Come See Me in the Good Light topped the winners at this year’s CinemaEye Honors. The awards recognizing the best in non-fiction gave two prizes to the documentary directed by Ryan White, including Best Feature. This year, the Feature prize celebrates the contributions from key creatives and subjects from the awarded film.
Come See Me in the Good Light observes the relationship between poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley as the former receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and they vow to savour every remaining day they have left together. The film also won the music prize for Blake Neely’s score while Gibson and Falley were among the documentary participants recognized in the non-competitive Unforgettables category honouring memorable figures in non-fiction film.
The CinemaEye Honors winners spread the wealth with fellow Oscar frontrunner The Perfect Neighbor scoring two competitive prizes: Best Director for Geeta Gandbhir and Best Editing for Viridiana Lieberman. The Perfect Neighbor mines police bodycams and surveillance footage to capture the story of a neighbourhood under siege from a trigger happy resident whose mental health struggles tragically collide with Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. Both Come See Me in the Good Light and The Perfect Neighbor are on the Oscar shortlist for Best Documentary Feature.
Other winners in this year’s CinemaEye Honors include Oscar shortlisted docs The Alabama Solution, Apocalypse in the Tropics, Seeds, and All the Empty Rooms.
This year’s list of CinemaEye Honors winners is as follows:
Feature: Come See Me in the Good Light – Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave, Tig Notaro, Stef Willen, Brandon Somerhalder, Berenice Chávez, Blake Neely, Dave Richards, Brent Kiser, Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley
Direction: Geeta Gandbhir – The Perfect Neighbor
Editing: Viridiana Lieberman – The Perfect Neighbor
Production: Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman – The Alabama Solution and Petra Costa and Alessandra Orofino – Apocalypse in the Tropics
Cinematography: Brittany Shyne – Seeds
Original Music Score: Blake Neely – Come See Me in the Good Light
Sound Design: James LeBrecht, Greg Francis and Nina Hartstone – Deaf President Now!
Visual Design: Sara Gunnarsdóttir, Josh Shaffner and Kevin Eskew – It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
Debut: Seeds – Brittany Shyne
Audience Choice Prize: The Tale of Silyan – Tamara Kotevska
Nonfiction Short: All the Empty Rooms – Joshua Seftel
Spotlight Award: To the West, in Zapata – David Bim
Heterodox Award: The Voice of Hind Rajab – Kaouther Ben Hania
Unforgettables Honorees
Noam Shuster-Eliassi – Coexistence, My Ass!
Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley – Come See Me in the Good Light
Seymour Hersh – Cover-Up
Sara Shahverdi – Cutting Through Rocks
Pavel Talankin – Mr. Nobody Against Putin
Jacinda Ardern – Prime Minister
Fatma Hassona – Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
Broadcast Film: Pee-wee as Himself – Matt Wolf
Nonfiction Series: Social Studies – Lauren Greenfield
Anthology Series: Conan O’Brien Must Go – Conan O’Brien and Jeff Ross
Broadcast Editing: Social Studies – Alyse Ardell Spiegel, Helen Kearns, Catherine Bull and Charles Little II
Broadcast Cinematography: Omnivore – Tom Elliott, Sy Turnbull and Jurgen Lisse
