‘A Thousand Cuts’ wins Best Documentary at Gotham Awards 2021

A Thousand Cuts, Ramona Diaz’s documentary on Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, won Best Documentary at the 30th Gotham Awards. It tied with Garrett Bradley’s Time for first place.

The PBS Frontline documentary and Time bested 3 other nominees, including 76 Days by Hao Wu and Weixi Chen, City Hall by Frederick Wiseman, and Our Time Machine by Yang Sun and S. Leo Chiang.

The virtual hybrid ceremony, which is usually held in early December, was moved to Tuesday, January 12 (Philippine time) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The yearly event, hosted by the Independent Filmmakers Project, was broadcast live from Cipriani Wall Street, New York this year.

The Gotham Awards is an American film awards body dedicated to honoring independent films, and is seen to “amplify key contenders in the Academy Awards race.”

Diaz’s 98-minute feature film tackles the attacks of President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration on Philippine democracy and the media, zeroing in on, Maria Ressa, one of TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2018 and co-founder of Rappler.

A Thousand Cuts has screened in various international festivals since its international premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020. It made the rounds in the San Francisco International Film Festival 2020, HotDocs 2020, Full Frame 2020, IDFA 2020, DOC NYC Shortlist, SXSW Film Festival, and AFI DOCS, to name a few.

It won Best Documentary at DocEdge 2020, the David Carr Award at the Montclair Film Festival 2020, and the Global Impact Award at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 2020.

A Thousand Cuts aired as episode of Frontline, the long-running investigative documentary program on the American PBS, on Saturday, January 9 (Philippine time).

It was screened around the US and Canada in select online theaters beginning August 2020, and streamed for free in the Philippines in June. – Rappler.com