“Crip Camp” has been named the best documentary of 2020 at the 36th annual IDA Documentary Awards, the International Documentary Association announced on Saturday at a virtual ceremony.
The film, about an upstate New York summer camp for disabled teens that helped launch the disability rights movement, also won the ABC News VideoSource Award for its use of archival footage and finished as runner-up to “My Octopus Teacher” for the Pare Lorentz Award.
“Crip Camp,” a Netflix film that premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, won in a category whose other nominees were “Collective,” “Gunda,” “MLK/FBI,” “The Reason I Jump,” “Reunited,” “Softie,” “Time,” “The Truffle Hunters” and “Welcome to Chechnya.”
Garrett Bradley won the best director award for “Time” and also won the Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award for that film.
In the television categories, awards went to “American Experience” for curated series, “Last Chance U” for episodic series and “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children” for multi-part documentary.
Matthew Killip’s “John Was Trying to Contact Aliens” won the award for documentary short.
“Dick Johnson Is Dead” won two awards, one for its editing and one for its writing, while “My Octopus Teacher” won for music and also took the Pare Lorentz Award for “exemplary filmmaking while focusing on the appropriate use of the natural environment, justice for all and the illumination of pressing social problems.”
Founded in 1982, the IDA runs the longest-running awards dedicated exclusively to nonfiction filmmaking. In the 15 years since the IDA Awards have been handing out a single Best Feature prize, the winner has gone on to be nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar 10 times, and has won four times.
Willie Garson hosted the online ceremony.
The winners:
Best Feature: “Crip Camp”
Directors and Producers: Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht. Producer: Sara Bolder
Best Director: Garrett Bradley, “Time”
Best Short: “John Was Trying to Contact Aliens”
Director and Producer: Matthew Killip
Best Curated Series: “American Experience”
Executive Producers: Susan Bellows and Mark Samels
Best Episodic Series: “Last Chance U”
Director and Executive Producer: Greg Whiteley. Executive Producers: Joe LaBracio, James D. Stern, Lucas Smith, Andrew Fried, Dane Lillegard
Best Multi-Part Documentary: “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children”
Directors and Executive Producers: Sam Pollard, Maro Chermayeff, Joshua Bennett, Jeff Dupre. Executive Producers: John Legend, Mike Jackson, Ty Stiklorious, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller
Best Short Form Series: “POV Shorts”
Producer: Opal H. Bennett. Executive Producers: Justine Nagan, Chris White
Best Audio Documentary: “Somebody”
Reporters and Producers: Alison Flowers, Bill Healy and Sarah Geis. Host: Shapearl Wells. Reporters: Sam Stecklow, Annie Nguyen, Kahari Blackburn, Rajiv Sinclair, Henri Adams, Matilda Vojak, Dana Brozost-Kelleher, Frances McDonald, Diana Akmajian, Andrew Fan and Maddie Anderson. Associate Producer: Ellen Glover. Executive Producers: Jamie Kalven, Maria Zuckerman, Christy Gressman, Leital Molad
Best Music Documentary: “Universe”
Directors: Sam Osborn and Nicholas Capezzera. Producers: Esther Dere and Leah Natasha Thomas
David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award: “People Like Me” Director/Producer: Marrok Sedgwick, Co-Editor: Jackson Patrick-Sternin, University of California, Santa Cruz
Best Cinematography: Viacheslav Tsvietkov, “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange”
Best Editing: Nels Bangerter, “Dick Johnson Is Dead”
Best Music Score: Kevin Smuts, “My Octopus Teacher”
Best Writing: Nels Bangerter and Kirsten Johnson, “Dick Johnson is Dead”
Pare Lorentz Award: “My Octopus Teacher”
Director: Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed. Producer: Craig Foster
Honorable Mention: “Crip Camp”
Directors/Producers: Nicole Newnham, Jim LeBrecht. Producer: Sara Bolder
ABC News VideoSource Award: “Crip Camp”
Directors/Producers: Nicole Newnham, Jim LeBrecht. Producer: Sara Bolder
Honorary Awards
Amicus Award: Regina S. Scully
Career Achievement Award: Sam Pollard
Courage Under Fire Award: David France, Olga Baranova, David Isteev and the filmmakers and activists from “Welcome to Chechnya”
Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award: Garrett Bradley, “Time”
Pioneer Award: Firelight Media
Truth to Power Award: Maria Ressa and Rappler