In a field of 10 nominees for Best Picture, it’s hard to imagine a situation where You Can See Everything isn’t on the list at the 99th Academy Awards in March 2027. There are still a couple of months left on the 2026 movie schedule, so we haven’t seen all the favorites yet, but plenty of people are calling it one of the best movies of 2026. I’m among those people. It’s been two weeks since I saw the A24 release from directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, and I’m still thinking about it all the time.
All that said, while it seems a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination and maybe some other categories, it might not get nominated at all in another, more obvious category: Best Documentary Feature. That is hard to believe, I know.
No Documentary Has Ever Been Nominated For Best Picture
In the 98 years of Academy Award nominations, no documentary has ever made its way into Best Picture. That includes legendary (and well-received) documentaries like The Thin Blue Line, Bowling for Columbine, An Inconvenient Truth, Woodstock, and others. That doesn’t include Fahrenheit 9/11, which, despite being the highest-grossing documentary of all time at the box office, was ruled ineligible because it was aired on TV before being released in theaters.
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That streak will likely end on January 21st when the nominations are announced. You Can See Everything is on basically every early prediction list that has come out since the movie was released last week. It’s also sitting at 98% “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, with a 97% from audiences, and it is continuing to win big at the box office. Oh, and there have been hundreds of articles, YouTube videos, and podcasts talking about the movie. It’s the buzziest movie of 2026, so I think it’s certain to be nominated, and I wouldn’t rule out it actually winning.
It Might Not Get Nominated In Best Documentary
Normally, you’d think that any documentary nominated for Best Picture would be the odds-on favorite to win the category it most naturally fits in, Best Documentary. However, on many of those same predictions, it’s not even among the prospective nominees. This is mind-blowing to me, but I do understand the arguments against it. Or, well, the argument against it. That basically comes down to how much the movie blurs the lines between reality and creative license.
You Can See Everything isn’t a standard documentary. The movie purposely makes you question everything you see, despite its title. You spend the whole movie questioning everything, including who is manipulating whom, and what that all means. It’s meant to get the audience gasping and asking more questions than it answers. It’s brilliant in that way, but it’s also nothing like a “standard” documentary. Most documentaries are explicitly trying to answer a question or show you its version of the truth. You Can See Everything is less interested in the truth than it is in questioning truth itself.
There is speculation that the documentary wing of the Academy may not reward You Can See Everything because it blurs that line too much, and they may not consider it a true documentary. That’s not the only uphill battle it faces. In recent years, the Best Documentary category has leaned heavily into foreign documentaries and documentaries that focus on war and strife. That includes the last three winners: 2025’s Mr. Nobody Against Putin, 2024’s No Other Land, and 2023’s 20 Days in Mariupol.
There are at least two favorites in the category that fall in line with those: Naza, about the ongoing military action in Palestine, and Rehearsals for a Revolution, about the history of Iran from the 1979 Revolution through the current war. Naza has been the most-talked-about upcoming documentary among awards watchers. At least before You Can See Everything dropped its trailer in September.
Could It Be Nominated For Other Oscars?
Last week, A24 announced it would mount an awards campaign for the movie and listed several categories it would submit the movie for. In addition to Best Picture and Best Documentary, Variety reported that A24 would be submitting for Best Director (Fielder and Oppenheim), original score (Ari Balouzian), cinematography (David Bolen), film editing (Adam Locke-Norton), sound (Paul Hsu and Richard Carlos), production design (Alex DiGerlando and Rebecca Meis), costume design (Katina Danabassis), and makeup and hairstyling (Stephanie Pasicov and Kerrie Smith). Oh – and Best Supporting Actress (SPOILER), which I won’t get into because it’s impossible to talk about (Spoiler) until everyone has seen the movie. IYKYK.
I don’t think it’s going to take home 11 nominations, but I do think at least a handful of those are possible, like Best Director, Best Editing, Best Score, and Best Cinematography. No comment on Supporting Actress (though I do think this is a stretch). A documentary getting nominated in five or six categories would be historic, and while I think it’s so unprecedented, I’m not ready to say with any confidence that it will get all those. It’s worth noting that Variety believes it could get as many as five, including Picture, Director, Cinematography, Editing, and Supporting Actress. One category Variety isn’t predicting is Best Score, which I hope it is nominated for. The music is critical to the whole presentation.
It Might Walk Away Empty-Handed
To be sure, the film faces an uphill battle. Weirdly, the one nomination I’m truly confident in is Best Picture. Not only is it the one category with 10 slots, but it also doesn’t matter if the movie blurs that line between reality and…unreality (I’m really trying to avoid calling it “fiction,” because it’s never fiction, it’s just an unconventional presentation of non-fiction). As a fan of documentaries, I appreciate the argument against its inclusion in the Best Doc category, but I strongly disagree. I think it’s one of the best movies of 2026 and one of the best documentaries of all time.
That makes it all the more remarkable to me that, despite that, it may very well walk away from the 99th Academy Awards with no Oscars at all. One thing is for sure: host Conan O’Brien will be making a lot of jokes about it. That I can predict confidently.
