'Once Upon a Time in Harlem' Builds Its Oscar Case on Five Critics Choice Nominations

Once Upon a Time in Harlem earned five nominations Tuesday at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, Deadline reports, adding to a festival run that started with a Sundance premiere and continued with berths at Cannes, Telluride, Toronto and New York. Deadline describes it as the only documentary to have done all of that. That kind of distinction functions as much as marketing as validation — festival programmers saying yes is a form of advance praise most documentaries never collect — and it dovetails with the film's push for Oscar recognition. Five nominations from a critics' body plus a festival card like that is the shape of a campaign, not just a reception.