With ‘Minding the Gap,’ Hulu Is Looking to Make Oscar History, Too

So much of that chatter during this awards season has been about Netflix and whether this is the year they finally make Oscar history and break into the Best Picture category at the Academy Awards. If it’s going to happen any year, it would seem to be this year, as they’ve come armed with Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, a gorgeously photographed, black-and-white story that touches on the director’s own upbringing in Mexico City. The reviews have been rapturous, and the Oscar buzz is strong. The one real hurdle Netflix has to clear is that … they’re Netflix. But most awards prognosticators think this will indeed be the year.

All the big news about Roma and Netflix, however, is obscuring the potential milestone for Hulu. While Hulu has seen big success at the Emmys for their TV output, their original films have paled in comparison to competitors Netflix and Amazon. But this year, they’re looking at their best shot at getting their very first Oscar nomination, with the documentary feature Minding the Gap.

Minding the Gap is a documentary by director Bing Liu, who filmed the lives of his friends — and ultimately himself — over the course of many years, drawing out and threading together a story that touches on growing up, notions of family, abuse, masculinity, and substance abuse. It’s a movie that unfolds itself, getting deeper, more complicated, more humane, and more profound as it goes on. Easily one of the best documentaries of the year, and people have been noticing.

Hulu acquired the film at Sundance, where the film won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking. Since then, Minding the Gap has steadily picked up documentary awards and nominations, especially now that we’ve entered awards season. Some of the more notable ones:

• NOMINATED: Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best Documentary, Best Director, and two other awards.
• WINNER: Critics Choice Documentary Award for Best First Time Director
• NOMINATED: Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary and Truer Than Fiction
• NOMINATED: Gotham Award for Best Documentary and Audience Award
• WINNER: New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Documentary
• WINNER: National Board of Review Top 5 Documentaries of the Year

This is what the resumé of an awards contender looks like. Last year’s Oscars announced their list of 15 finalists for the Best Documentary Feature award around this time, and it would be a shock not to see Minding the Gap on that list. One step closer to making history for Hulu, which is no stranger to firsts when it comes to TV awards. Two years ago, The Handmaid’s Tale won the Outstanding Drama award at the Primetime Emmys, becoming the first streaming series to win the top prize, and beating rivals Netflix and Amazon in the process.

At the Oscars, it was actually Amazon which scored first, nabbing a Best Picture nomination and Best Actor and Best Screenplay trophies for Casey Affleck and Kenneth Lonergan, respectively. Last year, Netflix has its own Oscar milestones, with a major-category nomination for Mudbound supporting actress Mary J. Blige and their first win for a feature film, taking Best Documentary Feature for Icarus.