How to watch A House Made of Splinters – is it on Netflix?

Is A House Made of Splinters on Netflix? The critically-acclaimed documentary has just been nominated for an Oscar, so here’s where you can watch it on streaming.

The nominations for the 95th Academy Awards have finally been announced. Everything Everywhere All at Once is the leader of the pack with 11 nominations, followed by Netflix’s war epic All Quiet on The Western Front with nine nods.

Top Gun: Maverick, the second-highest-grossing movie of 2022 behind Avatar: The Way of Water, bagged six nominations, including one for Best Picture.

In the Best Documentary Feature category, A House Made of Splinters bagged a nomination – so, here’s where it’s available to watch and stream.

Is A House Made of Splinters on streaming?

In the US, A House Made of Splinters isn’t available to stream on any platform, including Netflix and Amazon Prime, nor is it available to buy or rent on-demand.

There’s another option, though: it is available to stream on BBC iPlayer under its Storyville category. If you’re in the UK, you can access this easily. If you’re in the US, you’ll be able to watch it with the help of a VPN.

The movie had limited screenings at film festivals in 2022, including the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival – but unlike the other Best Documentary nominees, it doesn’t have an American distributor.

Director Simon Lereng Wilmont told Deadline: “Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to secure US distribution. So, we’ve made it this far all by ourselves. It’s kind of like déjà vu with my last film, The Distant Barking of Dogs, where it was exactly the same situation.”

What is A House Made of Splinters about?

A House Made of Splinters follows the life of a young boy named Kolya in an orphanage in the east of Ukraine, filmed before Russia’s invasion of the country. You can watch the trailer below:

The official description on iPlayer reads: “Tears turn to soap bubbles, and hugs turn to fights, in this award-winning film about an orphanage in eastern Ukraine, filmed before Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

“In a large ramshackle house near the front line in war-torn eastern Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian women run an orphanage. Children whose homes have been shattered by poverty, violence, and alcohol can safely stay there for up to nine months until a decision is made on whether to return them home, foster them or move them to another orphanage.

“When one child checks out of the orphanage, a new one always checks in, missing their parents. Children like Kolya, who smokes cigarettes on the sly, steals, and draws tattoos on his arms, but who also looks after his younger siblings before collapsing, crying, into his drunk mother’s arms.”

For the full list of nominations for the 2023 Oscars, click here.

The 95th Academy Awards then take place on March 12, 2023. You can find out how to watch the ceremony here.