Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety chief awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change in response to buzz and events.
Predictions are updated every Thursday. Best Documentary Feature Predictions Commentary (Updated: Nov. 2, 2026): Will the Academy’s documentary branch finally see it all? After a close race, A24’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You Can See Everything” beat DC’s comic book adaptation “Clayface” at the domestic box office.
The nonfiction sensation boasts a record-setting 99 on Metacritic, 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 4.7 out of 5 on Letterboxd and a 9.4 on IMDb. If that IMDb score holds, it would surpass the longtime No. 1 film, “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994), as the highest-rated movie of all time. History has shown, however, that popularity rarely does a documentary any favors.
The omission of “Hoop Dreams” in 1994 prompted the Academy to overhaul its Oscar voting mechanism, years before the documentary branch was established in 2001. Morgan Neville’s Mister Rogers portrait “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” grossed more than $22 million in 2018 and won the PGA and Critics Choice documentary awards, but failed to earn an Oscar nomination. Neville, who won for “20 Feet from Stardom” (2013), hasn’t been nominated since, keeping a theory on the awards circuit alive: Win once and the branch considers you taken care of.
Laura Poitras, who won for “Citizenfour” and later earned another nomination for “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” is a rare exception. Did they make a great documentary? That should be the question.” “You Can See Everything” won’t make the branch’s decision any easier because Fielder isn’t hiding behind the camera.
He’s in the frame, and the film keeps circling whether Holmes is being authentic, performing for the camera or some blurry mix of both. For a branch that still prizes the fly-on-the-wall approach, that could be a tough sell. Smart money sees this as the kind of movie that misses the 15-film shortlist in December.
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