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Goodbye Ceremony! Hello Connection!

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The 41st IDA Documentary Awards brings together nominees, honorees, peers in the field, and industry leaders. While Thursday, December 4, ...

2025 IDA Awards: Meet the Nominees

IDA Statement Opposing A Merger Involving Warner Bros. Discovery

41st IDA Documentary Award Honorees

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Events

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IDA Members' Works in Progress

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Works in Progress is a day-long screening series that gives IDA members the chance to share their works-in-progress and receive constructive feedback from other IDA members and their invited guests. The goal of Works in Progress is to offer IDA members invaluable opportunities to strengthen their work through incisive and practical feedback and garner an audience for their upcoming projects.
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IDA Awards: Meet the Nominees

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On Friday, December 5, IDA returns to our former home at the LA Center Studios, a landmark space for film production. There, we will be immersed in Los Angeles history in a beautiful mid-century modern venue with wonderful areas to mix and mingle.
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41st IDA Documentary Awards

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The 41st IDA Documentary Awards brings together nominees, honorees, peers in the field, and industry leaders. The presentation of the 2025 IDA Documentary Awards will take place on Saturday, December 6, in the ballroom of the beautiful, historic Los Angeles Athletic Club in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles.
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Fall 2025

This issue runs the thematic strand of “Dangerous Territory”—physical danger, political pressure, institutional exploitation. The cover feature on Petra Costa’s Apocalypse in the Tropics places her in conversation with Bernardo Ruiz, another filmmaker who has also deeply investigated the evolution of an electorate across multiple election cycles. The three other articles in this strand feature other filmmakers under fire. Mstyslav Chernov’s transformation from war reporter to filmmaker is chronicled by Sonya Vseliubska. Lauren Wissot’s profile of the Renaud brothers, Brent and Craig, illuminates the price of their vérité approach to conflict journalism, which is also covered in Craig’s recent mid-length film, Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud. Journalist Steve Brooks investigates how even nonprofits designed to nurture mediamaking can become sites of exploitation. Brooks, the former editor-in-chief of the San Quentin News, also details how the appropriation of two incarcerated filmmakers’ creative labor echoes decades of similar struggles inside California’s prisons.Outside of the thematic strand, Abby Sun interviews David Osit on Predators, his slippery exposé of the crime sting journalism of To Catch a Predator, after finding the film to be a compelling, unexpected critique of true crime— and the limits of personal documentaries.Our recurring segments include two festival dispatches. Natalia Keogan considers independent documentaries amid Tribeca’s rampant commercialization, while Tayler Montague returns to BlackStar, which has become a vital U.S. stop for BIPOC filmmakers. For “Producer’s Diary,” Robin Berghaus gathers the ups and downs of Bonnie Cohen and Jon Shenk’s In Waves and War. And “Screen Time” continues with capsule-length reviews on notable new releases.Articles featured in the print version will be published online between September and December 2025.
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