IDA Documentary Awards: the 16 features shortlisted before the November 17 nominations

The International Documentary Association’s awards are decided in their two top categories by the association’s members. For the 42nd edition, the association received 650 entries across all its categories from 95 countries, and it has shortlisted 16 feature-length and 12 short documentaries for the two top awards. It will name five nominees in each of the two top categories on Tuesday, November 17, and hand out the awards on Friday, December 4, 2026, at The Ebell of Los Angeles, with Tabitha Jackson as host. Here is the feature shortlist, with the details the IDA gives for each film, and how the rest of the process works.

The 16 shortlisted features

By our count, seven of the 16 list the United States among their countries, and MUBI is the only distributor with two films on the list. Four films have no distributor named. You Can See Everything, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, also features in our report on the Critics Choice Documentary Awards.

The 12 shorts

Media outlets’ documentary strands account for several of the shorts. Four of the 12 are listed with The New York Times Op-Docs: A Wolf in the Suburbs, Sanyi Kakas (Sanyi the Rooster), Son and Stalin Boys. The others are Free Joan Little (PBS), Fruits of Despair, How to Catch a Butterfly, Lost Songs of Sundari, Maybe Tomorrow (Channel 4), Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon (The New Yorker), They’re Here, from Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller, and The Hotline, listed with HBO Max. That last film is the subject of our item on its HBO premiere.

How the winners are chosen

The two top awards are decided by the membership. IDA members have been able to stream the shortlisted films on the association’s Virtual Cinema since early November, and from November 17 they view the nominees and vote. The IDA says thousands of members in 100 countries take part. Its pages give two closing dates for the vote: the shortlist announcement says November 29, while the awards page and the text of its screening page say November 27. The awards page adds that all dates are subject to change. The virtual viewing platform stays open to members until December 31.

Committees choose the nominees in every category: the IDA’s awards FAQ says 15 committees of more than 200 international filmmakers and industry professionals screen the entries and select them all. The other awards then go to juries, which the IDA says draw on more than 200 documentary professionals from more than 60 countries. They include Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Music Score, Best Production, Best Sound Design and Best Writing, as well as Best Documentary Not in the English Language, Best Music Documentary, and two series awards.

What the categories mean

The category page also lists two sponsored awards that committees can recommend films for: the Pare Lorentz Award, for a feature or short in the spirit and tradition of Pare Lorentz’s work, and the ABC News VideoSource Award, for a feature that builds its story on news footage.

Who could enter, and what a shortlist place means

The IDA has presented its Documentary Awards since 1984 and says they were the first awards program in the United States devoted solely to documentaries. Its FAQ for the 2026 edition set the eligibility window: films, series and other documentaries that premiered, or were due to premiere, between September 1, 2025, and December 31, 2026. Members could enter from May 4 and everyone else from June 1. The deadline for the public was August 20, and members had until September 1.

A place on a shortlist has a lasting effect. The FAQ says a project named in the shortlist announcement can no longer be entered in a later year, while one withdrawn before the announcement could be deferred to the next year’s competition at no extra fee. This edition also added a category: the FAQ describes Best Documentary Not in the English Language as new, open to features in which at least half of the spoken language, dialogue or audio recordings are in languages other than English, and says those films can also be entered for Best Feature, Best Music Documentary and the Creative Recognition awards.

The honorary awards

The ceremony also carries the IDA’s honorary awards. Its awards page lists a Career Achievement Award for the late Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán, whose five-hour trilogy The Battle of Chile, directed between 1972 and 1979, the IDA calls the foundation of his cinema. Amy Goodman and Juan González of Democracy Now! receive the Truth to Power Award. The Emerging Filmmaker Award, which the IDA’s board of directors selects, goes to the Kenyan-Australian filmmaking couple Maia Lekow and Christopher King; their second feature, How to Build a Library, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The Amicus Award, which the IDA has given since 1993 to friends of the documentary community who are not filmmakers, goes to the team behind Cannes Docs, the documentary program of the Cannes film market.