Ukraine’s Chance for Back-to-Back Oscars in the ‘Best Documentary Feature’ Category Falls Just Short

Ukraine’s top hope for an Academy Award this year fell just short at Sunday night’s Oscars, losing out to a documentary about an alliance between an Israeli journalist and a Palestinian activist in Jerusalem’s war in Gaza.

Ukraine’s submission, “Porcelain War”, was one of five nominees in the Best Documentary Feature category, but the Oscar went to “No Other Land,” made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective.

“Porcelain War,” a film by US director Brendan Bellomo and Ukrainian director Slava Leontiev, is a co-production of Ukraine, Australia, and the US, documenting Ukrainian artists Slava, Anya, and Andriy, who made porcelain figurines as Russia’s invasion raged on.

Leontiev, one of the film’s main protagonists, is now a soldier on the front lines.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary Films. 

Another documentary about the war in Ukraine that was expected to contend for an Academy Award in the “Best Documentary Short” category was “Once Upon a Time in Ukraine”. Created by US director Betsy West, it is a joint US-Ukraine production about how children in Ukraine experience Russia’s invasion that has targeted them and their families. It did not receive a nomination.

Two other Ukrainian documentaries that were submitted, “Peaceful People” by director Oksana Karpovych and “After the Rain: Putin’s Stolen Children Come Home” by Canadian director Sarah McCarthy, did not make the shortlist in the Best Documentary Feature category.  

Other Topics of Interest

Ukraine Prevented Two Massive Russian Offensives in 2024, 2025 – HUR Intel

Currently, 620,000 Russian troops are deployed against Ukraine, including forces stationed in occupied territories and Kursk Oblast.

In 2024, Ukraine won its first Academy Award in history via “20 Days in Mariupol,” a documentary shot during the Russian siege of Mariupol in the first weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.

An estimated 50,000 Ukrainians died as a result of the siege in Mariupol, which lasted for months until May 2022.