'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' is the Critics' Choice for Best Documentary

It was a beautiful night for documentaries, as the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association presented their 3rd annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards on Saturday night (I’m a member of both organizations, by the way). Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was the big winner, taking home the honors for Best Documentary, Best Director, and Best Editing.

Free Solo also picked up three awards, for Best Sports Documentary, Best Cinematography, and Most Innovative Documentary. Otherwise, there was a nice split among the rest of the winners, including a tie in the category of Best First Director, which was shared by Bing Liu for Minding the Gap and Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster for Science Fair.

Among the highlights of the evening were the special honors that went to the iconic documentarians Stanley Nelson and Michael Moore. The latter took the opportunity to finally deliver his full acceptance speech from the Oscars in 2003 when he won an Academy Award for Bowling for Columbine. “I got up this morning and I went rummaging through all these bankers’ boxes and files, and I knew I had kept this, and I found it,” Moore told the crowd of critics and filmmakers.

Here is an excerpt of the continued speech:

So before I close, I want to say a few words about nonfiction and how to use it as a cure for the many lies we are being told, and as a nonviolent weapon of revolution and change. I have read over the years that my first movie, ‘Roger and Me,’ kicked open the doors for documentary films, the first documentary to be widely distributed to the shopping mall cinemas and multiplexes of America.

You can read the full transcribed text at IndieWire care of BFCA member Kate Erbland.

Here are all the winners of the night:

Best Documentary: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Best Limited Documentary Series: The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling

Best Ongoing Documentary Series: Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

Best Director: Morgan Neville for Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Best First Time Director: TIE: Bing Liu for Minding the Gap, and Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster for Science Fair

Best Political Documentary: RBG

Best Sports Documentary: Free Solo

Best Music Documentary: Quincy

Most Innovative Documentary: Free Solo

Best Cinematography: Free Solo

Best Editing: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?