One Of The Biggest 2026 Oscar Upsets Came In An Unexpected Category

If there's one Academy Award category that's most prone to upsets, it's Best Documentary Feature. To cast a vote, Academy members must watch all five nominees — which isn't a heavy lift, but, well, let's just say some folks take their Oscars responsibilities more seriously than others.

Even then, I don't think I've seen a bigger Best Documentary upset since 1999, when Spike Lee's searing, masterfully crafted "4 Little Girls" (one of his finest films, period) inexplicably lost to the pedestrian "One Day in September." Fortunately, "Mr. Nobody Against Putin" upsetting "The Perfect Neighbor" at the Oscars tonight doesn't feel at all like an injustice. It's just one rapturously received nonfiction movie edging out another rapturously received nonfiction movie, and the nice thing is that both movies will hopefully be around for a long time for viewers to discover.

If you haven't been watching the Oscars closely, you're probably wondering why this is such a big deal. Interestingly, it has less to do with the quality of either film than the money poured into the campaign for "The Perfect Neighbor."

"The Perfect Neighbor" was the heavy favorite coming into what wound up being a mostly unsurprising Oscar night. The documentary is about the unremitting harassment of Ajike Owens and her children by their racist neighbor, Susan Lorincz, and how the latter's hatred of the family led her to shoot Ajike dead in a bogus application of Florida's wretched "Stand Your Ground" law. It's a difficult film to reckon with, but it is a must-watch if only because we must never forget how law enforcement takes the threat of violence less seriously when a Black person is the target.

"The Perfect Neighbor" also had the full weight of Netflix's awards-campaign machine behind it, which seemed more than sufficient to put it over the top. But when Oscar voting opened, many awards experts noticed there was a groundswell of support for "Mr. Nobody Against Putin." Though it only received a small theatrical release from Kino Lorber and lacked an aggressive awards campaign, the film's depiction of one ordinary man who, in the face of nationalism being forced on school children after Russia invaded Ukraine, documents how easily the state can manufacture consent. It's why people are so freaked out about the Trump-aligned Ellisons merging Paramount Skydance with Warner Bros. Discovery.

This is a topic that is also on the minds of many Americans, and, in the view of Academy voters who watched all five nominated documentaries, this was the film that resonated most. "Mr. Nobody Against Putin" is currently only available to rent on Prime Video, Apple TV, and Kino Film, but now that it's won Best Documentary Feature, it'll surely be streaming for free in the near future.