Filling out your Oscar ballot just became a lot easier, as Amazon Prime just released the Academy Award-nominated documentary Time on YouTube for free. The film is now available to all audiences even if you do not have a subscription to Prime Video. At only 80 minutes, it’s a must-see before the awards ceremony, as well as one of the most original films of the year.
Produced and directed by Garrett Bradley, Time follows the story of Sibil Fox Richardson as she fights for the release of her husband, Rob, who is serving a 60-year prison sentence for his participation in an armed robbery. Fox herself served three and a half years for her role in the crime. Shot in black-and-white, Time blends original footage with home videos for a touchingly intimate story about love, guilt, responsibility, and justice. Its deeply-felt universality is outstanding, achieved through Bradley’s deft combination of emotion and evidence. It’s impossible not to watch Time and feel intense grief and anger.
The film had a fantastic run in the film festival circuit last year, and received rave reviews from critics. Time has already picked up a slew of awards this season, including the Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary. Our chief film critic Matt Goldberg named it the eighth-best film of the year, and deemed it “a damning portrait of America.” It’s certainly a frontrunner for the Best Documentary Feature award, but it is competing against the other fantastic entries including Collective, Crip Camp, The Mole Agent, and My Octopus Teacher.
Time will most likely only be available on YouTube for a limited time, as this is probably meant to boost the film’s visibility and buzz as the Academy Awards voting is currently underway (which begins on the 15th and ends on the 20th). This is one of the first times in Oscar history in which most of the nominated films are available on streaming services or on-demand, so watching these amazing works has never been easier.
The Academy Awards will air on April 28. Watch Time for free on YouTube below.