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Source: The Hollywood Reporter
At most film awards ceremonies, the usual assumption is that there will only be a single film or individual to be given one of the numerous prizes handed out throughout the event. Because of this, when there is a tie – when two (if not more) winners are named at once – many may be caught slightly off guard, though rarely to a point where they become suspicious about what’s happened. While ties don’t occur on a regular basis, no awards ceremony is completely immune from possibly awarding multiple winners at once; even the Academy of Motion Pictures of Arts and Sciences, the organization that holds the yearly Academy Awards, has seen its fair share of ties over its extensive history (the most recent taking place in 2013 when both “Skyfall” and “Zero Dark Thirty” were both named recipients for the Best Sound Editing accolade). With that said, it’s even rarer for there to be a tie when it comes to the big prize, the Best Picture accolade (or whatever the equivalent is at a given ceremony); regardless of whether an organization has chosen to honor all of cinema or a small portion of it, there’s often a determined effort to decide upon one single winner above all others, which makes the reveal of a potential tie all the more surprising. Of course, ties are still bound to happen from time to time, something that became quite apparent at the most recent Critics Choice Documentary Awards when not one, but two features were named winners of the event’s highest honor, the Best Documentary Feature award.
On Sunday, November 10th, the 9th annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards, held this year at the Edison Ballroom in New York City and livestreamed on social media platforms like YouTube and Facebook, took place and, after handing out various prizes that honored the best of this year’s documentary film releases, came to a conclusion with the announcement of the winners of the Best Documentary Feature award, one that came as something of a minor shock to those who’d only anticipated hearing one film title being read out loud. As it turns out, there were two big winners for the evening, although if one were judging by the number of awards won overall throughout the evening, then there may in fact be a clearer answer as to which film has managed to triumph over all others over the course of the ceremony.
With a total of six wins (including the aforementioned Best Documentary Feature), Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s “Super/Man”, which focuses on the life of “Superman” actor Chistopher Reeve following a horse-riding accident that paralyzed him from the neck down, proved to be the big favorite among Critics Choice voters. In addition to the organization’s highest honor, the film also received prizes for Best Archival Documentary and Best Biographical Documentary, while Bonhôte and Ettedgui were named Best Director, Otto Burnham was awarded with Best Editing, and Ilan Eshkeri won the prize for Best Score. While “Super/Man” wasn’t the most nominated film going into the ceremony, it nonetheless managed to sweep in every category it’d been featured in, a strong indication of not only the documentary’s warm reception, but also of a possible chance that it may be able to triumph at upcoming awards ceremonies that aren’t entirely focused on documentaries.
Conversely, the other Best Documentary Feature award winner was nominated in three other categories but was unable to win in any of them, making its tie with “Super/Man” all the more unexpected (but by no means underserved). That film is Josh Greenbaum’s “Will & Harper”, a Netflix-produced documentary revolving around a cross-country road trip taken between popular actor Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, who had come out as a transgender woman to Ferrell just a few years prior. Besides the Best Documentary Feature prize, the film also earned Greenbaum a nomination for Best Director and Nathan Halpern a nod for Best Score (both of which, as discussed earlier, ultimately went to “Super/Man”), in addition to Zoë White’s nomination for Best Cinematography (a prize that was given to Iris Ng, Eunsoo Cho, and Justin Turkowski for their work on the Apple TV+ documentary “The Last of the Sea Woman”). Even with this only win, the success of “Will & Harper” so far does also bode well for its future prospects in the coming award season.
Going into the ceremony, the film that had more nominations that any other was not any of the previously mentioned features, but rather Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s political documentary “Sugarcane”, which investigates the Canadian Indian residential school system and the alarmingly devastating impact it’s had on Indigenous Canadian cultures. Prior to the event, “Sugarcane” looked forward to potential wins in the categories of Best Documentary Feature, Best True Crime Documentary, Best Political Documentary, Best Historical Documentary, Best Director, Best New Documentary Filmmaker(s) (both for NoiseCat and Kassie), Best Editing (for Nathan Punwar and Maya Daisy Hawke), and Best Cinematography (for Kassie and Christopher LaMarca). By the time the event ended, “Sugarcane” was fortunately able to avoid going home completely empty-handed, securing wins for both Best True Crime Documentary and Best Political Documentary.
There were, of course, plenty of other documentaries awarded throughout the evening, even if each of them was only able to pick up one award. Among the other multiple-prize winners were “The Last of the Sea Women”, which (as mentioned earlier) won Best Cinematography and Best Science/Nature Documentary, and “Simone Biles Rising”, which was given accolades for Best Sports Documentary and Best Limited Docuseries. Among the single-prize winners were Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, who won Best New Documentary Filmmakers for their work on “Daughters”; Steve Martin, who won Best Narration for “Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces”; “The Greatest Night in Pop”, which was named Best Historical Documentary; “Music by John Williams”, the recipient of the Best Music Documentary award; and “30 for 30”, which won Best Ongoing Series. Many would agree that these are all fine documentaries, and one hopes to see at least a few of them go on to receive even greater recognition in the near future.
