Streaming Documentary

Between 2014 and 2015, a series of long documentaries following real cases drew large audiences, one after another. Streaming grew out of that momentum and became one of the major outlets for feature documentaries. In 2018, a film made for streaming won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the first time. But summing it up as "streaming became the lead" still seems premature. Where to place the starting point, and what mattered most, differ depending on who's arguing it. This map leaves what is undecided as undecided. One thing is certain: this river has kept flowing ever since the Lumières filmed workers leaving a factory. The leftmost band on the map runs unbroken from top to bottom.