Annal:2009 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature

Man on Wire

James Marsh

• 2009 Oscar-Documentary winner
• Score: 10.59

On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire and illegally rigged between the New York’s twin towers. After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released. This documentary complies Petit s footage to show the numerous extraordinary challenges he faced in completing the artistic crime of the century.

The Betrayal: (Nerakhoon)

Ellen Kuras, Thavisouk Phrasavath

• 2009 Oscar-Documentary nominee
• Score: 6.59

Filmed over 23 years, The Betrayal is the directorial debut of renowned cinematographer Ellen Kuras in a remarkable collaboration with the film’s subject and co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath.

During the Vietnam War, the United States government waged its own secret war in the neighboring country of Laos. When the U.S. withdrew, thousands of Laotians who fought alongside American forces were left behind to face imprisonment or execution. One family, the Phrasavaths, made the courageous decision to escape to America. hoping to find safety, they discovered a different kind of war.

Encounters at the End of the World

Werner Herzog

• 2009 Oscar-Documentary nominee
• Score: 6.59

Welcome to antarctica—like youve never experienced it. Youve seen the extraordinary marine life the retreating glaciers and of course the penguins but leave it to award winning iconoclastic filmmaker werner herzog to be the first to explore the south poles most fascinating inhabitants..Humans.

The Garden

Scott Hamilton Kennedy

• 2009 Oscar-Documentary nominee
• Score: 6.59

The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.

But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.

The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America, from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers:

Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public?

And the powers-that-be have the same response: “The garden is wonderful, but there is nothing more we can do.”

If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up?

Trouble the Water

Tia Lessin, Carl Deal

• 2009 Oscar-Documentary nominee
• Score: 6.59

Trouble the Water takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. It’s a redemptive tale of two self-described street hustlers who become heroes-two unforgettable people who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning.

The film opens the day before the storm makes landfall—twenty-four year old aspiring rap artist Kimberly Rivers Roberts is turning her new video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors trapped in the city. “It’s going to be a day to remember,” Kim declares. With no means to leave the city and equipped with just a few supplies and her hi 8 camera, she and her husband Scott tape their harrowing ordeal as the storm rages, the nearby levee breaches, and floodwaters fill their home and their community.

Seamlessly weaving 15 minutes of this home movie footage shot the day before and the day after the storm, with archival news segments and verite footage shot over two years, directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal document a journey of remarkable people surviving not only failed levees, bungling bureaucrats and armed soldiers,…