The 2026 Oscars race for the documentary classes is coming into focus. IndieWire can announce the 2025 Albie Awards honorees, which leads immediately 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 Competition and at the beginning of Academy Awards campaigning. The 2025 Albie Awards might be held on September 24 at Ginny’s Supper Membership on the Purple Rooster in Harlem, with an after-party on the Maysles Documentary Middle.
The 2025 honorees for the Albie Awards are a trio of acclaimed competition documentaries. Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck’s “Orwell: 2+2=5,” which premiered on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition, is among the many choices, 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 Middle 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” received the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition and can debut on Netflix later this fall.
Brittany Shyne’s “Seeds” additionally takes place within the American South. The characteristic received the Grand Jury Award on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition, and tells the story of generational Black farmers.
“So far the Albies have been an early predictor of prime contenders for the Academy Awards and different important honors,” Kazembe Balagun, the Govt Director of MDC, mentioned. “This yr, 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 yr, with the chaotic state of safety on the earth, we deal with the essential function of the humanities celebrating the values that convey us collectively in group and the forces that divide us. The Albies this yr 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 occasions perform in a playbook of worldwide totalitarianism.”
Earlier Albie Award filmmakers embrace 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 Middle have been based in 2007 to have a good time “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.
