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‘Fire at Sea’ (Courtesy: Tiff)

By: Carson Blackwelder

Managing Editor

The nominations for the 2017 Academy Awards were announced bright and early this morning and, while there were plenty snubs, we want to talk about one surprise: the inclusion of Fire at Sea in the best documentary feature category. The surprise here isn’t that the film was actually nominated but that, as a foreign film, it joins a rather small group of films that have done exactly that. So, what is the track record of foreign films in the best documentary feature category?

When the nominations were read, Fire at Sea (written and directed by Gianfranco Rosi) found itself competing alongside I Am Not Your Negro (directed by Raoul Peck and co-written by Peck and James Baldwin); Live, Animated (directed by Roger Ross Williams and written by Ron Suskind); O.J.: Made in America (directed by Ezra Edelman), and 13th (directed...

By Anjelica Oswald

Managing Editor

Directed by Rory Kennedy, Last Days in Vietnam focuses on the final weeks of the Vietnam War in April 1975 and the Americans who tried to rescue as many South Vietnamese refugees that they could — against White House orders — as the North Vietnamese Army approached Saigon. Kennedy has never been nominated for an Oscar, but her 2012 documentary Ethel, about Ethel Kennedy (Rory’s mother), was nominated for five Emmys. Last Days in Vietnam, which premiered at Sundance, could garner Kennedy her first Oscar nom.

Historically, Vietnam documentaries have done well in the documentary category at the Oscars, and that may be due to many Academy members having come of age during the war. Here are 11 Vietnam documentaries that have been nominated for best documentary (in chronological order):

The Anderson Platoon

Filmed in 1966 by Pierre Schoendoerffer, a war reporter and cameraman, the film follows a 33-man...

He was one of the few directors of war movies with first-hand experience of conflict

Pierre Schoendoerffer, who has died aged 83, was one of the few directors of war films who had actually lived out the adventures of his soldier heroes. The American film-makers William Wellman, Sam Fuller and Oliver Stone did so, but no other director explored the same subject as single-mindedly and doggedly as Schoendoerffer.

His experiences of combat as a military cameraman and as a prisoner of war during the conflict in Indochina marked his output, most directly La 317ème Section (The 317th Platoon, 1965), about a doomed French unit; Le Crabe-Tambour (The Drummer Crab, 1977), about French officers involved in the fall of the French empire after the second world war; his Oscar-winning television documentary La Section Anderson (The Anderson Platoon, 1967), which followed the lives of Us soldiers in Vietnam; and Diên Biên Phú (1992), about a Us war...

A day after Greg Smith rattled the financial sector with his New York Times Op-Ed, "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs," claiming that "the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it," Deadline's Mike Fleming reminds us that Wall Street was pretty toxic and destructive long before Smith even began his 12-year run at the company. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio "are committing to make The Wolf of Wall Street their fifth collaboration. The film is based on the Jordan Belfort memoir of his days as a hard partying, drug addicted stockbroker who was indicted in 1998 for security fraud and money laundering and served a 22-month federal prison stretch. Shooting will begin August in New York." The Playlist's Kevin Jagernauth posts a 2007 interview with Belfort.

Also at the Playlist, Jagernauth reports that Gerardo Naranjo (Miss Bala) will likely direct Michael Fassbender in J Mills Goodloe...

Pierre Schoendoerffer, who won an Oscar for the 1967 Vietnam War documentary The Anderson Platoon, died following an operation at a hospital outside Paris. The exact cause of death remains unclear. He was 83. While still in his 20s, Schoendoerffer served as a cameraman with the French army in the 1950s. As a result, he was present when the crucial fortress of Dien Bien Phu fell to the Vietnamese guerrilla army in May 1954, thus signaling the end of French rule in Indochina. Following his capture, Schoendoerffer spent four months in a Pow camp before being sent back to France. From the late '50s on, Schoendoerffer directed ten films, both narrative and documentary features, most of them related to his war experiences. As quoted in the New York Times, in 1994 Schoendoerffer explained that “the earth of Indochina still clings to my soul, just like the mud of the trenches used to stick to my boots.

Oscar-winning director Pierre Schoendoerffer has died at the age of 83.

He passed away in his native France on Wednesday.

The filmmaker served as a cameraman in the French army during the 1950s and he spent four months in Indochina as a prisoner of war after being captured by the Vietnamese guerrillas in 1954.

Upon his release, Schoendoerffer became a war correspondent and then embarked on a film career winning acclaim for his gritty movie The 317th Platoon. He also wrote and directed Drummer Crab and A Captain's Honor, and, in 1968, he earned an Academy Award for his documentary The Anderson Platoon.

Paying tribute to the director, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called him "one of the very rare French directors who, thanks to the universality of his message, won an Oscar."...

Paris — Pierre Schoendoerffer, an Oscar-winning French filmmaker who was held prisoner in Indochina and chronicled the pain of war on screen and on the page, has died. He was 83.

The French military health service confirmed that he died Wednesday. France's Le Figaro newspaper said Schoendoerffer died in a hospital outside Paris after an operation.

"France will miss him," President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement that praised the "legendary filmmaker and novelist" for risking his life for France and "helping us better understand our collective history."

Born in central Franceo on May 5, 1928, Schoendoerffer served as a cameraman in the French army in the 1950s and volunteered to be parachuted into the besieged fortress of Dien Bien Phu, where the decisive battle of the French war in Indochina was fought.

When the stronghold fell to the Vietnamese guerrilla army in May 1954, Schoendoerffer was captured and spent four months in a Pow camp before being repatriated.

Whether they are glossy or gritty, embedded or independent, the best war documentaries still reveal the sheer savagery of combat, says film-maker Kevin Macdonald

When was real combat first recorded on film? Probably almost as soon as the "cinematograph" camera was invented. They say that around 1916, Mexican revolutionary general Pancho Villa used to stage battles for his cameramen to record when the light was good. During the second world war, John Ford and John Huston were just two of the great Hollywood directors who picked up 16mm cameras to film real action for, respectively, The Battle of Midway and Report from the Aleutians. But these were straightforward propaganda movies for the most part: they made no pretences of showing what combat was really like for a soldier – what it felt like physiologically and psychologically. Their aim was to stir the patriotic fervour of the audience and to soothe their anxieties about the conflict.