Cinema Eye Honors announces today its first awards announcements for 2023. The organization, now in its 16th season, recognizes outstanding artistic achievement in the realm of nonfiction and documentary films and episodic works. Specifically, today’s announcement includes the nominees in five Broadcast categories, the annual Short List (which spotlights 10 of the year’s most distinguished documentary films) and the Legacy Award recipient for 2023.

Leading the pack in the Broadcast Film and Series category with three nominations is HBO’s Four Hours at the Capital, which details the January 6 riot. Following closely behind with two nods is the second season of HBO’s docuseries hit How To with John Wilson. Overall, HBO has so far garnered 11 nominations, well ahead of any other networks and streaming platforms. Other nominees that received two nominations are Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back (Disney+), Sally Aitken’s Playing With Sharks (Disney+), the CNN anthology series Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy and W. Kamau Bell’s We Need to Talk About Cosby (Showtime).

Additionally, Cinema Eye Honors announced the 10 films on this year’s Shorts List, comprised of semi-finalists for its Nonfiction Short Film Honor. Among those 10 films, five or six will be announced as the nominees in the Short Film category next month. 

The 2023 awards will also mark the 10-year anniversary of the organization’s list of The Unforgettables—which focuses on the year’s most notable documentary subject—as well as the centennial of Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. As such, Cinema Eye Honors announced a year-long celebration of documentary film subjects and the role they play in the construction of nonfiction films. This encompasses the presentation of the 2023 Legacy Award to Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb, the filmmaker’s acclaimed 1995 portrait of underground cartoonist R. Crumb. Zwigoff will be presented with the award during a Legacy Award screening of his film next year at the the newly restored Eagle Theatre in Northeast Los Angeles.

“I’m glad to find out you don’t have to be dead to receive this award,” Zwigoff said in a written statement. “I guess they figured I’m finally close enough. I’m so old my film career started decades before this Cinema Eye Award existed, so now they have to give me the Honorary version, the ‘Legacy Award.’ This is sort of like the Lifetime Achievement Award or the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award they hand out each year at the Oscars, except I haven’t achieved much in my lifetime, and I generally prefer the company of animals to humans. In any case, it’s a nice honor and I’m in great company judging from the list of prior recipients.”

Find the full list of nominees below, and keep tabs on Cinema Eye Honors’s official website for further announcements.

Legacy Award

Crumb

Directed by Terry Zwigoff

Produced by Lynn O’Donnell and Terry Zwigoff

Edited by Victor Livingston

Cinematography by Maryse Alberti

Music by David Beddinghaus

Sound by Scott Breindell

Broadcast Film Nominees

Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes

Directed by James Jones | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

Directed by Rory Kennedy | Netflix

Four Hours at the Capitol

Directed by Jamie Roberts | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

George Carlin’s American Dream

Directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

Playing With Sharks

Directed by Sally Aitken | Disney+

Nonfiction Series Nominees

The Beatles: Get Back

Directed by Peter Jackson | Disney+

Black and Missing

Directed by Geeta Gandbhir and Samantha Knowles | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey

Directed by Rachel Dretzin | Netflix

LuLaRich

Directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Jenner Furst | Amazon Studios

Mind Over Murder

Directed by Nanfu Wang | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

We Need to Talk About Cosby

Directed by W. Kamau Bell | Showtime

Anthology Series Nominees

How To with John Wilson

Nathan Fielder, Michael Koman, Clark Reinking and John Wilson, Executive Producers | HBO

Origins of Hip Hop

Peter Bittenbender, Mark Grande, Slane Hatch; Supervising Producers: Amira Lewally and Phoenix Skye Maulella, Executive Producers | A&E

Prehistoric Planet

Jon Favreau and Michael Gunton, Executive Producers; Tim Walker, Series Producer | Apple TV+

Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy

Tom Barry, Adam Hawkins, Eve Kay and Stanley Tucci, Executive Producers; Robin O’Sullivan, Series Producer | CNN

Women Who Rock

Jessica Hopper, Rachel Brill, John Varvatos, Derik Murray and Jesse James Miller, Executive Producers | EPIX

The World According to Jeff Goldblum

Jeff Goldblum, Jane Root, Sara Brailsford, Keith Addis and Arif Nurmohamed, Executive Producers, Ben Jessop, Series Producer | Disney+

Broadcast Editing Nominees

37 Words

Jessica Congdon and Dave Marcus | ESPN

The Beatles: Get Back

Jabeez Olssen | Disney+

Four Hours at the Capitol

Will Grayburn | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

How to Survive a Pandemic

Adam Evans and Tyler H. Walk | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

How To with John Wilson

Adam Locke-Norton | HBO

We Need to Talk About Cosby

Meg Ramsay | Showtime

Broadcast Cinematography Nominees

Four Hours at the Capitol

Jamie Roberts | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy

Coodie Simmons and Danny “DNA” Sorge | Netflix

Playing With Sharks

Michael Taylor, Judd Overton, Nathan Barlow and Toby Ralph | Disney+

Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy

Andrew Muggleton | CNN

Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Come Off

Sam Jones and Jesse Green | HBO Documentary Films/HBO Max

Shorts List

(Cinema Eye’s Annual List of the Year’s Top Short Documentaries)

Anastasia
Directed by Sarah McCarthy

The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone
Directed by Maya Newell

In Flow of Words
Directed by Eliane Esther Bots

The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo
Directed by Ilinca Călugăreanu

Keys to the City
Directed by Ian Moubayed

Last Days of August
Directed by Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck  

Long Line of Ladies
Directed by Rayka Zehtabchi and Shaandiin Tome

The Martha Mitchell Effect
Directed by Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy

Nuisance Bear
Directed by Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden

Shut Up and Paint
Directed by Alex Mallis and Titus Kaphar