December 13, 2021 Is an Oscar Campaign Worth the Cost for an Independent Documentary? Everyone wants an Academy Award. But for the last several years, nonfiction filmmakers working in the nonprofit sector have faced daunting Read more
April 20, 2021 Screen Time: Watch Best Documentary Short Oscar Nominees Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. The 93rd Academy Award Read more
February 22, 2020 IDA Member Spotlight: Marshall Curry and Poh Si Teng For our February Member Memo, I had the unique opportunity to interview two of our IDA Members who were both nominated for the 2020 Academy Awards. Read more
February 7, 2020 'The Cave' Spotlights Women on the Syrian Warfront Syrian documentary filmmaker Feras Fayyad has been battling his whole professional life. First, he was battling to keep his family safe (he's still Read more
February 4, 2020 Dancing for Their Lives: 'Walk Run Cha-Cha' Finds Joy on the Ballroom Floor When filmmaker Laura Nix walked into a dance studio in the San Gabriel Valley to find 40 people ballroom-dancing in the middle of the day, she Read more
February 3, 2020 'In the Absence' Examines the Sewol Ferry Disaster In the Absence begins with the usual narrative markers of a ship tragedy: a drone camera sweeps over the site, we hear a 911 call, security camera Read more
February 2, 2020 Refugee Trauma: 'Life Overtakes Me' Documents Kids in Comas John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson co-directed the Oscar-nominated documentary short Life Overtakes Me , an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantee Read more
February 1, 2020 'Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you're a girl)': Growing Up Female in Afghanistan Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in an ultra-conservative patriarchal society? If your answer is, "No, it's already depressing Read more
January 31, 2020 From Ferguson Battle Rapper to 'St. Louis Superman' After the success of her feature documentary A Suitable Girl , Al Jazeera's Witness series asked Smriti Mundhra to make another film. It wasn't long Read more
January 29, 2020 'The Edge of Democracy' Tracks Brazil's Slide to Fascism Though The Edge of Democracy is Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa's final piece in a personal trilogy, it's the first to nab her an Oscar nomination Read more