Netflix, which is investing heavily in documentary and feature films, has won its first feature film Oscar with the sports doping documentary ‘Icarus‘ winning the best documentary feature.
Icarus beat out ‘Last Men in Aleppo’, ‘Strong Island’, ‘Faces Places’ and ‘Abacus: Small Enough to Jail’.
Icarus was released on Netflix in August 2017, and is based on filmmaker Bryan Fogel’s investigation into doping in sports, aided by the assistance of Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Russian anti-doping laboratory who candidly discussed the doping scheme under Vladimir Putin.
Fogel thanked Netflix for exposing documentaries to a large audience around the world by releasing them simultaneously on its streaming service to 190 countries.
“Netflix has single-handedly changed the documentary world,” Fogel said. “They have given voice to documentary in a way that no company or distributor has ever done before.”
Netflix’s period drama film Mudbound also had scored four Oscar nominations but eventually went empty-handed. Netflix had so far received 15 Oscar nominations with the first one in 2014.
Netflix rival Amazon Studios which was nominated for Best Screenplay for ‘The Big Sick’ also didn’t win in the category. It had won three Oscars last year.
