“No Other Land,” a documentary shot over five years in Gaza by a collective of Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers, was named the best documentary of 2024 at the International Documentary Association’s 40th annual IDA Documentary Awards.
The film also won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it premiered, and at the Gotham Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards and the National Board of Review Awards.
At the IDA Awards, it came out on top in a category that also included “Black Box Diaries,” “Dahomey,” “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” “Sugarcane” and “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin.”
Its four directors — Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor & Yuval Abraham — won in the IDA’s directing category as well. At the beginning of the program, the film was also given the Pare Lorentz Award and the Courage Under Fire Award.
Documentary writing and editing awards went to “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” cinematography to “Queendom” and music to “Frida.”
In the television categories, awards went to the limited series “A Town Called Victoria,” the episodic series “We’re Here,” the curated series “Independent Lens” and the TV feature documentary “Two American Families: 1991-2024.”
The short doc award went to “Instruments of a Beating Heart.”
The show took place at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles and was hosted by comedian and writer Adam Conover.
Also at the ceremony, special awards were given to documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter (the Career Achievement Award), “Black Box Diaries” director Shiori Ito (Emerging Filmmaker Award) and the four “No Other Land” directors, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham (Courage Under Fire Award).
Earlier in the week, the IDA came under fire for canceling ads taken out by an Israeli film, “We Will Dance Again.” The filmmakers charged the organization with anti-Israeli bias, a charge IDA lawyers dismissed as “fictional” in a letter to TheWrap. At the ceremony, in addition to the four awards for “No Other Land,” an Israeli student director won the award for student documentary and the limited series prize went to a series about antisemitic violence in Texas.
The IDA winner went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature five times in the 13 years from 2004 to 2016, but the two organizations have not matched in the last seven years.
The full list of winners:
Best Feature Documentary: “No Other Land”
Best Short Documentary: “Instruments of a Beating Heart”
Best Director: Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor & Yuval Abraham, “No Other Land”
Best Cinematography: Ruslan Fedotov, “Queendom”
Best Editing: Rik Chaubet, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
Best Original Music Score: Víctor Hernández Stumpfhauser, “Frida”
Best Writing: Johan Grimonprez, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
Best TV Feature Documentary: “Two American Families: 1991-2024”
Best Curated Series: “Independent Lens”
Best Episodic Series: “We’re Here”
Best Limited Series: “A Town Called Victoria “
Best Music Documentary: “Omar & Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird”
Best Audio Documentary: “What’s Up, Michael Freeman?”
David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award: Her Name Was Zehava”
ABC News Video Source Award: “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat”
Pare Lorentz Award: “No Other Land”
Courage Under Fire Award: “No Other Land”
Emerging Filmmaker Award: Shiori Ito, “Black Box Diaries”
Career Achievement Award: Dawn Porter