Five Hamptons Doc Fest Films Make Oscar Shortlists

Hamptons Doc Fest executive director Jacqui Lofaro and artistic director Karen Arikian recently announced that five of the 30 documentary feature films and documentary film shorts screened at the 16th annual Hamptons Doc Fest, November 30 to December 6 at Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater were named to the Oscars Shortlists on December 21 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Oscars Shortlists include 15 films in each of 10 categories which will advance in those categories for the 96th Academy Awards.

In the Documentary Feature Film category, two Hamptons Doc Fest films—“American Symphony” and “The Eternal Memory” — were among the 15 Shortlisted.

The film “American Symphony,” directed by Matthew Heineman who received this year’s HDF Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at the Gala on December 2, follows stressed musician Jon Batiste as he prepares his original composition for its premiere at Carnegie Hall while his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, is undergoing hospital treatments for her rare form of leukemia.

The film also made the Shortlist in the two separate categories of Music (Original Score) and Song (“It Never Went Away”).

“The Eternal Memory,” directed by Maite Alberdi, which won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of veteran Chilean journalist Augusto Gongora and his devoted wife and caretaker Paulina Urrutia, the former Chilean culture minister, as Gongora struggles with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Plus a resounding three of the seven documentary film shorts screened at Hamptons Doc Fest’s innovative “Shorts and Breakfast Bites” programs on December 2 and 3 made the Oscars Shortlists in the category of Documentary Short Film.

These include “The ABCs of Book Banning” (27 min.) directed by Trish Adiesic and Naz Habtezghi and produced by Sheila Nevins, about book banning in American schools told through the eyes of children; “The Barber of Little Rock” (35 min.) directed by John Hoffman and Christine Turner, about a barber’s visionary approach to the wealth gap by founding a community bank in Little Rock, Arkansas; and “Last Song from Kabul” (30 min.) directed by Kevin Macdonald about a group of daring young musicians in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.

Stay tuned until January 23 when the Academy announces the shorter list of Nominees in each category, and March 10, when the annual Academy Awards ceremony announces the winners.