Such predictions, however, miss the first, unalterable, ironclad rule of Oscar predictions: The Best Documentary Feature is always the Holocaust movie. Always. If there is no Holocaust movie nominated, then the winner will be some other movie that depicts Jews suffering. Only if there is no such movie, then the award will be presented to the most politically correct and uplifting movie remaining.
This rule accurately covers every Best Documentary Feature winner for at least the past twelve years, including such easily predictable winners as Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, One Day In September, The Last Days, The Long Way Home and Anne Frank Remembered.
Point of fact, the only popular documentary to win the Oscar in the past twelve years was the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" doc When We Were Kings for 1996, which was nominated against documentaries on Nelson Mandela, ballerina Suzanne Ferrell, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld and journalist George Seldes . Not one Holocaust movie. Indeed, widely-seen works such as Buena Vista Social Club, Eyes on the Prize and The War Room consistently fail to win, and Hoop Dreams, best of them all, wasn't even nominated.
[The exception that proves the rule: I have located only one Holocaust-related documentary from the past twenty years which was nominated but did not win: Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler Within Germany 1933-1945 (1991). But, of course, that wasn't completely about the Jews either. See?]
So, what does this portend for 2003? Well, we've got Michael Moore, a Vietnam reconciliation movie, spelling bee kids, a bird movie, and, finally, Prisoner of Paradise, described as follows on the Oscar website:
FILM SYNOPSIS
One of the leading theatrical figures in 1930s Berlin, actor, director and cabaret performer Kurt Gerron, a German Jew, was forced to write and direct a Nazi propaganda film while being held prisoner in a concentration camp.
Winner. Guaranteed.
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