Two Hamptons Doc Fest Award Films Make the Oscar Shortlist

Two of the feature films screened at the 17th annual Hamptons Doc Fest, which ran December 5 to 11 at Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater, were named to the Oscars Shortlist of 15 films in the Documentary Feature Film category by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They are “Daughters” and “Union,” which were both Hamptons Doc Fest awards films.

“Daughters,” directed by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, who both appeared at the Sag Harbor Cinema on December 8 for a Q&A after the film, received the Hamptons Doc Fest’s prescient new award this year — the first Breakthrough Director Award — presented by the film’s co-presenters, Hamptons Doc Fest executive director Jacqui Lofaro and New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) CEO Cynthia Lopez.

The film, which took eight years to make, follows four young girls as they prepare for a special daddy daughter dance with their fathers who were incarcerated in a Washington, D.C., jail, some for 20 year sentences, where they’re not allowed to touch or hug their children. Speaking to the program’s success rate, 95 percent of the participants in this 12-week “Date With Dad” program that now exists in a dozen prisons never returned to jail after being paroled.

The film, available globally on Netflix, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and also won two awards there in the U.S. Documentary Competition — Festival Favorite and Audience Choice.

“Union,” which won a Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, and Best Documentary Feature at several other film festivals, was sold out at its screening at the Sag Harbor Cinema on December 6. It was preceded by a presentation of this year’s Hamptons Doc Fest Impact Award to the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms Program Officer Paulina Suarez by PBS American Masters founder Susan Lacy, for its 75 years of funding social impact films like “Union.” After the screening, both directors Brett Story and Stephen Maing appeared live for their Q&A. The film chronicles the story of a group of warehouse workers as they launched a grassroots campaign at an Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island to start the American Labor Union.

Stay tuned on January 17, when the smaller list of five “nominees” in each Oscar category will be announced, with the ultimate winner receiving the Oscar at the Academy Award ceremony on March 2.