Flee was the top winner at last night’s IDA Awards. Presented by the International Documentary Association, the IDA Awards honourable Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s triple Oscar nominee with the prizes for Best Feature and Best Director. Flee is an animated odysseys that shares the story of Rasmussen’s friend Amin (a pseudonym) escaping the mujaheddin in Afghanistan and coming of age, and coming out, in Denmark. Flee recently made history by scoring a trifecta of Oscar nominations for Best International Feature, Best Animated Feature, and Best Documentary Feature.
Rasmussen tied his top competitor for the latter prize in the Best Director category at the IDA Awards. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson shared the prize for his acclaimed music doc Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Summer of Soul also scored wins for Best Editing and Best Music Doc for its electrifying archival portrait of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Both Flee and Summer of Soul premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival where they won the Grand Jury Prizes for World Cinema and U.S. documentary, respectively.
The full list of IDA Awards winners is as follows:
Best Feature: Flee – Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellstrӧm, Signe Byrge Sørensen, Charlotte De La Gourneri
Best Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Flee AND Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Summer of Soul (tie)
Best Writing: North By Current – Angelo Madsen Minax
Best Music Documentary: Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) – Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent, David Dinerstein
Best Film Editing: Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) – Joshua L. Pearson
Best Cinematography: Faya Dayi – Jessica Beshir
Best Short: A Broken House – Jimmy Goldblum, Matt Weaver, Richard Gephardt, Harrison Nalevansky
Best Music Score: Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground – Roman GianArthur
Best Curated Series: Independent Lens – Lois Vossen, Sally Jo Fifer
Best Episodic Series: My Love: Six Stories of True Love – Xan Aranda, Mo-young Jin, Andrew Fried, Dane Lillegard, Jordan Wynn
Best Multi-Part Documentary: Exterminate All the Brutes – Raoul Peck, Daniel Delume, Rémi Grellety, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, Jamie Morris, Jack Oliver, Poppy Dixon
Best Short Form Series: Viral Dreams – Georg Tschurtschenthaler, Udi Nir, Sagi Bornstein. Executive Producer: Christian Beetz
Best Multi-Part Audio Documentary or Series: Suave – Maggie Freleng, Julieta Martinelli, Maria Hinojosa, Marlon Bishop, Audrey Quinn, Stephanie Lebow
Best Stand-Alone Audio Documentary: VICE News Reports: Monaea, A 2020 Diary – Monaea Upton, Jen Kinney, Ashley Cleek, Adizah Eghan, Kyle Murdock, Adreanna Rodriguez. Executive Producer: Kate Osborn
David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award: Seahorse – Nele Dehnenkamp, Christine Duttlinger
ABC News VideoSource Award: Whirlybird – Matt Yoka, Diane Becker
Pare Lorentz Award: The First Wave – Matthew Heineman, Jenna Millman, Leslie Norville
-honourable mention: Tigre Gente: Elizabeth Unger, Joanna Natasegara
