The Cinema Eye Honors are awards recognizing excellence in nonfiction or documentary filmmaking and include awards for the disciplines of directing, producing, cinematography and editing. The awards are presented each January in New York and have been held since 2011 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. Cinema Eye was created to celebrate artistic craft in nonfiction filmmaking, addressing a perceived imbalance in the field where awards were given for social impact or importance of topic rather than artistic excellence.

History

Nominations for the awards are determined by voting of top film festival documentary programmers and winners are voted on by an invited membership of more than 800 documentary film experts. Cinema Eye also presents an Audience Choice Prize where voting is open to the public and the Heterodox Award. The first Cinema Eye Honors were presented at the IFC Center in New York City on March 18, 2008.

Winners Through the Years

Winners in 2008

Winners in 2009

Winners in 2010

Winners in 2011

Winners in 2012

Winners in 2013

Winners in 2014

Winners in 2015

Winners in 2016

Winners in 2017

Winners in 2018

Winners in 2019

Winners in 2020

Winners in 2021

Winners in 2022

Winners in 2023

Winners in 2024