HOLLYWOOD – If there was ever any doubt about the continued greatness of Barack and Michelle Obama, here you go. The former president and first lady received their first Oscar nomination for their production company’s debut documentary.
“American Factory” is up for the 2020 Academy Awards’ Best Documentary category. The film highlights blue-collar workers in post-industrial Ohio who are employed at a factory that was opened by a Chinese billionaire at a former General Motors plant.
The Obamas signed a multi-year deal with Netflix in May 2018 to produce a string of TV series, films and documentaries (both fiction and nonfiction) for the streaming giant.
President Obama tweeted, “Glad to see American Factory’s Oscar nod for Best Documentary. It’s the kind of story we don’t see often enough and it’s exactly what Michelle and I hope to achieve with Higher Ground. Congrats to the incredible filmmakers and entire team!”
The first lady also sent a social media shout out:
“So thrilled that Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar, and all of the incredible people behind #AmericanFactory are nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar! We’re so proud of them and amazed by their talent for storytelling.”
The historic first couple’s Higher Ground production company is also set to release a children’s show for preschoolers called Listen to Your Vegetables & Eat Your Parents, a narrative film adaptation of the biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom and a new series from Nashville creator Callie Khouri called Bloom.
Is there anything they fail at? That’s always a possibility, but we’ll love and support them anyway.
CONGRATULATIONS!
The Academy Awards will air Feb. 9 on ABC. Will you be watching?
