Wednesday morning, the International Documentary Association announced its nominees and select winners for the 2014 IDA Awards, an annual tribute to the best-of-the-best of non-fiction film and television. Pertinent to award season are the Best Feature contenders, including Lara Poitras” recent hit “CITIZENFOUR” “Point and Shoot,” an American filmmaker”s look inside Libyan prisons, “Finding Vivian Maier,” a portrait of the posthumously legendary photographer, Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado's artist profile “The Salt of the Earth,” and Nick Broomfield”s verite serial killer investigation, “Tales of the Grim Sleeper.” Unlike years past, all five films look like viable Best Documentary candidates come Oscar time, making the IDA Awards even more influential.
Past winners include “The Square” (2013), “Searching for Sugar Man” (2012), “Nostalgia for Light” (2011), and “Waste Land” (2010).
For his work founding the Sundance Institute and producing documentaries through Sundance Productions, the IDA Awards will honor Robert Redford with its career achievement award. Past winners include Alex Gibney, Barbara Kopple, Errol Morris, Sheila Nevins, Michael Moore and Werner Herzog.
Notably missing from the top category are critically acclaimed and crowd pleasing docs like “Life Itself,” “Keep on Keepin' On,” “Red Army.” Though reactions to the under-the-radar “CITIZENFOUR” have catapulted the Edward Snowden expose to the top of many prediction lists, the Oscar race is still anyone”s game, and films on and off of the IDA Awards” list could pull through as a winner. We”ll know more when the Best Documentary shortlist surfaces in early December.
The IDA Documentary Awards will take place on Friday, Dec. 5.
Read the full list of nominations below:
Best Feature Award
“CITIZENFOUR”
“Finding Vivian Maier”
“Point and Shoot”
“The Salt of the Earth”
“Tales of the Grim Sleeper”
Best Short Award
“Ghost Train”
“Our Curse”
“Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall”
“Tashi and the Monk”
“The Queen”
Best Curated Series Award
“American Experience”
“American Masters”
“Independent Lens”
“POV”
“Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel”
Best Limited Series Award
“Chicagoland”
“COSMOS: A SpaceTime Odyssey”
“The Sixties”
“Time of Death”
“Years of Living Dangerously”
Best Episodic Series Award
“Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown”
“Morgan Spurlock Inside Man”
“Oprah's Master Class”
“Our America with Lisa Ling”
“VICE”
Best Short Form Series Award
“A Short History of the Highrise”
“Last Chance High”
“Op-Docs”
“Planet Money Makes a T-shirt”
“Russian Roulette”
Humanities Award
“How I Got Over”
“Keep On Keepin” On”
“Limited Partnership”
David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award
“Cast in India”
“Evaporating Borders”
“Hotel 22”
“My Dad's a Rocker”
“Solitary Plains”
ABCNews Videosource Awards
“1971”
“The Assassination of President Kennedy”
“Captivated The Trials of Pamela Smart”
“Concerning Violence”
“The Joe Show”
Creative Recognition Awards
Best Cinematography
“Elevator”
Best Editing
“Last Days in Vietnam”
Best Music
“Alfred and Jakobine”
Best Writing
“Finding Vivian Maier”
Pare Lorentz Award
“Tashi and the Monk” Directors: Andrew Hinton, Johnny Burke
Career Achievement Award
Robert Redford