Of Stars and Men, a 1964 animated feature by John Hubley which tells of humankind's quest to find its place in the universe, won an award in the documentary category at the San Francisco Film Festival.
[4] In the article written to accompany the event, Kees Driessen talked about the "least controversial" form of the genre; the "illustrated radio documentary", citing Aardman Animation's 1987 film Lip Synch: Going Equipped (directed by Peter Lord) as an example.
[6] His films from the late 1980s-onward typically feature recordings of people talking about certain topics in their lives (such as alcohol abuse or loneliness), accompanied by Fierlinger's animation which mainly illustrates the stories in a realistic way.
This is a contrast from films and series such as Aardman's Creature Comforts, which recontextualise such audio recordings by combining them with more fanciful, non-realistic animated interpretations.
[9] Some animated documentaries that were nominated or won for Oscars are So Much for So Little (1949),[10] Sunrise Over Tiananmen Square (1998),[11] The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation (2005), I Met the Walrus (2007), Last Day of Freedom (2015) [12] and Flee (2021).