The 2010 Best Documentary Oscar went to Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens for The Cove at the 82nd Academy Awards on March 7, 2010. The Cove is a documentary about the slaughter of dolphins by fisherman in a small town, Taijii, in Japan.http://theenvelope.latimes.com/news/la-etw-fisher-stevens4-2010mar04,0,1699406.story The documentary's screen writer was Mark Monroe and it was executive produced by Jim Clark.http://festival.sundance.org/2009/film_events/films/cove

Best Documentary Nominees

Documentary - Feature

• Anders Østergaard and Lise Lense-Møller for Burma VJ - VJ stands for video journalists, who shot this shaky and sometime blurred footage with cameras small enough to be concealed in times of threat and danger. It contains interviews of ordinary people carrying on with their everyday lives under a regime forcing change on its people.http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/movies/20burm.html
  
• Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens for The Cove - The trainer of TV's Flipper heads up a team who investigate the killing of dolphins in Taiji, Japan, uncovering the brutal and primitive methods used in the "killing zone."http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/movies/31cove.html
  
• Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein for Food, Inc. - Looking at the abuse of animals in the industrial production of production, the film attempts to point at all aspects of modern food production, but mainly focuses on the human cost of eating high fat, high sugar and processed foods as a regular diet.http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/movies/12food.html
  
• Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith for The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers - Daniel Ellsberg, an Ivy League-educated Marine who served on the ground in Vietnam, became a pro-war analyst in the State Dept.; eventually coming to see its immorality through his girlfriend Patricia, who argued relentlessly against the war.http://www.kqed.org/arts/movies/article.jsp?essid=27917
  
• Rebecca Cammisa for Which Way Home - Following the lives of children smuggled into the United States from Mexico, this film reveals the terrible conditions under which they live, why they travel to the US and their unknown fate.http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/110356-which-way-home/

Documentary - Short Subject Winner

• Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett for Music by Prudence
  

The Other Nominees Included:

• Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill for China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
  
• Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher for The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
  
• Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert for The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
  
• Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra for Rabbit à la Berlin
  

Documentary - Feature

• 2000: Kevin McDonald One Day In September
• 2001: Mark Jonathon Harris Into the Arms of Strangers
• 2002: Jean-Xavier de Lestrade Murder on a Sunday Morning
• 2003: Michael Moore Bowling For Columbine
• 2004: Errol Morris The Fog of War
• 2005: Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski Born into Brothels
• 2006: Luc Jacquet and Yves Darondeau March of the Penguins
• 2007: Davis Guggenheim An Inconvenient Truth
• 2008: Alex Gibney and Eva Orner Taxi to the Dark Side
• 2009: James Marsh and Simon Chinn Man on Wire

The 2010 Oscars received a little bit of self-promotion from Rick O'Barry, held up a sign that said "Text Dolphin to 44144". The team here accepted their award for The Cove, which won Best Documentary at the 82nd Academy Awards.