The 2026 Oscars race for the documentary classes is coming into focus. IndieWire can announce the 2025 Albie Awards honorees, which leads instantly into the marketing campaign for securing an Academy Award nod.
The Albie Awards are billed as being a key business occasion, particularly as they happen previous to the New York Movie Pageant and in the beginning of Academy Awards campaigning. The 2025 Albie Awards can be held on September 24 at Ginny’s Supper Membership on the Purple Rooster in Harlem, with an after-party on the Maysles Documentary Heart.
The 2025 honorees for the Albie Awards are a trio of acclaimed pageant documentaries. Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck’s “Orwell: 2+2=5,” which premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Pageant, is among the many picks, together with Sundance award winners “The Excellent Neighbor” and “Seeds.”
“Orwell: 2+2=5” captures the lifetime of “1984” creator George Orwell. Peck beforehand directed “I Am Not Your Negro,” screened on the Maysles Documentary Heart as a part of its Oscar-nominated run.
“The Excellent Neighbor” facilities on Ajike Owens, a Black girl, who was killed by her white neighbor in Florida in 2023 after a seemingly minor dispute. The movie explores the impression of Stand Your Floor gun legal guidelines; Geeta Gandbhir’s “The Excellent Neighbor” gained the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary on the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant and can debut on Netflix later this fall.
Brittany Shyne’s “Seeds” additionally takes place within the American South. The characteristic gained the Grand Jury Award on the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant, and tells the story of generational Black farmers.
“Thus far the Albies have been an early predictor of prime contenders for the Academy Awards and different vital honors,” Kazembe Balagun, the Government Director of MDC, mentioned. “This 12 months, we’re excited to honor Raoul Peck’s ‘Orwell: 2+2=5,’ Geeta Gandbhir’s ‘The Excellent Neighbor,’ and Brittany Shyne’s ‘Seeds.’”
Balagun added of the well timed doc honorees, “This 12 months, with the chaotic state of safety on the planet, we concentrate on the essential function of the humanities celebrating the values that convey us collectively in neighborhood and the forces that divide us. The Albies this 12 months have a look at a wide range of well timed subjects: generational black farmers and the importance of proudly owning land, how Stand Your Floor legal guidelines divide us and incite violence, and the way our present instances perform in a playbook of worldwide totalitarianism.”
Earlier Albie Award filmmakers embody Margaret Brown, Stanley Nelson, Michèle Stephenson, and Joe Brewster, plus Oscar winners Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Balal, and Rachel Szor.
The Albie Awards and Harlem’s Maysles Documentary Heart have been based in 2007 to have fun “preeminent filmmakers who convey tales alive in considerate and provocative methods,” the group states. Late director Albert Maysles based the MDC to foster documentary movies that highlight the push for a extra equitable world.
