‘Apollo 11,’ ‘Amazing Grace’ Selected for International Documentary Association Shortlist

Dave McNary

Click here to read the full article.

The International Documentary Association has announced its shortlist for best feature, a category that includes “Apollo 11,” “American Factory,” “Diego Maradona,” “The Biggest Little Farm,” and the Aretha Franklin concert film “Amazing Grace.”

The 2019 awards will be presented during a ceremony at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Dec. 7. Up to 10 nominees in each of the categories will be selected from the shortlist and announced on Oct. 23, when nominees in all categories are announced. IDA members will have access to nominated films to vote for Best Feature and Best Short starting Nov. 4.

More from Variety

For the first time, the IDA will present an award for best director. Awards will be presented in the following categories: best feature, best short, best curated series, best episodic series, best multi-part documentary, best short form series, best audio documentary, David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award, best music documentary, best director, best cinematography, best editing, best writing, best music score, and the Pare Lorentz Award.

“The feature and short documentaries on this year’s IDA shortlists represent a remarkable breadth of work,” said Simon Kilmurry, executive director of the IDA. “These films are urgent clarion calls for action, they are exposing injustice and inhumanity, they are love stories and offer great hope — and they contain the full breadth of the human experience. They have all earned deserved attention.”

IDA Documentary Awards 2019 Features Shortlist
Advocate (Israel, Canada, Switzerland. Directors and Producers: Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche.
Producers: Paul Cadieux and Joelle Bertossa)
Amazing Grace (USA / NEON. Producers: Alan Elliot, Tirrell D. Whittley, Sabrina V. Owens, Joe Boyd, Rob
Johnson, Chiemi Karasawa, Spike Lee, Angie Seegers and Joseph Woolf)
American Factory (USA / Netflix. Directors and Producers: Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert. Producers:
Jeff Reichert and Julie Parker Benello)
Apollo 11 (USA / NEON and CNN Films. Director and Producer: Todd Douglas Miller. Producers: Thomas
Petersen and Evan Strauss)
Aquarela (UK, Germany, Denmark / Sony Pictures Classics. Director: Victor Kossakovsky. Producers:
Aimara Reques, Heino Deckert and Sigrid Dyekjær)
Black Mother (USA / Grasshopper Film. Director and Producer: Khalik Allah. Producer: Leah Giblin)
Cunningham (USA, Germany / Magnolia Pictures. Director and Producer: Alla Kovgan. Producers: Helge
Albers, Ilann Girard, Elizabeth Delude-Dix, Kelly Gilpatrick and Derrick Tseng)
Dark Suns (Canada / Dogwoof. Director and Producer: Julien Elie)
Diego Maradona (UK / HBO. Director: Asif Kapadia. Producers: James Gay-Rees and Paul Martin)
EARTH (Austria / KimStim. Director and Producer: Nikolaus Geyrhalter. Producers: Michael Kitzberger,
Markus Glaser and Wolfgang Widerhofer)
For Sama (UK, Syria / PBS Distribution, FRONTLINE. Director and Producer: Waad al-Kateab. Director:
Edward Watts)
Hail Satan? (USA, Sweden / Magnolia Pictures. Director: Penny Lane. Producer: Gabriel Sedgwick)
Honeyland (Macedonia / NEON. Director: Tamara Kotevska. Director and Producer: Ljubomir Stefanov.
Producer: Atanas Georgiev)
Kabul, City in the Wind (Netherlands, Afghanistan, Germany. Director: Aboozar Amini. Producer: Jia Zhao)
Lemebel (Chile, Colombia / Compañía de Cine. Director and Producer: Joanna Reposi Garibaldi. Producer:
Paula Sáenz-Laguna)
Midnight Family (Mexico, USA / 1091. Director and Producer: Luke Lorentzen. Producers: Kellen Quinn,
Daniela Alatorre and Elena Fortes)
Midnight Traveler (USA, UK, Qatar / Oscilloscope Laboratories. Director: Hassan Fazili. Producers: Su Kim
and Emelie Coleman Mahdavian)

One Child Nation (USA / Amazon Studios. Directors and Producers: Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang.
Producers: Christoph Jörg, Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements and Carolyn Hepburn)
Our Time Machine (China / POV, Da Xiang. Directors and Producers: Yang Sun and S. Leo Chiang)
Present.Perfect. (USA, Hong Kong / Burn The Film. Director: Shengze Zhu. Producer: Zhengfan Yang)
Roll Red Roll (USA / POV. Director and Producer: Nancy Schwartzman. Producers: Steven Lake and Jessica
Devaney)
Sea of Shadows (USA, Austria / National Geographic. Director: Richard Ladkani. Producers: Walter Kohler
and Wolfgang Knopfler)
The Apollo (USA / HBO. Director and Producer: Roger Ross Williams. Producers: Lisa Cortés, Jeanne Elfant
Festa and Cassidy Hartmann)
The Biggest Little Farm (USA / NEON, LD Entertainment. Director and Producer: John Chester. Producer:
Sandra Keats)
The Cave (USA, Syria, Denmark / National Geographic. Director: Feras Fayyad. Producers: Kirstine Barfod
and Sigrid Dyekjaer)
The Edge of Democracy (USA, Brazil / Netflix. Director and Producer: Petra Costa. Producers: Joanna
Natasegara, Shane Boris and Tiago Pavan)
The Feeling of Being Watched (USA / POV. Director: Assia Boundaoui. Producer: Jessica Devaney)
The Hottest August (USA, Canada / Grasshopper Film. Director and Producer: Brett Story. Producer:
Danielle Varga)
The Proposal (USA / Oscilloscope Laboratories. Director: Jill Magid. Producers: Charlotte Cook, Laura
Coxson and Jarred Alterman)
This is Not a Movie (Germany, Canada / National Film Board of Canada. Director: Yung Chang. Producers:
Anita Lee, Allyson Luchak, Nelofer Pazira and Ingmar Trost)

IDA Documentary Awards 2019 Shorts Shortlist
30 for 30 Shorts: Mack Wrestles (USA / ESPN. Directors and Producers: Taylor Hess and Erin Sanger.
Producers: Erin Leyden and Gentry Kirby)
A Love Song for Latasha (USA. Director and Producer: Sophia Nahli Allison. Producers: Janice Duncan and
Fam Udeorji)
After Maria (USA / Netflix. Director: Nadia Hallgren. Producer: Lauren Cioffi)
All Inclusive (Switzerland / Some Shorts. Director: Corina Schwingruber Ilić. Producer: Stella Händler)
America (USA / Aubin Pictures. Director: Garrett Bradley. Producers: Lauren Domino and Catherine Gund)

Black to Techno (USA / Frieze. Director: Jenn Nkiru)
Easter Snap (USA. Director and Producer: RaMell Ross. Producers: Joslyn Barnes and Su Kim)
In the Absence (USA, Korea / Field of Vision. Director: Yi Seung-Jun. Producer: Gary Byung-Seok Kam)
La Bala de Sandoval (Ecuador / Vtape. Director and Producer: Jean-Jacques Martinod)
Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a girl) (UK, USA, Afghanistan / Lifetime Films, A&E
IndieFilms. Director: Carol Dysinger. Producer: Elena Andreicheva)
Lost and Found (USA, Myanmar / National Geographic. Director: Orlando von Einsiedel. Producers: Mark
Bauch, Harri Grace and Dan Lin)
Marielle and Monica (Brazil, UK / The Guardian. Director: Fabio Erdos. Producer: Marina Costa)
Sam and the Plant Next Door (UK / The Guardian. Director and Producer: Omer Sami)
Scenes from a Dry City (USA / Field of Vision. Directors and Producers: Simon Wood and Francois Verster)
Show Me the Way (USA / Topic.com. Director and Producer: Kate Kunath)
St. Louis Superman (USA / MTV Documentary Films, Al Jazeera Witness and Meralta Films. Directors and
Producers: Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan. Producer: Poh Si Teng)
The Love Bugs (USA. Directors and Producers: Allison Otto and Maria Clinton)
The Nightcrawlers (USA, Philippines / National Geographic. Director: Alexander Mora. Producers: Joanna
Natasekura, Doireann Maddock and Abigail Anketell-Jones)
The Separated (USA / The Atlantic. Director and Producer: Jeremy Raff)
The Unconditional (USA. Director and Producer: Dave Adams. Producers: Adam Soltis, Renee Woodruff
Adams, Josie Swantek Heitz and Chris Tuss)
Valley of the Rulers (Serbia, Israel. Director: Efim Graboy. Producer: Dejan Petrovic)

Best of Variety

Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.