Award-winning documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter will be honored at this year’s DOC NYC Film Festival, Realscreen reports. Porter will receive the Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence at the fest’s Visionaries Tribute event.
The award, which includes a $5,000 cash prize, is given in recognition of a mid-career documentary filmmaker for outstanding work in observational cinema. “Citizenfour” helmer Laura Poitras took home the inaugural award in 2014, and in 2015 the honor went to Kim Longinotto, director of “Dreamcatcher.”
Porter’s credits include “Spies of Mississippi” and “Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper.” Her 2013 doc “Gideon’s Army” won an Emmy and the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award. The portrait of three public defenders working in the Southern United States was also nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Porter herself is a former lawyer who practiced law for five years. “Trapped,” her latest doc, explores how abortion providers — and their many patients — are affected by little-known abortion laws in the U.S. that make it difficult for clinics to stay open.
When Women and Hollywood asked Porter her advice for other female directors, she said that she’d give the same advice to any director: “Figure out what you want to say and keep asking yourself if you are saying it.” She added, “Be decisive but also respectful of the people you are collaborating with, and pick people you enjoy working with. It’s always a long and involved process making a film.”
“Trapped” will screen at DOC NYC. The festival’s lineup also includes highlights such as Ava DuVernay’s examination of the U.S. prison-industrial complex “13th,” Kirsten Johnson’s visual memoir “Cameraperson,” and “Weiner,” an account of controversial NYC politician Anthony Weiner’s scandal-ridden mayoral campaign, co-directed by Elyse Steinberg.
DOC NYC runs from November 10-17.
