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The Alliance of Women Film Journalists has announced the nominees for their 2015 Eda Awards recognizing the amazing work done by and about women -- both in front and behind the camera. According to their site, "the EDAs are named in honor of Awfj founder Jennifer Merin.s mother, Eda Reiss Merin, a stage, film and television actress whose career spanned more than 60 years. A dedicated foot soldier in the industry, Eda was one of the founders of AFTRA and a long-standing Member of AMPAS."

Todd Haynes' "Carol" led the pack with nine nominations, followed by "Mad Max: Fury Road" with six, "Room" and "Spotlight" with five each, and "The Martian" with four.

I wish I can vote for the Eda Awards because their Special Mention Awards are just too darn fun with categories like "Best Nudity," and "Actress Most In Need of a New Agent!"

Winners of the 2015 Eda...

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists has announced the nominees for the 2015 Eda Awards.

Carol leads this year’s nominations with nine, followed by Mad Max: Fury Road with six, Room and Spotlight with five each, and The Martian with four.

The Awfj is an association of professional female movie critics, reporters and feature writers working in print, broadcast and online media, dedicated to supporting work by and about women – both in front of and behind the cameras.

The Eda Award winners will be announced on January 12, 2016.

Awfj Best Of Awards

These awards are presented to women and/or men without gender consideration.

Best Film

Carol

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

Room

Spotlight

Best Director

Lenny Abramson – Room

Todd Haynes – Carol

Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu – The Revenant

Tom McCarthy – Spotlight

George Miller – Mad Max Fury Road

Ridley Scott – The Martian

Best Screenplay, Original

Ex Machina – Alex Garland

Inside Out – Pete Docter,...

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50 fabulous documentary films, covering hard politics through to music, money and films that never were...

Thanks to streaming services such as Netflix, we’ve never had better access to documentaries. A whole new audience can discover that these real life stories are just as thrilling, entertaining, and incredible as the latest big-budget blockbuster. What’s more, they’re all true too. But with a new found glut of them comes the ever more impossible choice, what’s worth your time? Below is my pick of the 50 best modern feature length documentaries.

I’ve defined modern as being from 2000 onwards, which means some of the greatest documentaries ever made will not feature here. I’m looking at you Hoop Dreams.

50. McConkey (2013)

d. Rob Bruce, Scott Gaffney, Murray Wais, Steve Winter, David Zieff

Shane McConkey was an extreme skier and Base jumper who lived life on the edge, and very much to the full.

It's not the "Girlhood" that you're probably thinking about... the much-discussed French coming-of-age drama directed by Céline Sciamma that was released in the USA earlier this year (and is currently on Netflix, streaming). More than a decade before Sciamma's film, multiple award-winning filmmaker Liz Garbus directed a documentary also titled "Girlhood," which uses the stories of 2 teenage girls - inmates, victims of horrific violence and tragedy - serving time in a Maryland juvenile detention center, to explore America's justice system.  Like last year's "Girlhood," Garbus' film can also be classified as a coming-of-age story...

Announcements for the lineup for the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, taking place between January 22nd and February 1st, are starting to roll out. Watch this page for updates as more films and sections are revealed.

Premieres

Brooklyn (John Crowley, UK)

Digging for Fire (Joe Swanberg, USA)

Don Verdean (Jared Hess, USA)

End of the Tour (James Ponsoldt, USA)

Experimenter (Michael Almereyda, USA)

Grandma (Paul Weitz, USA)

I Am Michael (Justin Kelly, USA)

I'll See You In My Dreams (Brett Haley, USA)

Last Days in the Desert (Rodrigo Garcia, USA)

Lila & Eve (Charles Stone III, USA)

Mississipi Grind (Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden, USA)

Mistress America (Noah Baumbach, USA)

Seoul Searching (Benson Lee, USA/Korea)

Sleeping with Other People (Leslye Headland, USA)

Ten Thousand Saints (Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman, USA)

True Story (Rupert Goold, USA)

A Walk in the Woods (Ken Kwapis, USA)

Zipper (Mora Stephens, USA)

Documentary Premieres

Beaver Trilogy Part IV (Brad Besser,...

Exclusive: ICM Partners has signed Emmy-winning director/producer Liz Garbus, whose most recently film, Love, Marilyn, made its world premiere at Toronto and was acquired by HBO for summer broadcast. Using a cast of actors that includes Adrien Brody, Glenn Close, Paul Giamatti, Uma Thurman and Viola Davis to read from Monroe’s private writings, Garbus brings a little known side of the bottle blonde bombshell to light. Garbus’s first film about prison life, The Farm: Angola, USA got an Oscar nom and won the Sundance Grand Jury prize and two Emmy Awards. Garbus then co-founded Moxie Firecracker Films with producer/director Rory Kennedy. They made the docu Girlhood and Garbus followed with the HBO docu Bobby Fischer Against The World and Killing In The Name. Garbus also has produced and directed multiple television specials for networks including Lifetime, MTV, A&E, Discovery, Court TV, Sundance Channel, Oxygen, and many others.

Exclusive: ICM Partners has signed Emmy-winning director/producer Liz Garbus, whose most recently film, Love, Marilyn, made its world premiere at Toronto and was acquired by HBO for summer broadcast. Using a cast of actors that includes Adrien Brody, Glenn Close, Paul Giamatti, Uma Thurman and Viola Davis to read from Monroe’s private writings, Garbus brings a little known side of the bottle blonde bombshell to light. Garbus’s first film about prison life, The Farm: Angola, USA got an Oscar nom and won the Sundance Grand Jury prize and two Emmy Awards. Garbus then co-founded Moxie Firecracker Films with producer/director Rory Kennedy. They made the docu Girlhood and Garbus followed with the HBO docu Bobby Fischer Against The World and Killing In The Name. Garbus also has produced and directed multiple television specials for networks including Lifetime, MTV, A&E, Discovery, Court TV, Sundance Channel, Oxygen, and many others.

Brooklyn boy Bobby Fischer, the temperamental, reclusive 1970s chess champion, is probably best known by most people under 40 -- if he’s known at all -- for being that crazy ex-pat who said America got what it deserved on 9/11. Or maybe they’d heard of the 1993 drama Searching for Bobby Fischer, which really doesn’t have much to do with the man at all. Here, documentarian Liz Garbus (Girlhood) examines Fischer in a more comprehensive way than has ever been attempted before, and explores his enigma in ways that even those who do remember him at the height of his fame will find fascinating. Because even when he was known, he wasn’t very well known at all. With our hindsight today, however, Garbus’s portrait of Fischer as a lonely child and a monomanical young chess player becomes a portrait of his times as well...

For the lucky few who get in, Sundance isn’t just a festival — it’s a resource. Over the years, the festival has nurtured the careers of a number of documentary filmmakers who went on to become what senior programmer David Courier recently termed “master filmmakers” — filmmakers so good and so respected that the festival had to create the out-of-competition category, “Doc Premieres,” to make sure their work didn’t overshadow the greener directors.

It should come as no surprise to anyone in the documentary community to find Liz Garbus’ name in a category reserved for such filmmakers. Garbus’ history with the festival stretches back to 1998 when her feature, The Farm: Angola USA won the Grand Jury Prize. In the 13 years since that debut, Garbus has gone on to direct a number of films that would premiere at the festival, including Girlhood and The Execution of Wanda Jean.

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NEW YORK -- Indie banner Wellspring has acquired all U.S. rights to French writer-helmer Andre Techine's latest effort, Strayed, starring Emmanuelle Beart. Based on Gilles Perrault's best-selling novel, the film premiered this year in Cannes. Wellspring is eyeing an August release for the film, a period piece that follows a young widowed schoolteacher who flees the German occupation of Paris with her children. During their escape, the family meets a charismatic teenager who helps them survive in the wilderness. Techine's credits include the Catherine Deneuve starrer My Favorite Season and Alice and Martin, starring Juliette Binoche. Strayed is a French-British co-production, which was sold though the Wild Bunch sales banner. Wellspring acquisitions head Marie Therese Guirgis brokered the pact with Wild Bunch's Carole Baraton. Past and upcoming theatrical releases for Wellspring include Alexander Sokurov's Father and Son, Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold and Girlhood, by documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus.