Skip to main content
IDA Documentary Awards, December 5, 2024, The Orpheum Theater, Los Angeles
 

Honorees

Career Achievement Award Dawn Porter

Career Achievement Award

Dawn Porter

First given in 1985, the IDA Career Achievement Award is presented annually to an individual film or video maker who, through a body of work, has made a major and lasting contribution to the documentary form. The recipient is selected by IDA’s Board of Directors. Previous recipients include Julia Reichert, Werner Herzog, William Greaves, Les Blank, Sheila Nevins, and Errol Morris.

Dawn Porter is an American documentary filmmaker and the founder of the production company Trilogy. Her award-winning films include Gideon’s Army (2013), about three black public defenders working in the southern United States; Spies of Mississippi (2014), about the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC) efforts to preserve segregation during the 1950s and 1960s; Trapped, about the impact of anti-abortion laws on abortion providers in the South; and Bobby Kennedy for President, which debuted on Netflix.

Porter discovered her passion for filmmaking following her time as an attorney. Porter is a graduate of Swarthmore College with a major in political science and has a law degree from Georgetown University Law School. When she isn’t working behind the camera, Porter frequently lectures at universities across the nation, a passion she honed during her time as professor and Head of the Documentary Program at the prestigious UC Berkeley School of Journalism. She holds honorary degrees from Swarthmore College and Simmons University. Porter currently resides in New York City with her family.

Shiori Ito Emerging Filmmaker Award

Emerging Filmmaker Award

Shiori Ito

IDA’s Emerging Filmmaker Award has been given annually since 2003 to a filmmaker who by virtue of their early work shows extraordinary promise in exploring the possibilities of the nonfiction art form. The recipient is selected by IDA’s Board of Directors and typically presented to a filmmaker with a notable recent first or second feature film. Previous recipients include Nanfu Wang, Garett Bradley, Alex Rivera, and Natalia Almada.                                               

Shiori Ito, the director of Black Box Diaries (2024), is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. Her primary focus is gender-based human rights issues. She co-founded Hanashi Films, a Tokyo and London-based production company that has collaborated with NHK, BBC, and Al Jazeera, amongst others.

In 2017, Shiori wrote the book “Black Box,” based on her own experience of rape. The book reveals the sexism in Japan’s society and institutions and won the Free Press Association of Japan Award for Best Journalism in 2018. It has been translated into 11 languages, including English. In 2020 she was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. Black Box Diaries is her feature documentary debut.

Black Box Diaries is streaming as a part of IDA’s FallDocs between October 3-10, available for IDA members globally.

Courage Under Fire Award

Courage Under Fire Award

Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor, Yuval Abraham
Director of No Other Land (2024)

Established in 2001 and given occasionally by the IDA Board of Directors, IDA’s Courage Under Fire Award is presented to documentarians displaying conspicuous bravery in the pursuit of truth, as recognition from their peers for putting the freedom of speech—represented in its aspects of the crafts of documentary filmmaking and journalism—above all else, even their own personal safety.

Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community's mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. In No Other Land, Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families - the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free. This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice.

Basel Adra is a Palestinian lawyer, journalist, and filmmaker from Masafer Yatta. He has been an activist and documentarian since 15, fighting against Israel's mass expulsion of his community.

Rachel Szor is an Israeli cinematographer, editor, and director from Jerusalem.

Hamdan Ballal is a Palestinian photographer and farmer from Susya and has worked as a researcher for several anti-occupation human rights groups.

Yuval Abraham is an Israeli filmmaker and investigative journalist from Jerusalem.

No Other Land will be streaming as part of IDA’s FallDocs between November 17 and 24, and it will be available for IDA members globally.