Here are all the Nominees for the 12th Annual Cinema Eye Honors

November 8, 2018 | Los Angeles, California – The Cinema Eye Honors, which annually presents awards to celebrate outstanding artistry and craft in nonfiction film, announced nominees in 10 categories this afternoon, including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature and Outstanding Nonfiction Short.

Minding the Gap, Bing Liu’s autobiographical portrait of friendship and family violence, led all films with a total of 7 nominations. That ties a record for the most nominations in Cinema Eye history, matching Louie Psihoyos’ The Cove, Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home and Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir. Liu is a named nominee for six of those awards (Feature, Direction, Editing, Cinematography, Debut and Audience Choice), tying him with Lixin Fan for the most individual nominations ever for a single film.

Robert Greene’s Bisbee ‘17, RaMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening; and Sandi Tan’s Shirkers each had five nominations, with all three filmmakers nominated for Outstanding Direction. Greene is a veteran in the category, scoring his 3rd nomination for Direction, which matches the record in the category previously set by Frederick Wiseman. RaMell Ross and Sandi Tan are up for both Direction and Outstanding Debut. Greene, Liu, Ross and Tan are joined in the Direction category by Talal Derki, whose Of Fathers and Sonsis also up for Outstanding Feature.

Morgan Neville, who has been previously nominated for both Twenty Feet From Stardom and The Best of Enemies, received four nominations for Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, his portrait of beloved children’s television host Fred Rogers. The film, which is the highest grossing documentary of 2018, is up for Outstanding Feature, Editing, Audience Choice and Graphic Design. Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers, another of 2018’s box office successes, rounds out the Outstanding Feature category.

Free Solo, the latest film from Cinema Eye winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, also received four nominations, including nods for Production, Cinematography and Score. The pair are previous Cinema Eye winners, having received the Audience Choice prize in 2016 for their film Meru. They are nominated once again for the Audience prize for this latest film.

This year’s winners will be announced at the 2019 Honors Awards Ceremony, to be held on Thursday, January 10, 2019 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. The ceremony will be hosted, for the fourth straight year, by award-winning nonfiction filmmaker Steve James, who was Oscar nominated earlier this year for his film, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail. He’s a Cinema Eye nominee this year in the Outstanding Nonfiction Series category for America To Me. It’s James’ 10th nomination all time, tying him with filmmaker Laura Poitras.

This year’s nominees for Outstanding Nonfiction Short Film demonstrate the continued resurgence of the short form via online journalism platforms. Three of the nominees, Baby Brother, My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes and Volte are available to view via the New York Times’ Op Docs series. The other two, Concussion Protocol and Skip Day, were produced in association with Field of Vision and The Guardian, respectively.

Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas, the directors of Skip Day, were also the filmmakers behind last year’s winner in the category, Rabbit Hunt. It’s the first time that a filmmaker has been nominated in the Nonfiction Short category after taking the prize in the previous year.

In the Graphic Design and Animation category, Syd Garon and Chris Kirk received nominations for their work on Bathtubs Over Broadway. It’s Kirk’s 3rd nomination in the category and Garon’s 5th, which sets a Cinema Eye record for the most individual nominations in any single category.

Other returning nominees include:

Jeff Malmberg and Aaron Wickenden are nominated for their editing work on Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Malmberg was nominated for four awards at CEH11 and won for Outstanding Debut for Marwencol. Wickenden was nominated twice in 2016, both as an editor on Best of Enemies and for the Spotlight Award as one of the directors of Almost There.
Joslyn Barnes, nominated in the Outstanding Feature Film category for Hale County This Morning, This Evening, won the Feature Film Honor in 2018 for Yance Ford’s Strong Island. Barnes is the second person in Cinema Eye history to be nominated two years in a row in the top category, joining Simon Chinn, who was nominated in back-to-back years for Project Nim (CEH12) and Searching for Sugar Man (CEH13).
Talal Derki and Hans Robert Eisenhauer, up this year for Of Fathers and Sons, were both previously nominated for Derki’s debut, Return to Homs.
Minding the Gap’s Joshua Altman was nominated previously in the Editing category for his work on Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public.
Dan Deacon receives his second straight nomination in the Original Score category for Time Trial. He was nominated in 2018 for Rat Film.

Nominees for this year’s Broadcast Film and Series Award as well as the Heterodox Award (recognizing work that blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction) and the year’s Unforgettables (noteworthy documentary subjects) were announced two weeks ago at a lunch event in Los Angeles.

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking

Bisbee ‘17
Directed by Robert Greene | Produced by Susan Bedusa, Bennett Elliott and Douglas Tirola

Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Directed by RaMell Ross | Produced by Joslyn Barnes, Su Kim and RaMell Ross

Minding the Gap
Directed by Bing Liu | Produced by Bing Liu and Diane Moy Quon

Of Fathers and Sons
Directed by Talal Derki | Produced by Ansgar Frerich, Eva Kemme, Tobias N. Siebert and Hans Robert Eisenhauer

Three Identical Strangers
Directed by Tim Wardle | Produced by Grace Hughes-Hallett and Becky Read

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Directed by Morgan Neville | Produced by Caryn Capotosto, Nicholas Ma and Morgan Neville

Outstanding Achievement in Direction

Outstanding Achievement in Production

Susan Bedusa, Bennett Elliott and Douglas Tirola | Bisbee ‘17
Stephen Maing, Ross Tuttle and Eric Daniel Metzgar | Crime + Punishment
Josh Lowell, Phillip Manderla and Peter Mortimer | The Dawn Wall
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin, Evan Hayes and Shannon Dill | Free Solo
Ansgar Frerich, Eva Kemme, Tobias N. Siebert and Hans Robert Eisenhauer | Of Fathers and Sons
Daniel McCabe, Geoff McLean and Alyse Ardell Spiegel | This is Congo

Outstanding Achievement in Editing

RaMell Ross | Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Julien Faraut | John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
Joshua Altman and Bing Liu | Minding the Gap
Michael Harte | Three Identical Strangers
Jeff Malmberg and Aaron Wickenden | Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography

Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Score

Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design or Animation

Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film

América | Directed by Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll
Distant Constellation | Directed by Shevaun Mizrahi
Hale County This Morning, This Evening | Directed by RaMell Ross
Minding the Gap | Directed by Bing Liu
Shirkers | Directed by Sandi Tan

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Short Filmmaking

Baby Brother | Directed by Kamau Bilal
Concussion Protocol | Directed by Josh Begley
My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes | Directed by Charlie Tyrell
Skip Day | Directed by Patrick Bresnan and Ivete Lucas
Volte | Directed by Monika Kotecka and Karolina Poryzala

Spotlight Award

The Distant Barking of Dogs | Directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont
Island of Hungry Ghosts | Directed by Gabrielle Brady
The Other Side of Everything | Directed by Mila Turajlic
Roll Red Roll | Directed by Nancy Schwartzman
The Silence of Others | Directed by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar
A Woman Captured | Directed by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter

The following categories were previously announced on October 25:

Audience Choice Prize

Bathtubs Over Broadway | Directed by Dava Whisenant
Free Solo | Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. | Directed by Stephen Loveridge
Minding the Gap | Directed by Bing Liu
On Her Shoulders | Directed by Alexandria Bombach
Quincy | Directed by Rashida Jones and Al Hicks
RBG | Directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West
Shirkers | Directed by Sandi Tan
Three Identical Strangers | Directed by Tim Wardle
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? | Directed by Morgan Neville

Outstanding Achievement in a Nonfiction Film for Broadcast

Outstanding Achievement in a Nonfiction Series for Broadcast

Heterodox Award

Unforgettables