THE TOP CONTENDERS

All That Breathes (HBO)

Shaunak Sen’s Hindi-language portrait of two brothers trying to save New Delhi’s black kites won Sundance’s world doc grand jury prize and the doc Gotham Award, and is up for the top Cinema Eye and Spirit awards, as well.

Descendant (Netflix)

Fourteen years after The Order of Myths, Margaret Brown returns to the Mobile, Alabama, area to chronicle the legacy of the last slave ship to come to America. The Obamas-backed doc was awarded a Sundance special jury prize.

Good Night Oppy (Amazon)

The real-life Wall-E was the Mars space rover Opportunity, which was expected to survive for 90 days but lasted 15 years, as Ryan White documents in his crowd-pleaser that also highlights the NASA employees who worked on it.

Navalny (Warner Bros.)

For this Sundance audience award winner, Daniel Roher secured access to Russian resistance leader Alexei Navalny shortly before Putin jailed him, capturing his spirit — and one of the most jawdropping scenes of this, or any, year.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Neon)

Oscar winner Laura Poitras highlights photographer Nan Goldin’s art and activism in this doc, only the second to win the Venice top prize. It’s up for top doc Cinema Eye and Spirit awards.

Fire of Love (Nat Geo/Neon)

The married volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft are the focus of Sara Dosa’s doc, which won Sundance’s doc editing award, was nominated for the top Critics Choice doc award and is up for the top Cinema Eye honor.

Last Flight Home (MTV Doc Films) Doc vet Ondi Timoner, a two-time winner of Sundance’s doc grand jury prize, could land her first Oscar nomination for her most personal work yet: a portrait of her family as her elderly father seeks assistance in ending his life.

Retrograde (Nat Geo)

Daring documentarian Matthew Heineman, Oscar-nominated for 2015’s Cartel Land, chronicles the final months of the war in Afghanistan, and the aftermath of the American withdrawal, from U.S. and Afghan troops’ perspectives.