In the increasingly noisy and contentious documentary race–as beleaguered critics and Oscar doc branch members try to decide which of the overwhelming number of films they should see–every award group nomination makes it easier for them to decide.
Thus, the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking nominees for the 7th Annual Nonfiction Film Awards were revealed in New York Wednesday night. Zachary Heinzerling’s Sundance hit “Cutie and the Boxer” nabbed six nominations, while Joshua Oppenheimer’s “The Act of Killing” followed with five. Three more well-reviewed fest faves fill out the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking category: Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s abortion doc “After Tiller,” Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s commercial fishing expose “Leviathan” and Sarah Polley family memoir “Stories We Tell.”
Forty feature films and six shorts were vying for this year’s Cinema Eye Honors. Nominees for Outstanding Feature were determined by votes from the 23-person nominations committee as well as more than 80 directors of this year’s eligible films.
The group has added its first annual Nonfiction Films Made for Television award. Four of the six films come from HBO Documentary Films ( Lucy Walker’s “The Crash Reel,” Dawn Porter’s “Gideon’s Army,” Alex Gibney’s “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” and Sebastian Junger’s “Which Way to the Front Line From Here: The Life and Times of Tim Hetherington”). PBS nabbed the other two nominations, including Susan Lacy’s “Inventing David Geffen” (American Masters) and Christine Turner’s “Homegoings” (POV). The nomination for Junger’s Hetherington film is noteworthy, as Junger and Hetherington were both nominated for two Cinema Eye awards in 2011 for their film “Restrepo,” and Hetherington posthumously won the Cinema Eye Honor for Nonfiction Short in 2012 for his film, “Diary.”
For the first time in Cinema Eye history, more women were nominated for the Directing Award than their male counterparts–of the 11 filmmakers nominated for Cinema Eye’s top Feature Film award, 7 are women.
Six films were nominated for short film, including Laura Poitras’ “Death of a Prisoner,” which first appeared as a New York Times Op-Doc in advance of her ongoing breaking news stories about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Poitras won the Cinema Eye Honor for Direction in 2011 for her film, “The Oath.”
There are ten contenders for Cinema Eye’s Audience Choice Prize, which includes high-profile documentaries from Morgan Neville (box office hit “20 Feet From Stardom”), Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s “Blackfish” (from CNN Films) and music docs from Greg “Freddy” Camalier (“Muscle Shoals) and Dave Grohl (“Sound City”). For the first time, a director earned a double nomination: Jehane Noujaim directed “Rafea: Solar Mama,” with Mona Eldaeif, as well as Egyptian revolution doc “The Square.”
The 7th Annual Cinema Eye Honors winners will be announced in early January 2014 in New York City.
A full list of nominees is below.
Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking
The Act of Killing
Directed by: Joshua Oppenheimer
Produced by: Signe Byrge Sørensen
After Tiller
Directed by: Martha Shane and Lana Wilson
Produced by: Martha Shane and Lana Wilson
Cutie and the Boxer
Directed by: Zachary Heinzerling
Produced by: Lydia Dean Pilcher, Mark Steele
Leviathan
Directed by: Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel
Produced by: Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel
Stories We Tell
Directed by: Sarah Polley
Produced by: Anita Lee
Outstanding Achievement in Direction
The Act of Killing
Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer
After Tiller
Directed by Martha Shane and Lana Wilson
First Cousin Once Removed
Directed by Alan Berliner
Leviathan
Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel
The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear
Directed by Tinatin Gurchiani
Stories We Tell
Directed by Sarah Polley
Outstanding Achievement in Editing
The Act of Killing
Edited by Janus Billeskov Jansen
First Cousin Once Removed
Edited by Alan Berliner
Let the Fire Burn
Edited by Nels Bangerter
Leviathan
Edited by Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel
Our Nixon
Edited by Francisco Bello
Outstanding Achievement in Production
The Act of Killing
Signe Byrge Sørensen
After Tiller
Martha Shane and Lana Wilson
Dirty Wars
Anthony Arnove, Brenda Coughlin and Jeremy Scahill
Expedition to the End of the World
Michael Haslund-Christensen
The Square
Karim Amer
About the Cinema Eye Honors and the 2014 Awards
The Cinema Eye Honors were founded in 2007 to recognize excellence in artistry and craft in nonfiction filmmaking. It was the first and remains the only international nonfiction award to recognize the whole creative team, presenting annual craft awards in directing, producing, cinematography, editing, composing and graphic design/animation.
Cinema Eye is headed by a core team that includes Founding Director AJ Schnack (director, Caucus and Kurt Cobain About A Son), Honors Chair Esther Robinson (director, A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory; Cinema Eye nominee for Outstanding Debut, 2008), Board Chair Andrea Meditch (executive producer, Buck and Man on Wire), Nominations Committee Chair Charlotte Cook (Head of Programming, Hot Docs Film Festival) and Managing Director Nathan Truesdell (producer, Caucus and We Always Lie to Strangers). Will Lennon is Cinema Eye’s Program Manager.
Nominees for the Cinema Eye Honors feature awards are determined in voting by the top documentary programmers from throughout the world. This year’s nominations committee included Charlotte Cook (Hot Docs), David Courier (Sundance), Heather Croall (Sheffield Doc/Fest), Hussain Currimbhoy (Sheffield Doc/Fest), Joanne Feinberg (Ashland Film Festival), Tine Fischer (CPH:DOX), Elena Fortes (Ambulante), Ben Fowlie (Camden International Film Festival), Tom Hall (Sarasota Film Festival), Doug Jones (Los Angeles Film Festival), Jim Kolmar (SXSW), Amir Labaki (It’s All True, Brazil), Grit Lemke (DOK Liepzig), Artur Liebhart (Planete Doc Review), David Nugent (Hamptons Film Festival), Veton Nurkollari (DokuFest Kosovo), Janet Pierson (SXSW), Thom Powers (Toronto International Film Festival, DOC NYC), Rachel Rosen (San Francisco), Charlotte Selb (RIDM Montreal), Sky Sitney (Silverdocs), Genna Terranova (Tribeca), Sadie Tillery (Full Frame) and David Wilson (True/False).
Nominees for the Cinema Eye Honors short film awards were selected by a nominations committee that included Karen Cirillo (True/False), Charlotte Cook (Hot Docs), Hussain Currimbhoy (Sheffield Doc/Fest), Ben Fowlie (Camden International Film Festival), Claudette Godfrey (SXSW), Ted Mott (Full Frame), Veton Nurkollari (DokuFest Kosovo), Rachel Rosen (San Francisco) Sky Sitney (Silverdocs) and Kim Yutani (Sundance).
Nominees for the Television Award were selected by a nominations committee of film critics and writers that included Steve Dollar, Bilge Ebiri, Eric Hynes, Eric Kohn, Nick Pinkerton and Allison Willmore.
The members of the Cinema Eye Filmmaker Advisory Board include Mila Aung-Thwin (producer, Last Train Home; Cinema Eye winner for Outstanding Production, 2011), RJ Cutler (director, The September Issue; Cinema Eye winner for Audience Choice, 2010), Sam Green (director, Utopia in Four Movements; Cinema Eye Nominee for Outstanding Original Score (2011), Steve James (director, The Interrupters, Cinema Eye winner for Outstanding Feature and Direction, 2012), Ellen Kuras (director, The Betrayal; Cinema Eye nominee for Outstanding Debut, 2010), Audrey Marrs (producer, Inside Job; Cinema Eye nominee for Outstanding Production, 2011), James Marsh (director, Man on Wire; Cinema Eye winner for Outstanding Feature, 2009), Laura Poitras (director, The Oath; Cinema Eye winner for Outstanding Direction, 2011), Morgan Spurlock (director, Where in the World is Osama bin Laden; Cinema Eye nominee for Outsanding Graphics, 2009) and Jennifer Venditti (director, Billy the Kid; Cinema Eye winner for Outstanding Debut, 2008).
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