The Two Women in Row 23 Have Just Been Nominated for an Academy Award (and other true tales from this year's Oscar doc hopefuls)

Somewhere in the air en route to Denver, a United pilot came on the PA and said, "I have a very important announcement for the passengers.  The women in row 23 have just been nominated for an Academy Award for their film Jesus Camp."  And with that, co-directors and Oscar nominees Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing began screaming, hugging flight attendants and basking in the applause of the plane.

Since then, they've found what this year's other documentary nominees have also discovered:  while nonfiction filmmakers often work in veritable anonymity, there's nothing like an Oscar nomination to change that reality entirely.

"It’s different from anything else that can happen to you," Grady told me today.  "Everyone gets married and everyone graduates from college, but i had no context for this experience in which everyone in the world gets to hear about something that happened to you at the same time.  I had no context for it but, damn, its a good one."

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, co-directors of Jesus Camp

My Country, My Country director Laura Poitras started her day with an early yoga session.  When she got home, she checked her email, "there was nothing, which is not necessarily good news.  Then I checked online and everything was on there except for the documentaries, so I just thought, I’m going to work.  And then I got a phone call from (publicist) Ann (Stulz)."

Poitras is the only one of this year's Oscar nominees to also be up for Best Documentary at the Film Independent Spirit Awards (she was previously nominated for the Truer Than Fiction Award for Flag Wars).  "I was completely shocked by both (nominations) when I got the word so its really exciting.  When I heard on Tuesday, when I got the call, I was incredibly moved to be nominated for the Oscar, but also moved by the company I was in.  To be there with James’ film (Iraq in Fragments) and Jesus Camp and Inconvenient Truth.  These are all films that I love and all films that send an important message."  (Poitras has yet to see the fifth nominee - Amy Berg's Deliver Us From Evil.)

My Country, My Country director Laura Poitras

The Jesus Camp directors had long thought that the Academy might only select one film that dealt with religion and they thought Deliver Us would probably be that film.  "I was worried they were going to choose one (film about) Iraq, one (film about) religion, but they just chose the films they liked," Heidi Ewing said.

Iraq in Fragments director James Longley told me that he was very happy to see his film and Poitras' nominated for the prize - both deal with the war in Iraq by looking at the affects of the war on Iraqi citizens.

"We were covering the subject in very different ways, both stylistic and by looking at different layers of society," Longley said.  "I think (My Country, My Country) is really great.  The thing her film does that mine doesn't do is that it shows the more educated, intellectual Iraqis, the Iraqi family who’s more easy to identify with for westerners and that’s something really important.  There’s a layer of society in a place like Baghdad that is of professional, multi-lingual people.  Having that kind of perspective is really important and she did that, she humanized it and made it accessible for a western audience."

Poitras agrees:  "I think it says something about the importance of this war.  Not just that they are Iraq films, but that they are looking at the Iraqis and what they want for their country.  It’s just really moving that both films are nominated.  It’s not the films that made the most money at the box office.  but it says, this is important."

All three directors I spoke to expressed excitement for their fellow nominees.

"I was so rooting for Jesus Camp," Poitras said.  "It’s one of the those movies where you go, damn, now that’s a good movie.  If you look at Iraq in Fragments, it has production value that studio movies don't have.  And in terms of cinema, these are all well-crafted films.  They aren’t just message films, driven by content.  They are really driven by craft."

"We are so happy for Laura," Ewing said.  "We love, love her film.  It could easily be ignored because it wasn't this huge theatrical release, but it was so finely done and I’m so happy for her."

I asked Longley about the craziness of the awards season and James, who has won the top prize at the IDAs and the Gothams - and is nominated for the Directors Guild prize - displayed his typical relaxed demeanor:

Iraq in Fragments director James Longley

"Obviously it’s amazing and it really is an honor.  But, it is what it is also, and there was as much a chance that I would get nominated as that I wouldn't.  It's great to be nominated but if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have wanted to build it up as a huge failure of myself or my film or my work and be incapacitated by it.  It's amazing to me that it made it as far as it did.  Who knows if a film I make now or in the future will ever go this far again."

"If it wins, that's amazing but what's important is making a film you care about and that you are happy with.  If you allow (awards) to matter then its great when you're successful but most of the time you arent going to be successful."