'Wire' and 'Waltz' Split the IDA Documentary Awards

The votes for top honors at the 2008 International Documentary Association (IDA) Awards were split between two very different docs: Man on Wire, about the whimsical Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers in 1974; and Waltz with Bashir, a memoir of life in war-torn Lebanon that's completely animated.

The IDA Awards were held Friday night in Los Angeles, hosted by everyone's favorite doc-maker Morgan Spurlock (perhaps a consolation prize for his own 2008 film, Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, not being nominated). The other nominees for the top prize, called the Distinguished Feature Award, were Kassim the Dream, Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, and Young@Heart. That last one took home a separate prize, the Alan Ett Music Documentary Award.

Man on Wire has been earning raves ever since it premiered at Sundance in January, where it had the rare distinction of winning both the grand jury prize and the audience award. Rotten Tomatoes has declared it the best-reviewed film of all time, scoring positive reviews from 100% of its 133 critics. It's a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination and a good bet for the win.

Waltz with Bashir, on the other hand, won't be getting an Oscar nod, at least not in the documentary category -- it's ineligible because it didn't open theatrically before the Aug. 31 deadline. (The doc eligibility period is September-August, not January-December like it is for other awards.) It may still be nominated in the foreign-language and animated categories, however.

The IDA Awards also included a career achievement prize for Werner Herzog and a "pioneer award" for Rob Epstein, whose films The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989) both won Oscars. IndieWIRE has the complete list of IDA winners here.