Films are listed by the year they received the
Academy Award for Documentary Feature; the year of production follows the title in parentheses. There is sometimes a gap of more than a year between a film's production and its award, which is often the result of the film's unavailability in translation.
- 1944 Desert Victory[?]
- 1945 The Fighting Lady[?]
- 1946 The True Glory[?]
- 1947 none given
- 1948 Design for Death[?]
- 1949 The Secret Land[?]
- 1950 Daybreak in Udi[?]
- 1951 The Titan: Story of Michelangelo[?]
- 1952 Kon-Tiki
- 1953 The Sea Around Us[?]
- 1954 The Living Desert
- 1955 The Vanishing Prairie[?]
- 1956 Helen Keller in Her Story[?]
- 1957 The Silent World[?]
- 1958 Albert Schweitzer[?]
- 1959 White Wilderness[?]
- 1960 Serengeti Shall Not Die[?]
- 1961 The Horse with the Flying Tail[?]
- 1962 Sky Above and Mud Beneath[?]
- 1963 Black Fox: The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler[?]
- 1964 Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel With the World[?]
- 1965 Jacques-Yves Cousteau's World Without Sun[?]
- 1966 The Eleanor Roosevelt Story[?]
- 1967 The War Game
- 1968 The nderson Platoon[?]
- 1969 Journey Into Self[?]
- 1970 Arthur Rubinstein - The Love of Life[?]
- 1971 Woodstock[?]
- 1972 The Hellstrom Chronicle[?]
- 1973 Marjoe[?]
- 1974 The Great American Cowboy[?]
- 1975 Hearts and Minds[?]
- 1976 The Man Who Skied Down Everest[?]
- 1977 Harlan County, U.S.A.
- 1978 Who Are the Debolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?[?]
- 1979 Scared Straight![?]
- 1980 Best Boy[?]
- 1981 From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China[?]
- 1982 Genocide[?]
- 1983 Just Another Missing Kid[?]
- 1984 He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin'[?]
- 1985 The Times of Harvey Milk[?]
- 1986 Broken Rainbow[?]
- 1987 (tie):
- 1988 The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table[?]
- 1989 Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
- 1990 Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt[?]
- 1991 American Dream[?]
- 1992 In the Shadow of the Stars[?]
- 1993 The Panama Deception[?]
- 1994 I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School[?]
- 1995 Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision[?]
- 1996 Anne Frank Remembered[?]
- 1997 When We Were Kings[?]
- 1998 The Long Way Home[?]
- 1999 The Last Days[?]
- 2000 One Day in September[?]
- 2001 Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport[?]
- 2002 Bowling for Columbine - Alliance Atlantis Communications, Dog Eat Dog Films, Salter Street Films International, United Broadcasting Inc., VIF Babelsberger Filmproduktion GmbH & Co. Zweite KG (VIF 2) - Michael Moore, Charles Bishop[?], Jim Czarnecki[?], Michael Donovan[?], Kathleen Glynn[?] producers - Michael Moore director
- Daughter From Danang[?] - Gail Dolgin[?] producer - Gail Dolgin, Vicente Franco[?] directors
- Le Peuple migrateur[?] - Bac Films, Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC), Eyescreen S.r.l., Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, France 2 Cinéma, France 3 Cinéma, Galatée Films, Le Studio Canal+, Les Productions JMH, Les Productions de la Guéville, Pandora Filmproduktion GmbH, Télévision Suisse-Romande (TSR), Wanda Visión S.A., Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) - Jacques Perrin[?], Christophe Barratier[?] producers - Jacques Perrin director
- Prisoner of Paradise[?] - Malcolm Clarke[?], Stuart Sender[?] directors
- Spellbound[?] - Blitz/Welch - Jeffrey Blitz[?], two persons named Sean Welch[?] producers - Jeffrey Blitz director
- See also : Academy Awards