The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced the shortlists for the 38th IDA Documentary Awards that is set to be held on December 10, 2022, at the Paramount Theater on the Paramount Studios Lot in Los Angeles. The nominee announcement is set on Friday, November 11, 2022.

Rick Pérez, IDA’s Executive Director, stated: “This year’s Best Feature Documentary and Best Short Documentary shortlists reflect a growing awareness that multiple perspectives are necessary to better reflect the worldwide popularity of the form and to recognize the global community of artists working in the field.”

Among those shortlisted for Best Feature Documentary are After A Revolution, All that Breathes, Fire of Love, Delikado, Moonage Daydream, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, and Singing on the Rooftops.

This year’s shortlists and nominees are selected by independent committees of 310 documentary makers, curators, critics, and industry experts from 52 countries. A total of 806 submissions in all categories were received, 40% of which are internationally produced or co-produced projects from 86 countries.

The IDA Documentary Awards is the world’s most distinguished event dedicated exclusively to the documentary genre, celebrating and honoring the year’s best nonfiction films, series, audio documentaries, and programs. It seeks to represent excellence in the documentary field from around the world, by emerging and established docmakers.

To see the full list of shortlisted documentaries, go to documentary.org

The New Yorker débuted a new short documentary today, “Nuisance Bear,” which presents a portrait of a Manitoba town where travellers arrive in droves every autumn to observe the migration of polar bears. The footage that filmmakers Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden captured reveals as much about the behavior of the humans—including the scrums of wilderness paparazzi that descend on Churchill, Manitoba every fall—as that of the bears.

Earlier this week, “Nuisance Bear” received three Critics Choice Documentary Award nominations—a first for a short—for Best Cinematography, Best Short Documentary, and Best Science/Nature Documentary. These nominations join a list of more than a dozen other honors for the film.

In a genre that relies heavily on voice-overs to bridge the gap between humans and wildlife, Weisman and Osio Vanden chose ​​not to include narration or music in the film. Weisman told The New Yorker, “We were curious: Can we make it an experiment—a challenge to ourselves as artists and filmmakers—to tell this narrative and have people really feel engaged without those elements?” Another pivotal moment came during the filming, when they decided to mount a camera on their car, at the eye level of the bears. “It was important for us to maintain that animal’s perspective,” Osio Vanden said. The result is a film that pushes the conventions of the nature documentary.

“Nuisance Bear,” which was executive produced by Sigrid Dyekjær and Alex Pritz, has screened at more than ninety festivals and received numerous honors, including an Honorable Mention for Best Canadian Short Film at the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as selections at the SXSW Film Festival and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. It also won the Academy Award® -qualifying awards for Best International Short Film at the 2022 American Documentary and Animation Film Festival (AmDocs) and Best Non-Fiction Film at the 2022 Short Shorts Film Festival.