If you enjoyed a documentary in a movie theater in the last year, odds are you won’t be seeing it at the Oscars in March.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has revealed its “short list” of 15 films, culled from 89 submissions, that are eligible to be nominated for best documentary feature.

Most of the top-grossing and praised documentaries of the year, including Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Chris Rock’s “Good Hair,” the struggling-rock-band chronicle “Anvil! The Story of Anvil,” the Michael Jackson documentary “This Is It” and R.J. Cutler’s look at Vogue magazine, “The September Issue,” were not eligible, as the category covers movies released prior to Sept. 30.

Only four of the 15 pictures sold more than $500,000 in tickets in theaters. Eight of the films have no reported box office and appear to have played only for the one-week theatrical runs in Los Angeles and New York that are required to be eligible.

This is far from the first time that some of the best regarded documentaries didn’t make the short list. In 1989, there was uproar when “The Thin Blue Line,” about a man who was wrongly convicted of murder in Texas, failed to get an Oscar nomination.

A year later, a letter signed by 44 filmmakers was sent to the academy expressing “shock and outrage” over the omission of Moore’s “Roger & Me,” about the effect of General Motors layoffs.

Bruce Davis, executive director of the academy, defended the process of selecting documentaries.

“In the documentary category and best picture, it would be nice if the best works of art were also the pictures that had been seen by the most people,” he said. “It doesn’t always work out that way.”

The 15 films on the short list are “The Beaches of Agnes,” “Burma VJ,” “The Cove,” “Every Little Step,” “Facing Ali,” “Food, Inc.,” “Garbage Dreams,” “Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders,” “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” “Mugabe and the White African,” “Sergio,” “Soundtrack for a Revolution,” “Under Our Skin,” “Valentino: The Last Emperor,” and “Which Way Home.”