PGA Award for Best Documentary: Directors Guild champ ‘Fire of Love’ battles BAFTA winner ‘Navalny’

Daniel Montgomery
·3 min read
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It’s shaping up to be an exciting, competitive awards season for documentaries. “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is the odds-on favorite for the Oscar as of this writing, but precursor awards have gone in different directions. Coming up are the February 25 Producers Guild of America Awards, where “All the Beauty” is absent from the nonfiction lineup. So which film will win instead?

It’s a three-way race according to the combined predictions of over 1,000 Gold Derby users. “Fire of Love” has the lead with 5/1 odds and support from 12 out of 18 Expert journalists we’ve surveyed from major media outlets, seven out of 12 Gold Derby Editors, 16 of our Top 24 Users, and 14 of our All-Star Top 24. The film, which explores the lives and deaths of a pair of married volcanologists, recently won the Directors Guild Award, so it’s off to a good start within the industry.

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However, it’s going up against the film that beat it at the BAFTA Awards: “Navalny,” the real-life thriller about the plot to kill Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. The film feels especially urgent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. That combined with its BAFTA win puts it in a good position to upset. It currently ranks second with 11/2 odds and the backing of four Experts, three Editors, six of our Top 24, and eight All-Stars.

The third film with a strong shot at winning according to our forecasts is “All That Breathes,” the Sundance and Cannes prize winner about Indian brothers who care for Delhi’s ailing kite population. Two Experts, two Editors, two of our Top 24, and two All-Stars are predicting this film. All three favorites are also nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The remaining four PGA nominees in this race were snubbed by the academy: “Descendant,” “Retrograde,” “The Territory,” and “Nothing Compares.”

So what does a PGA Award mean for the Oscar race? Since the award was first given out in 2007, only seven PGA winners have gone on to win the Oscar. The two groups have lined up for the last two years in a row (2020’s “My Octopus Teacher” and 2021’s “Summer of Soul”), but for the three years before that the PGA winner wasn’t even nominated at the Oscars (2017’s “Jane,” 2018’s “Won’t You be My Neighbor?,” and 2019’s “Apollo 11”). So this award isn’t guaranteed to go to one of the Oscar nominees. But when the PGA winner is nominated for the Oscar, it tends to win the academy’s documentary honor too.

PREDICTthe 2023 Oscar winners through March 12

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?

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