feature, and by becoming an Oscar contender for best documentary, the film is also the ninth Academy Award-nominated film for Independent Lens, who produced the film.

Distributed by Hulu, this film chronicles the friendship and hardships experienced over several years between three young men in Rockford, IL. Bonded by a shared love of skateboarding, their exploits were all documented by novice filmmaker Bing Liu, who began filming him and his two friends when they were young teens. The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Award for breakthrough filmmaking. While Hulu's TV shows have achieved success in the past, Minding the Gap marks its first Oscar nomination and first notable film.

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Created by Berlin-based filmmaker Talal Derki, this documentary provides a rare look into the life of an Islamic Caliphate, following Derki as he returns home to his native Syria and (posing as a jihadist-sympathizing photojournalist) chronicles the daily life of a radical Islamist family over the course of two years. The film acts as a follow-up to Derki's 2013 debut, the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner The Return to Homs, though rather than focusing on rebel insurgents, this documentary shows an even scarier reality: young boys under the absolute influence of an Al-Nusra Front member and father of eight.

RBG — which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival — chronicles the life and career of beloved Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or RBG. Directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West had both previously worked on projects involving Ginsburg, but they began producing this documentary in 2015 when they decided Ginsburg deserved a film focusing solely on her (though it took some convincing to get RBG to sign on to the project, which she did eventually with full support). The film was created from hours of footage from Ginsburg meetings and speeches, as well as a face-to-face interview with Ginsburg in 2017.