Each year IDA recognizes the achievements of a filmmaker who has made a significant impact at the beginning of his or her career in documentary film. This year IDA will honor David France, the producer and director of one of the year’s most-acclaimed films How To Survive A Plague, with the 2011 Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award.
Since his film's premiere last January at the Sundance Film Festival, award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author David France has received tremendous praise from critics, programmers and fellow filmmakers for his directorial debut. A former Newsweek senior editor known for his pieces bridging science and culture, his work has appeared in the New York Times and New York magazine, where he is a contributing editor, and has been recognized with a National Headliner Award and a GLAAD Media Award, among others. His three nonfiction books include Our Fathers, the critically acclaimed epic examination of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse crisis. Several films have been inspired by his work, including the Emmy-nominated Showtime film Our Fathers, for which he received a WGA nomination. He is at work on a major new history of AIDS, due from Alfred A. Knopf in 2014.
Previous recipients of the Donnet Award include Marshall Curry (If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front; Racing Dreams), Danfung Dennis (Hell and Back Again), Natalia Almada (The General), and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation, Walk Away Renee) .
David France will receive his award at the 28th annual IDA Documentary Awards ceremony, to take place Friday, December 7 at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles.