Just more than 200 documentary features qualified for Oscar consideration this year, a record-breaking number.

With so many films in the race, it becomes a major challenge to navigate through titles that originate from across the globe. That’s where Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary virtual event, which kicks off today at 9 a.m. PT, comes in. It can be your guide to many of the most accomplished and award-winning nonfiction films with serious aspirations to Oscar recognition.

During today’s event we welcome Oscar-nominated director Tamara Kotevska and producer and DoP Jean Dakar for a discussion of The Tale of Silyan, their National Geographic documentary that tells a story infused with North Macedonian legend about a man who rescues an injured white stork.

When it comes to legends of rock n’ roll, no group surpasses a British band founded in 1968. We’ll hear from the creative team behind Becoming Led Zeppelin, a Sony Pictures Classics release with the distinction of being the highest-grossing documentary of the year.

Along with Becoming Led Zeppelin, music underscores several more films featured on Contenders Documentary. Diane Warren: Relentless explores the songwriter and 16-time Oscar nominee who has written songs for Celine Dion, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Cher and many other greats. Ai Weiwei’s Turandot takes us inside an astounding production of the Puccini opera directed by one of the world’s most famous artists. And Viva Verdi! opens the doors to a fabulous retirement home for opera singers and musicians established by the brilliant composer Giuseppe Verdi. Casa Verdi’s hallways and elegant drawing rooms thrum with violin, percussion, piano and soaring vocals.

We count on documentary filmmakers to bring their acute focus to the most significant social, political and environmental issues of our time. Today we will hear from directors behind some remarkable investigative films: Eugene Jarecki will tell us about his penetrating analysis of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in The Six Billion Dollar Man; Dog Warriors follows the scent of ex-military men who engage in a thrilling, white-knuckle attempt to rescue canines from a grim fate; Trade Secret exposes a disturbing threat to polar bears that has seen the magnificent creatures trafficked for their skins and body parts; The Age of Disclosure blows the lid off the U.S. government’s knowledge of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena—what used to be called UFOs.

Click here for the Contenders Documentary preview magazine

A medical mystery that afflicts a surprisingly large number of people, especially children, comes under the microscope in Complicated, from Open Eye Pictures. In The Hemingway, a filmmaker living with ALS, Patrick Sean O’Brien, takes us inside the world of his imagination in a short film of startling humor and visual audacity co-directed by Evan Mathis.

No film this year is more audacious than Trains, a black & white journey along steel rail lines through events of the 20th century, some poignant and evocative, others terrifying. The film from Polish master Maciej Drygas chugs along without a word of dialogue.

Follow along all day on Deadline.com and on social via #DeadlineContenders, and check back Tuesday when we launch the event’s streaming site with the full panel videos.

Contenders Film: Documentary

(order subject to change)

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY FILMS

The Tale of Silyan

Tamara Kotevska (Director/Producer)
Jean Dakar (Cinematographer/Producer)

CHARLOTTE STREET FILMS/WATERMELON PICTURES

The Six Billion Dollar Man

Eugene Jarecki (Writer/Director/Producer)

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Becoming Led Zeppelin

Bernard MacMahon (Writer/Director)
Allison McGourty (Writer/Producer)

OPEN EYE PICTURES

Complicated

Andrew Abrahams (Director/Producer/Principal DP)

EPF MEDIA & DRYGAS FILM PRODUCTION

Trains

Maciej J Drygas (Writer/Director)

INCIPIT FILM/LA MONTE PRODUCTIONS

Ai Weiwei’s Turandot

Maxim Derevianko (Writer/Director/Cinematographer)
Christine La Monte (Producer)
Marta Zaccaron (Producer)

OPEN EYE PICTURES

Dog Warriors

Andrew Abrahams (Director/Producer/Principal DP)

MASTERCLASS/GREEWICH ENTERTAINMENT

Diane Warren: Relentless

Diane Warren (Songwriter/Subject
Bess Kargman, Director/Producer

ONERIC LTD

The Hemingway

Patrick Sean O’Brien (Co-Director)
Evan Mathis (Co-Director)

UNTITLED FILM WORKS

Trade Secret

Abraham Joffe (Director/Producer)

LA MONTE PRODUCTIONS/SIMONSAYS ENTERTAINMENT/WANBLI

Viva Verdi!

Yvonne Russo (Writer/Director/Producer)
Christine La Monte (Writer/Producer)
Nicholas Pike (Music Composer)

RELENTLESS RELEASING

The Age of Disclosure

Dan Farah (Director/Producer)