Netflix Picks Up Two Award-Winning Documentary Shorts: 'An Open Field' and 'One Last Order'
Netflix has acquired two festival-honoured documentary shorts, An Open Field and One Last Order, bringing both to its global streaming platform. The deal was announced on 11 August 2026, according to Deadline. Each film arrives with a decorated festival run behind it.
An Open Field is a 38-minute co-production of South Africa, France, and Germany. Directed by Teboho Edkins and produced by his father, Don Edkins, the film follows father and son as they travel to the site in Ethiopia where Teboho's brother, Max Thabiso Edkins, was killed in the 2019 crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. That Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft went down in an open farm field in the Gimbichu district of Ethiopia, killing all 157 people on board. The crash was caused by the faulty activation of Boeing's MCAS automated flight software — a system designed to push the aircraft's nose down automatically under certain flight conditions. The film won the IDFA Award for Best Short Documentary at the 2025 International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam, a prize that carries a €5,000 purse, as listed on IDFA's official winners page IDFA.
One Last Order, directed by Lauren DeFilippo and Sam Soko, turns to a quieter story. It follows Sighle Williams working her final shift after 37 years at Mac's Drive-Thru, a fixture in Gainesville, Florida. The film had its world premiere at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, and later screened at a hometown premiere at Gainesville's Bo Diddley Plaza on 2 May 2026. Along the way it collected a string of audience and jury honours: Best Documentary and the Audience Award at the 2026 Aspen Shortsfest, the Short Film Audience Award at the Miami Film Festival, and the Best Documentary Short Audience Award at the Nantucket Film Festival, per Deadline.
Both films now move from the festival circuit — the travelling showcase circuit where short documentaries build word-of-mouth before finding wider distribution — to a platform that reaches subscribers in more than 190 countries. Documentary shorts, which typically run under 40 minutes, often struggle to secure commercial distribution outside festivals; a streaming acquisition gives them a lifespan well beyond the festival calendar.
No release dates for either title on Netflix have been announced.
