The surprise cultural phenomenon of our pandemic winter, Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed’s My Octopus Teacher (2020) suggests a paradigm shift in the history of wildlife documentaries. The result of a decade-plus of production, the film follows filmmaker and Sea Change Project founder Craig Foster as he forges an unlikely, year-long relationship with a common octopus in a kelp forest off the coast of South Africa. The film is deliberate, mediative, and—though mainly focused on the personal growth and development of the human protagonist—eschews the type of anthropomorphism typically evidenced in the genre.

With its nomination this year for the Academy Awards’ Best Documentary Feature, My Octopus Teacher joins a long and storied history of wildlife films to be nominated for the category. While some may argue that wildlife films should not altogether be considered documentaries, that does not negate the fact that critters have played an outsized role in the award’s 70-some-year history.

If My Octopus Teacher has you hungry for more award-worthy wildlife film fare, here is a selection of films from the past half century that have not only been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature but have also taken home the prize.

The Sea Around Us (director Irwin Allen, 1953)

Long before forging his legacy as Hollywood’s “Master of Disaster” with mega-productions such as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), Irwin Allen was charged with directing a humble film adaptation of Rachel Carson’s best-selling book The Sea Around Us. The film was given a minuscule budget; Irwin was forced to solicit underwater footage—for free—from filmmakers and marine biologists across the world. The response was overwhelming; 1.6 million feet of footage poured in, depicting tropical barrier reefs to arctic seas, microscopic plankton to some of the largest whales on Earth. The resulting film is an impressive collage of technicolor ocean footage that earned the Best Documentary Feature award of 1953. While the film is, at times, reliant on glorifying the more exploitative practices of humanity in the ocean, it also proved itself generations ahead of its time in illustrating the link between ocean and climate health— ultimately offering a stark warning on polar ice melts more than 50 years before Davis Guggenheim and former vice president Al Gore won the same award for An Inconvenient Truth. 

The Vanishing Prairie (director James Algar, 1954)

Walt Disney loomed so large across multiple mediums last century that it might have been easy to overlook his outsized role in the establishment of the wildlife film genre. Disney’s short Seal Island, directed by James Algar, has the distinction of being the first wildlife film to capture an Oscar with 1949’s award for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel). This film was the first in a long string of mid-century success for Disney—and director Algar—in the genre. They went on to win the Best Documentary Feature awards for The Living Desert in 1953 and again the following year with The Vanishing Prairie. In all of these true-life adventures, Disney and Algar established trademark anthropomorphic characters, high-stakes survival narratives, and supercharged whimsy that would (and continues to) define their work in the genre throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. However, The Vanishing Prairie differs a bit from the other works in that it addresses a serious issue—the loss of natural prairie lands in the United States, offering contemporary viewers images of threatened midwestern prairie ecosystems.

Serengeti Shall Not Die (director Michael Grzimek, 1959) 

Serengeti Shall Not Die is a film marked by contradictions. In one way, the movie functions as a love letter to East Africa from German director Bernhard Grzimek—a love made bittersweet through the fact that Grzimek’s son and cinematographer, Michael, died on location while filming, when the plane he was piloting collided with a vulture. The film also serves up some of the most accessible footage of African wildlife of the era, in vibrant color. Yet its story also reinforces many of the problematic colonialist tropes that have long plagued the genre. Still, the film persists as a piece of history—a repository of footage of a fragile ecosystem that has profoundly changed in the 60 years since the Grzimeks’ production. 

World Without Sun (director Jacques-Yves Cousteau, 1964) 

In the past, I’ve written about Jacques Cousteau’s more popular and award-winning The Silent World (1953), but that blockbuster shouldn’t overshadow Cousteau’s more bizarre and ambitious follow-up, World Without Sun, winner of 1964’s Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Where The Silent World is interested on the exploration of the sea, World Without Sun focuses on its colonization. The film chronicles Cousteau, his crew of “oceannauts,” and the time they spent living aboard Continental Shelf Station Two—or Conshelf Two—a scientific colony and living space located 10 meters below the Red Sea off the coast of Sudan. As is the case in much of Cousteau’s work, World Without Sun is more of a story of the explorers themselves than the natural world they explore, yet the sheer audacity of the experiment—expertly documented by Cousteau and crew—creates a genre-bending experience worthy of viewing.

March of the Penguins (director Luc Jacquet, 2005) 

After decades of decline (as measured by theatrical releases and commercial successes), the wildlife film was reinvigorated in the early aughts thanks to the emperor penguins of Antarctica. Defying isolation and subzero temperatures, the producers of March of the Penguins created a wildlife film in the classic tradition of Disney’s True-Life Adventures (complete with relatable animal characters and a life-or-death narrative)—but this time, with a modern storyline and an overt conservationist message. The cultural impact of March of the Penguins was unprecedented for a wildlife film—sparking a parody, a video game, and a minor culture war along the way. Perhaps even more important, the film inspired a new generation of wildlife films to be produced and released in movie theaters across the world.

The Cove (director Louie Psihoyos, 2009)

Few wildlife films tell as harrowing of a story as 2009’s The Cove. The film, directed by former National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, features footage of the dolphin-hunting practices of inhabitants of a small Japanese town. To capture this controversial footage, Psihoyos used high-definition cameras disguised as rocks and hidden underwater microphones. The result is a pointed rebuke of the dolphin-hunting industry and a call to action to end the endeavor. In Japan, the film received harsh reviews, accusations of inaccuracy in its portrayal of the fishermen, as well as a response film that purports to tell the fishermen’s story. However, the film was internationally celebrated and helped spur a rise in wildlife films with a thriller bent, such as The Ivory Game (2016).