| BAFTA Award for Best Documentary | |
| Awarded For: | In recognition of the number of high-quality theatrical documentaries released in cinemas |
| Presenter: | British Academy of Film and Television Arts |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Holder: | 20 Days in Mariupol (2023) |
| Year: | 1948 |
| Website: | BAFTA Website |
This page lists the winners for the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary, formerly known as the Robert Flaherty Documentary Award, for each year.
In the following lists, the titles and names in bold with a gold background are the winners and recipients respectively; those not in bold are the nominees. The years given are those in which the films under consideration were released, not the year of the ceremony, which always takes place the following year.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), is a British organisation that hosts annual awards shows for film, television, children's film and television, and interactive media. A theatrical documentary award was presented by the Academy between 1948 and 1990. Documentaries have continued to be honoured with British Academy Television Awards since then and have been eligible in all relevant categories at the Film Awards. In 2012, the Academy re-introduced this category in recognition of the number of high-quality theatrical documentaries released in cinemas in the UK each year.[1]
| Year | Film | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Louisiana Story | Robert J. Flaherty | |
| Farrebique | Georges Rouquier | |
| Is Everybody Listening? | Jackson Beck | |
| Shadow of the Ruhr | Sergei Nolbandov | |
| Those Blasted Kids | Astrid Henning-Jensen and Bjarne Henning-Jensen | |
| Three Dawns to Sydney | John Eldridge | |
| Daybreak in Udi | Terry Bishop | |
| Circulation | ||
| The Cornish Engine | Bill Mason and Philip Armitage | |
| Drug Addict | Robert Anderson | |
| Island of the Lagoon (Isole Nella Laguna) | Luciano Emmer and Enrico Gras | |
| The Liver Fluke in Great Britain | John Shearman | |
| Report on the Refugee Problem | ||
| Year | Film | Recipient(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Not awarded | |||
| Volcano (Le Rendezvous du diable) | Haroun Tazieff | ||
| Not awarded | |||
| Nobody Waved Good-bye | Don Owen | ||
| The Human Dutch | Bert Haanstra | ||
| The Life of Billy Walker | |||
| Portrait of Queenie | Michael Orrom | ||
| Tokyo Olympiad | Kon Ichikawa | ||
| Brute Force and Finesse | Max Morgan-Witts | ||
| Deckie Learner | Michael Grigsby | ||
| Stravinsky | Roman Kroitor and Wolf Koenig | ||
| Goal | The World Cup | Abidine Dino and Ross Devenish | |
| Buster Keaton Rides Again | John Spotton | ||
| I'm Going to Ask You to Get Up Out of Your Seat | Richard Cawston | ||
| Matador | Kevin Billington | ||
| To Die in Madrid | Frédéric Rossif | ||
| Famine | Jack Gold | ||
| The Things I Cannot Change | Tanya Ballantyne | ||
| In Need of Special Care | Jonathan Stedall | ||
| Inside North Vietnam | Felix Greene | ||
| Music! | Michael Tuchner | ||
| A Plague On Your Children | Adrian Malone | ||
| Prologue | Robin Spry | ||
| Year | Film | Recipient(s) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sad Song of Yellow Skin | Michael Rubbo | ||
| The Hellstrom Chronicle | Walon Green | ||
| Death of a Legend | Bill Mason | ||
| Not awarded | |||
| Grierson | Roger Blais | ||
| Cree Hunters of Mistassini | Boyce Richardson and Tony Ianzelo | ||
| Compañero: Victor Jara of Chile | Stanley Forman and Martin Smith | ||
| Leprosy | |||
| The Early Americans | Alan Pendry | ||
| Seven Green Bottles | Eric Marquis | ||
| Los Canadienses | Albert Kish | ||
| White Rock | Tony Maylam | ||
| Not awarded | |||
| The Silent Witness | David Rolfe | ||
| The Tree of Wooden Clogs | Ermanno Olmi | ||
| Year | Film | Recipient(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Not awarded | ||
| Soldier Girls | Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill | |
| Best Boy | Ira Wohl | |
| The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter | Connie Field | |
| Return Journey | Ian Potts | |
| Burden of Dreams | Les Blank | |
| The Atomic Café | Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty | |
| Not a Love Story | Bonnie Sherr Klein | |
| Jim Brown | ||
| Schindler | Jon Blair | |
| Forty Minutes Female Circumcision | Louise Panton | |
| The Visit: Part 3 - The Boy David | Alex McCall | |
| Wildlife on One Night Life | Dilys Breese | |
| 28 Up | Michael Apted | |
| GI Brides | Lavinia Warner | |
| South Bank Show Alan Bennett | David Hinton | |
| Afghanistan Reports: Allah Against The Gunships | Sandy Gall | |
| Omnibus Leonard Berstein's West Side Story | Christopher Swann | |
| Marilyn Monroe: Say Goodbye to the President | Christopher Olgiati | |
| David Lean: A Life in Film | Nigel Wattis | |
| The Frozen Ocean: Part 1 - Kingdom of the Ice Bear | Mike Salisbury and Hugh Miles | |
| Shoah | Claude Lanzmann | |
| Viewpoint '86: Afghanistan: The Agony of a Nation | Sandy Gall | |
| Omnibus The Mission | Robin Lough | |
| Forty Minutes The Fishing Party | Paul Watson | |
| Equinox Prisoner of Consciousness | John Dollar | |
| British Cinema: Personal View - A Turnip Head's Guide to the British Cinema | Alan Parker | |
| Baka - People of The Rain Forest | Phil Agland | |
| Man-Eating Tigers/Saving the Tiger | Naresh Bedi | |
| Fourteen Days in May | Paul Hamann | |
| Forty Minutes Home from the Hill | Molly Dineen | |
| This Week Death on the Rock | Chris Oxley | |
| The Duty Men: East Enders | Paul Hamann | |
| In from the Cold: A Portrait of Richard Burton | Tony Palmer | |
| Viewpoint Special: The Men Who Killed Kennedy | Nigel Turner | |
| First Tuesday | Kevin Sim | |
| Viewpoint '89: Cambodia - Year 10: A Special Report by John Pilger | David Munro | |
| Lost Children of the Empire | Joanna Mack and Mike Fox | |
| Everyman: Romania - State of Fear | John Blake | |