Producers Guild Sets Documentary Feature Nominees Including ‘Summer Of Soul’, ‘Flee’, ‘The First Wave’

The Producers Guild of America on Friday unveiled nominees in the Outstanding Documentary Motion Picture category for the 33rd annual PGA Awards. It’s the first batch of noms for the guild, which honors excellence in motion picture and television productions.

Seven docs were nominated today: MTV Documentary Films’ Ascension, Nat Geo’s The First Wave and The Rescue, Neon and Participant’s Flee, HBO’s In the Same Breath and Simple as Water, Music Box Films’ Writing With Fire and Hulu/Searchlight/Onyx Collective’s Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Producer eligibility for the award is still being worked out, the guild said today.

The eight films now advance to the final round of voting, which begins January 27 and ends February 10. Winners will be announced at the 2022 PGA Awards ceremony February 26.

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Last year, the PGA gave Netflix’s My Octopus Teacher and its producer Craig Foster the documentary feature prize; that pic went on to win at the Oscars.

This year has seen some changes in the documentary field: 138 feature docs qualified for Oscar consideration, 100 fewer than the year before. Part of the reason: a Television Academy rule going into effect in 2022 that makes any documentary uploaded to the Academy screening portal ineligible for Emmy consideration. Some potential qualifiers may have opted to shoot for the Emmys instead of going for broke on the Oscars.

Still to come from the PGA: its Sports, Children’s and Short Form Television Programs nominees will be announced January 13, with noms for everything else — Docs, Theatrical Motion Pictures, Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures, Television Series/Specials, and Televised/Streamed Motion Pictures — will be unveiled January 27.