No Other Land won the best feature documentary award at the 2024 International Documentary Association (IDA) Awards on Thursday night.
No Other Land, which paints a portrait of life under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, also won the best director for award for Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, and the IDA Pare Lorentz Award. The film previously won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it premiered, as well as at the Gotham Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards and the National Board of Review Awards.
Other winners include Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, which won three awards including best editing and writing, as well as Queendom, We’re Here and Omar & Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird, among others.
When nominations were announced last month, Sugarcane, a film about the abusive legacy of Catholic-run Native American missionary schools, racked up five nods, including for best feature. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat scored four nods and three titles — Queendom, Black Box Diaries and My Sweet Land — landed three nominations apiece.
This year’s IDA Documentary Awards nominees were selected from more than 700 entries from 77 countries, both up from last year, and, in the feature and shortlist categories, were chosen from shortlists announced on Oct. 24. Entries were reviewed by blue-ribbon jurors that included 300 documentary professionals from more than 40 countries.
In addition to the competitive awards, the IDA awards also honored Dawn Porter with the Career Achievement Award, Black Box Diaries‘ Shiori Ito with the Emerging Filmmaker Award and the four directors of No Other Land were honored with the Courage Under Fire Award.
The 40th IDA Documentary Awards were hosted by Adam Conover and took place at Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theater, with the ceremony also streaming live on documentary.org and IDA’s YouTube, Facebook and Instagram accounts.
See below for the full 2025 winners list.
DAVID L. WOLPER STUDENT DOCUMENTARY AWARDHer Name Was Zehava (USA, Israel)
IDA PARE LORENTZ AWARDNo Other Land (Palestine, Norway, USA)
BEST LIMITED SERIESA Town Called Victoria (USA)
BEST TV FEATURE DOCUMENTARYTwo American Families: 1991-2024 (USA)
ABC NEWS VIDEOSOURCE AWARDSoundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Belgium, France, Netherlands)
BEST CURATED SERIESIndependent Lens (USA)
BEST AUDIO DOCUMENTARY WINNERWhat’s Up, Michael Freeman? (USA)
BEST ORIGINAL MUSIC SCOREVictor Hernandez Stumpfhauser, Frida (USA)
BEST EDITINGRik Chaubet, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Belgium, France, Netherlands)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHYRuslan Fedotov, Queendom (USA, France)
BEST WRITINGJohan Grimonprez, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Belgium, France, Netherlands)
BEST EPISODIC SERIESWe’re Here (USA)
BEST MUSIC DOCUMENTARYOmar & Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird (USA)
BEST DIRECTORBasel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor & Yuval Abraham, No Other Land (Palestine, Norway, USA)
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORTInstruments of a Beating Heart (Japan)
BEST FEATURE DOCUMENTARYNo Other Land (Palestine, Norway, USA)
