37th IDA Documentary Awards shortlists announced: ‘Flee,’ ‘Ascension,’ ‘Summer of Soul’ in the running

Erik Anderson October 25, 2021

Gotham nominees Ascension, Faya Dayi, Flee, President, Summer of Soul all make the IDA shortlist cut

The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced the 37th Annual IDA Documentary Awards shortlists for the Best Feature and Best Short categories. The nominees for all categories will be revealed on Monday, November 15, 2021. The 2021 awards ceremony will take place Saturday, February 5, 2022 at Paramount Studios.

From the shortlists, up to ten nominees in each of the feature and short documentary categories will be selected. Following the nominees announcement, IDA members will vote for Best Feature and Best Short starting Monday, December 13, 2021.

Along with the top Gotham Award contenders, others in the running for an IDA nomination include NEON’s Alvin Ailey doc Ailey, Hulu’s Jacinta from Jessica Earnshaw, Michael Bonfiglio’s Where Are You, Charlie Brown? from Apple TV+ and Yung Chang’s Wuhan Wuhan.

This year, IDA received 748 submissions across all categories, including 314 documentary features from 58 countries, and 137 documentary shorts from 33 countries. The feature documentary shortlist was selected from 314 films from 58 countries. 52% of directors and 55% of producers are women, 59% of directors and 41% of producers identify as BIPOC. 14% of directors and 17% of producers are LGBTQ. The short documentary shortlist was selected from 137 films from 33 countries. 59% of directors and 59% of producers are women, 65% of directors and 53% of producers identify as BIPOC. 12% of directors and 12% of producers are LGBTQ. 0% of directors and 0% of producers are disabled.

The shortlists and nominees are selected by independent committees of 228 documentary makers, curators, critics, and industry experts from 44 countries. 51% of the committee identified as female, 59% as BIPOC, 20% as LGBTQ+ and 2% as disabled.

“These shortlists embody a range of cinematic styles, topics, themes and perspectives that reflect the best nonfiction filmmaking from throughout the world,” said Rick Pérez, Executive Director of IDA. “From the urgent, to the poetic and profound, these films capture the unique way the documentary film is in dialogue with the national and global cultural landscape.”

IDA Documentary Awards 2021 Features Shortlist:

Ailey (USA / NEON. Director: Jamila Wignot. Producer: Lauren DeFilippo.)

Apenas el sol (Nothing but the Sun) (Switzerland, Paraguay/ Film republic. Director/Producer: Arami Ullón. Producer: Pascal Trächslin.)

Ascension (USA. Director/Producer: Jessica Kingdon. Producers: Kira Simon-Kennedy, Nathan Truesdell.)

Black Power: A British Story of Resistance (United Kingdom / Amazon Studios. Director: George Amponsah. Producer: Helen Bart.)

Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters (USA / Kino Lorber. Director: Tom Hurwitz. Director/Producer: Rosalynde LeBlanc. Producer: Duana C. Butler.)

Charm Circle (USA. Director/Producer: Nira Burstein. Producer: Betsy Laikin.)

Convergence: Courage in a Crisis (USA / Netflix. Director/Producer: Orlando von Einsiedel. Producers: Dan Cogan, Liz Garbus, Amy Hobby, Laura McNaught.)

Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground (USA / HBO Max. Director: Sophia Nahli Allison.)

Faya Dayi (Ethiopia, USA, Qatar / Janus Films. Director/Producer: Jessica Beshir.)

FLEE (Denmark, France, Norway / NEON. Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Producers: Monica Hellstrӧm,Signe Byrge Sørensen.)

FRUITS OF LABOR (USA / Grasshopper Films, POV. Director/Producer: Emily Cohen Ibañez.)

In the Same Breath (USA, China / HBO, HBO Max. Director/Producer: Nanfu Wang. Producers: Jialing Zhang, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Carolyn Hepburn.)

Jacinta (USA / Hulu, ABC News. Director: Jessica Earnshaw. Producers: Jessica Earnshaw, Holly Meehl, Nimisha Mukerji.)

Life of Crime 1984-2020 (USA / HBO, HBO Max. Director/Producer: Jon Alpert. Producers: Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller.)

Miguel’s War (Lebanon, Germany, Spain. Director/Producer: Eliane Raheb.)

North By Current (USA / POV. Director/Producer: Angelo Madsen Minax. Producer: Felix Endara.)

Not Going Quietly (USA / Greenwich Entertainment. Director: Nicholas Bruckman. Producer: Amanda Roddy.)

President (Denmark, USA, Norway. Director: Camilla Nielsson. Producer: Signe Byrge Sørensen, Joslyn Barnes.)

Rebel Hearts (USA / discovery+. Director: Pedro Kos. Producers: Kira Carstensen, Shawnee Isaac-Smith, Judy Korin.)

So Late So Soon (USA / Oscilloscope Laboratories. Director: Daniel Hymanson. Producers: Trace Henderson, Josh Penn, Kellen Quinn, Noah Stahl.)

Storm Lake (USA / Independent Lens. Director: Beth Levison, Jerry Risius. Producer: Beth Levison.)

Summer of Soul (USA / Hulu, Searchlight Pictures. Director: Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. Producers: Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent, David Dinerstein.)

Taming the Garden (Switzerland, Germany, Georgia. Director/Producer: Salomé Jashi. Producers: Vadim Jendreyko, Erik Winker, Martin Roelly.)

This Stained Dawn (Pakistan, Canada. Director/Producer: Anam Abbas.)

Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre (USA / History. Director/Producers: Stanley Nelson, Marco Williams. Producer: Julie Sisson.)

Who Are You, Charlie Brown? (USA / Apple TV+. Director: Michael Bonfiglio. Producers: Kimberly Small, Marcella Steingart.)

Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker (USA / Kino Lorber. Director: Chris McKim. Producers: Randy Barbato, Fenton Bailey.)

Writing With Fire (India / ITVS, Music Box. Director/Producers: Rintu Thomas, Sushmit Ghosh.)

Wuhan Wuhan (USA / Starlight Media Inc., SA Inc., Kartemquin Films. Director: Yung Chang. Producers: Peter Luo, Donna Gigliotti, Diane Quon.)

IDA Documentary Awards 2021 Shorts Shortlist:

A Broken House (USA, Lebanon / Condé Nast Entertainment, The New Yorker, POV. Director/Producer: Jimmy Goldblum. Producers: Matt Weaver, Harrison Nalevansky.)

Águilas (USA / The New Yorker. Director/Producers: Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, Maite Zubiaurre.)

Ain’t No Time For Women (Canada / Travelling. Director: Sarra El Abed. Producer: Isabelle Grignon-Francke)

Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol (USA / The New York Times. Directors: Malachy Browne, David Botti. Producers: Haley Willis, Christiaan Triebert, Evan Hill, Cora Engelbrecht, Stella Cooper.)

E14 (United Kingdom / Fifth Season LTD. Director: Peiman Zekavat. Producer: Sanam Jehanfard.)

Joe Buffalo (Canada / Condé Nast Entertainment, The New Yorker. Director/Producer: Amar Chebib. Producers: Hayley Morin, Mack Stannard)

Joychild (USA / The New Yorker, Stanford University. Director/Producer: Aurora Brachman)

Kalsubai (India / Film and Television Institute of India. Director: Yudhajit Basu)

Open Shutters (USA, Republic of Korea / Field of Vision. Director/Producer: Do Youjin.)

Red Taxi (USA, Hong Kong / Field of Vision. Director/Producer: Anonymous)

same/different/both/neither (Brazil / Photogram Films Distribution. Director/Producer: Adriana Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa.)

Senior Prom (USA / PBS, Independent Lens. Director/Producer: Luisa Conlon. Producer: Jessica Chermayeff.)

Since you arrived, my heart stopped belonging to me (Desde que llegaste, mi corazón dejó de pertenecerme) (USA / The New Yorker. Director/Producer: Erin Semine Kökdil)

Status Pending (USA / Al Jazeera English – Witness. Director: Priscilla Gonzalez Sainz. Producer: Laura Reich.)

Takeover (USA. Director: Emma Francis-Snyder. Producer: Tony Gerber.)

The Last Cruise (USA / HBO Max. Director/Producer: Hannah Olson. Producers: Shane Boris, Joe Beshenkovsky, James A Smith.)

The Seeker (USA / Topic. Director: Lance Edmands. Producers: Kyle Martin, Sarah Tihany.)

Author
Recent Posts

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.