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Exclusive: Smashing Dandelions, the new production company founded by The Mauritanian writer and producer Michael Bronner and Bhakti Shringarpure, has set plans to adapt Ghost Season, the novel by Sudanese-American writer Fatin Abbas, into a feature film.

South Sudanese documentary filmmaker Akuol de Mabior (No Simple Way Home) is attached to write and direct, marking her debut in narrative features. Bronner and Shringarpure will produce.

The novel is described as a haunting portrait of five strangers forging fragile bonds amid war and displacement on the Sudanese border. In the book, five strangers – a white American geographer, a South Sudanese translator, a northern Sudanese cook, a Sudanese-American filmmaker, and a local boy – find themselves at an Ngo compound in the fictional town of Saraaya, on the border of Sudan and South Sudan. As civil war looms, their lives intertwine through unlikely alliances and emotional entanglements, until war and betrayal force difficult choices.

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All that Breathes topped the 2022 IDA Documentary Awards, winning best feature and two other competitive awards. The film was previously selected as the winner of the Pare Lorentz Award.

In addition to the top prize, the HBO title, which follows two brothers who run a bird hospital dedicated to rescuing injured black kites that are often affected by air pollution in New Delhi, won best director for helmer Shaunak Sen and best editing.

National Geographic and Neon’s Fire of Love documentary about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, which led the nominations for the 38th annual International Documentary Association honors with five nods, won two awards.

The IDA Documentary Awards were presented in a ceremony at Los Angeles’ Paramount Theater, hosted by actor-comedian Jenny Yang.

Best Feature Documentary

All that Breathes (India, United States, United Kingdom | Sideshow and Submarine Deluxe, HBO Documentary Films...

Simon Lereng Wilmont’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival winner A House Made Of Splinters and Young Plato from Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath are among the 38th International Documentary Association (IDA) feature nominees with Laura Poitras’s Venice Golden Lion winner All The Beauty And The Bloodshed.

They will vie for the top prize at the awards ceremony on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles on December 10 alongside Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, Sara Dosa’s Fire Of Love, Edward Buckles, Jr.’s Katrina Babies, Isabel Castro’s Mija, Daniel Roher’s Navalny, Akuol de Mabior’s No Simple Way Home,...

The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced their nominations in 18 categories for the 38th IDA Documentary Awards, which will be held on December 10, 2022, at the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles. “Fire of Love” led all feature documentaries with five bids, followed by “All That Breathes” with four. See the full list of nominees below.

See RSVP for Film Documentary panel on November 16: ‘Good Night Oppy,’ ‘Louis Armstrong’s Black and Blues,’ ‘Mija,’ ‘Retrograde’

Last year the group previewed three of the five Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature, including the winner “Summer of Soul” as well as IDA champ “Flee” and “Writing with Fire.” The year before that they were just as accurate when IDA winner “Crip Camp” was nominated along with “Collective” and “Time,” but Oscar champ “My Octopus Teacher” was snubbed.

Among this year’s IDA nominees for Best Feature, just two were also nominated by the Critics’ Choice...

“All that Breathes” and “Fire of Love” led all films in nominations for the International Documentary Association’s 38th annual IDA Documentary Awards, which were announced Friday morning.

“All That Breathes,” a lyrical film by Shaunak Sen about two brothers in New Delhi who care for birds that fall from the polluted skies, received four nominations, including Best Feature Documentary, and was also named the winner of the Pare Lorentz Award for a film showing commitment to social justice and the environment. Sara Dosa’s “Fire of Love,” about a married couple that spent their lives studying volcanoes, landed five nominations.

Other films that received multiple IDA nominations included “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” “A House Made of Splinters,” “No Simple Way Home” and “The Pawnshop.”

The Best Feature Documentary category, which included those six films plus “Katrina Babies,” “Mija,” “Navalny” and “Young Plato,” was long on international films,...

Fire of Love and All That Breathes further established themselves as solid Oscar contenders, leading all comers as the IDA Documentary Awards nominations were announced today.

Fire of Love, about scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft, a French couple who risked their lives documenting volcanic eruptions, earned five IDA nominations, including Best Feature Documentary and Best Director for Sara Dosa. It was also recognized in the cinematography, editing, and writing categories.

All That Breathes, director Shaunak Sen’s poetic study of two brothers in Delhi, India who rescue and rehabilitate injured birds of prey, was announced as the winner of the Pare Lorentz Award, an honor named for the pioneering filmmaker who made highly regarded work during the Great Depression. All That Breathes earned four other nominations, including Best Feature Documentary, Best Director, cinematography, and editing [see the full list of IDA Awards nominations below].

Two girls staying at a temporary shelter for neglected children in Eastern Ukraine in ‘A...

The International Documentary Association (IDA) has revealed the nominations for the 38th IDA Documentary Awards. Comprising 18 categories ranging from Best Feature Film and Best Short Film to Best Curated Series and Best Episodic Series, the awards ceremony is meant to support the vital work of documentary storytellers and champion a thriving and inclusive documentary culture.

Leading nominations in the film categories are “All That Breathes” and “Fire of Love,” each with five. Meanwhile, films like “The Territory” and “Descendant,” which have been recognized by other awards bodies like the Cinema Eye Honors, are nowhere to be found on this year’s IDA Awards’ nominees list.

It is somewhat expected, as nominees in each of the Best Feature Documentary and Best Short Documentary categories had been selected from the shortlists previously announced. IDA members will now have access to view each of the nominated films and to vote for Best Feature...

Click here to read the full article.

The International Documentary Association (IDA) announced the nominations for the 38th annual IDA Documentary Awards, which will be held on Dec. 10, 2022, at the Paramount Theater on the Paramount Studios Lot in Los Angeles.

Among the nominated features is National Geographic/Neon’s Fire of Love, director Sara Dosa’s portrait of vocanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, which led the nominated films with five honors. HBO Documentary Films’ All That Breathes earned four nominations and won the Pare Lorent Award.

Other notable nominees, also strong contenders in the Oscar race for best documentary feature, include Neon’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Amazon Studios’ Good Night Oppy and Wildcat, HBO Documentary Films’ Katrina Babies and Navalny, and Showtime’s Nothing Compares.

“We are thrilled to celebrate the achievements of such a stellar group of films and programs from around the world,” said co-presidents...

Nominations to be announced on November 11.

Laura Poitras’s Venice Golden Lion winner All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, Alex Pritz’s The Territory and Young Plato from Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath are named on the documentary feature shortlist for the 38th IDA Documentary Awards.

The International Documentary Association (IDA) published a list of 25 features and 24 shorts in the run-up to the awards ceremony on December 10 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles.

Up to 10 nominees in each of the feature and short documentary categories will be selected from the shortlist and announced on November 11. IDA members will get...

A handful of awards season frontrunners is starting to emerge with the announcement today of the IDA Documentary Awards Shortlists.

All That Breathes, directed by Shaunak Sen, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, from Laura Poitras, and The Territory, from Alex Pritz, made the 25-film shortlist of features, a day after securing nominations for the Gotham Awards. Three other strong contenders – Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love, Brett Morgen’s David Bowie doc Moonage Daydream, and Daniel Roher’s Navalny also made the IDA shortlist. See the complete features and shorts shortlists below.

‘Fire of Love’

The shortlisted films will be culled to a maximum of 10 nominees for Best Documentary Feature and 10 max for Best Short Documentary. Nominees in those and a variety of additional categories – including Best Director,...

South Sudanese director Akuol de Mabior’s No Simple Way Home is a gorgeous example of what African filmmakers can accomplish if Westerners would just get out of their way. A world premiere in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlinale, the doc is produced by Kenyan filmmaker Sam Soko (Softie) and the South African duo Tiny Mungwe and Don Edkins of Steps (Social Transformation and Empowerment Projects) as part of the organization’s Generation Africa initiative, “a pan-African anthology of 25 documentary films from 16 countries in Africa, on the topic of migration.” And it tells a tale not of folks […]

The post “I Believe that Valuing African Audiences Will Break the Pattern of Cliches That We Have Become Accustomed To”: Akuol de Mabior on Her Berlinale-Debuting doc No Simple Way Home first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

South Sudanese director Akuol de Mabior’s No Simple Way Home is a gorgeous example of what African filmmakers can accomplish if Westerners would just get out of their way. A world premiere in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlinale, the doc is produced by Kenyan filmmaker Sam Soko (Softie) and the South African duo Tiny Mungwe and Don Edkins of Steps (Social Transformation and Empowerment Projects) as part of the organization’s Generation Africa initiative, “a pan-African anthology of 25 documentary films from 16 countries in Africa, on the topic of migration.” And it tells a tale not of folks […]

The post “I Believe that Valuing African Audiences Will Break the Pattern of Cliches That We Have Become Accustomed To”: Akuol de Mabior on Her Berlinale-Debuting doc No Simple Way Home first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Berlinale Series Market, Co-Production Market name selections.

The world premiere of French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie’s Nobody’s Hero will open the Panorama section at next month’s Berlin International Film Festival, marking the first time the director has screened at the event.

Nobody’s Hero is one of 16 world premiere additions to the Panorama strand, joining the 13 titles confirmed last month for a complete list of 29 films.

Scroll down for the full list of new titles

The film takes place after a terrorist attack in Clermont-Ferrand in France, and centres on a likeable man in his mid-thirties, an older...