“The Look of Silence” wins top prize at IDA Documentary Awards

PanARMENIAN.Net - Joshua Oppenheimer‘s “The Look of Silence”, a companion piece to his Oscar-nominated 2012 documentary “The Act of Killing,” was named the best documentary of 2015 at the International Documentary Association’s IDA Documentary Awards on Saturday, December 5 night, according to TheWrap.

The film, which follows the family of a victim of the mass killings in Indonesia in the 1960s as they confront one of the perpetrators, beat a field that included “Amy,” “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” “Listen to Me Marlon,” “The Russian Woodpecker” and “What Happened, Miss Simone?”

“The Look of Silence” recently made the 15-film Oscar shortlist in the documentary feature category, as did “Amy,” “Listen to Me Marlon” and “What Happened, Miss Simone?,” and it is taking on the status of a slight frontrunner in a competitive field.

Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman’s animated doc “Last Day of Freedom” was named best short.

The ABC News VideoSource Award, which goes to the best use of archival footage, went to Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville‘s film about the Gore Vidal/William F. Buckley debates, “Best of Enemies.”

In television categories, Best Curated Series was a tie between “Independent Lens” and “POV,” while the Best Limited Series award went to Andrew Jarecki‘s nonfiction miniseries “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.”

The Best Episodic Series and Best Short Form Series awards went to “Chef’s Table” and “Do Not Track,” respectively. Benjamin Huget won the student documentary award for “The Archipelago.”

Several awards had been previously announced, with “How to Change the World” winning the Pare Lorentz Award and creative recognition honors going to “The Russian Woodpecker” for cinematography, “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” for editing, “Listen to Me Marlon” for writing and “Best of Enemies” for music.

Matthew Heineman, the director of “Cartel Land,” received the Courage Under Fire Award, while “(T)ERROR” directors Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe received the Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award.

In the honorary awards, veteran documentarian Gordon Quinn was given the Career Achievement Award, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos the Pioneer Award and Tony Tabatznik and the Bertha Foundation the Amicus Award.

The ceremony took place in the Paramount Theatre on the Paramount Pictures lot and was hosted by comic Tig Notaro.