AWARDS

Each year, three Audience Choice Awards are voted for by paper and virtual ballot, the Documentary Feature Award, sponsored by Florentine Films with a $1,000 cash prize; the Documentary Shorts Award, with a $500 cash prize; and the Narrative Shorts Award with a $500 cash prize. Winners are announced at the close of the festival.

The highlight of the film festival is the Jonathan Daniels Award, presented during a special Awards Ceremony held after the winning film is screened. It is given to a filmmaker(s) whose film demonstrates artistic excellence and awareness around a social justice issue.

Past recipients have included

 

  • Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon for The Central Park Five (2013)
  • Edet Belzberg for Watchers of the Sky (2014)
  • Margaret Nagle for The Good Lie (2015)
  • Brian Oakes for Jim: The James Foley Story (2016)
  • Beth Murphy for What Tomorrow Brings (2017)
  • Talya Tibbon and Joshua Bennett for Sky and Ground (2018)
  • Cynthia Wade and Sasha Friedlander for GRIT (2019)
  • Ofra Bloch for AFTERWARD (2020)
  • Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer for CURED (2021)
  • Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers for HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: YOUTH MENTAL ILLNESS (2022)

2020 Award Winning Films

Jonathan Daniels Award

AFTERWARD
Ofra Bloch, Director
Sponsored by HKS Associates

Audience Choice Award

Best Documentary Feature
BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHE
Pamela B. Green, Director
Sponsored by Florentine Films

Audience Choice Award

Best Narrative Short
BETTER HALF
Adam Jones and Pete Johnson, Directors
Steve Marchese and Joe Calabrese, Executive Producers
Sponsored by MONIFF

Audience Choice Award

Best Documentary Short
BENEATH THE INK
Cy Dodson, Director
Sponsored by MONIFF

About

Jonathan Daniels

Jonathan Myrick Daniels was a native of Keene, New Hampshire, and seminarian at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Heeding the plea of Dr. Martin Luther King for clergy to become more actively involved in the Civil Rights movement, he traveled to Alabama in 1965 to assist with voter registration efforts in the South. During a confrontation, he sacrificed his life to save the life of fellow protester Ruby Sales, a sixteen-year-old African American girl. Jonathan Daniels became an inspiration to all who believe in the importance of social responsibility.

The Monadnock International Film Festival joins the Jonathan Daniels Center for Social Responsibility to honor his memory by presenting the Jonathan Daniels Award to a filmmaker(s) who uses the transformative power of film to tell stories of hope, redemption and justice.

About the Jonathan Daniels Center for Social Responsibility

Our mission is to educate visitors on Jonathan Daniels’s life and martyrdom as an example of social justice in action, and to aspire and motivate individuals to lead lives that reflect similar principles. To learn more about the Center and Jonathan Daniel’s life, please visit jonathandanielscenter.org