Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story (Banger Films, National Film Board of Canada [NFB]) is among the nominees for Best Music Documentary at this year’s International Documentary Association (IDA) Documentary Awards.

The awards are billed as one of the highest honours in documentary filmmaking, with the 40th edition taking place in L.A. on Dec. 5, hosted by comedian Adam Conover.

Any Other Way, focused on the pioneering titular trans R&B singer in the 1960s, was also the recipient of the inaugural Pamela Segger Canadian Documentary Award at the Lunenberg Doc Fest in September. It is produced by Amanda Burt, Justine Pimlott, Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen.

B.C.-based Julian Brave NoiseCat is nominated for Best Director for co-directing Sugarcane (National Geographic, Kassie Films, Hedgehog Films) alongside Emily Kassie. The film, which earlier won a directing prize during its run at Sundance Film Festival, focuses on an investigation into missing and abused children at a residential school. Produced by Kassie and Kellen Quinn, Sugarcane is nominated in five categories in total, including Best Feature Documentary.

Several other Canadian films were nominated in the Best Short Documentary category, including Karsten Wall’s Modern Goose (NFB, New York Times Op-Docs) from producer Alicia Smith; Nine Easy Dances (York University), directed and produced by Nora Rosenthal; and The Poem We Sang (MAD Solutions), a Canada/Palestine/Jordan copro from Palestinian-Canadian photojournalist and filmmaker Annie Sakkab, who coproduced with Paul Lee.

With files from Realscreen

Image courtesy of NFB/Banger Films