The International Documentary Association announced the complete list of nominees, recipients and special honorees Wednesday for the IDA Documentary Awards, the most prestigious awards ceremony dedicated to non-fiction filmmaking in the United States. The ceremony recognizes achievements in feature-length and short form documentary, alongside the newly categorized Curated Series, Limited Series, Episodic Series and Short Form Series.
Nominees for Best Documentary are Tales of the Grim Sleeper, The Salt of the Earth, Finding Vivian Maier, Point and Shoot and Citizenfour. These nominations have been considered an indicator for which films may find their way to the Oscars in February, however past winners have often not been in alignment with the Academy. Speaking of which, the nominees for Short Documentary interestingly includes only one of the films shortlisted for the Academy Awards, Our Curse. The remaining IDA nominees for short-form are Ghost Train, Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall, Tashi and Monk and The Queen.
PBS dominates the Curated Series nominees with Independent Lens, American Masters, American Experience and POV all listed as contenders against HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. Limited series nominees include Chicagoland, COSMOS, The Sixties, Time of Death and Years of Living Dangerously.
Episodic Series looks at Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown, Morgan Spurlock: Inside Man, Oprah’s Master Class, Our American with Lisa Ling and Vice. Best Short Form Series goes to the Internet to nominate A Short History of Highrise, Last Chance High, NY Times’ Op-Docs, NPR’s Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt, and VICE News’ Russian Roulette.
The IDA Documentary Awards also recognizes films from students at the university level and films in the humanities that aim to “break down the walls of ignorance which separate us.” Technical awards are additionally given out in cinematography, music, editing, writing and use of news footage. Special honor awards will go to Robert Redford, Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, Rithy Panh and Darius Clark Monroe.
The winners of the 30th Annual IDA Doc Awards will be announced December 5th.
