George Orwell Documentary Among 3 To Be Honored At Albie Awards

Harlem’s Maysles Documentary Center is giving recognition to three of this year’s top nonfiction films with Oscar potential – Orwell: 2+2=5 from director Raoul Peck, The Perfect Neighbor directed by Geeta Gandbhir, and Sundance winner Seeds, directed by Britanny Shyne.

The center will honor the films at the 6^th annual Albie Awards dinner on September 24 at Ginny’s Supper Club @ Red Rooster in New York City.

“To date the Albies have been an early predictor of top contenders for the Academy Awards and other significant honors,” notes Kazembe Balagun, executive director of Mayles Documentary Center. “This year, we are excited to honor Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5, Geeta Gandbhir’s The Perfect Neighbor, and Brittany Shyne’s Seeds.”

Peck’s documentary, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, examines the life and work of author George Orwell, with particular emphasis on the prescient quality of Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984, published in 1949.

The Perfect Neighbor, winner of the directing award for U.S. documentary at Sundance, uses police dash cam and bodycam footage to present the shocking case of Ajike Owens, an African American mother of four who was gunned down by her neighbor, a white woman named Susan Lorincz, in Ocala, FL in 2023.

Shyne’s Seeds won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at Sundance in January, and has gone on to earn honors at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, as well as Provincetown and RiverRun festivals. Using black and white cinematography, the director explores the experience of African American farmers in the South who cultivate land held by their families for generations.

“This year, with the chaotic state of security in the world, we focus on the crucial role of the arts celebrating the values that bring us together in community and the forces that divide us,” Balagun explains. “The Albies this year look at a variety of timely topics: generational black farmers and the significance of owning land, how Stand Your Ground laws divide us and incite violence, and how our current times function in a playbook of global totalitarianism.”

The Maysles Documentary Center, founded by legendary filmmaker Albert Maysles (1926-2015), “fosters documentary film for a more equitable world.” Maysles’ classic documentary, Grey Gardens — which he directed with his brother David Maysles, Ellen Hovde, and Muffie Meyer – is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year.

More on this year’s honorees:

ORWELL: 2+2=5. Academy award nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5 details the life of famed author George Orwell and uses Orwell’s writings to draw lessons in our current political climate. The film premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and is one of the very few political documentaries addressing our current moment that will get a substantial theatrical release this fall. Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro screened at the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem as part of its acclaimed Oscar-nominated run.

Time magazine said “ORWELL: 2+2=5 feels like the boldest documentary anyone could make right now” and called the film “exhilarating.” “Poignant and galvanizing” wrote The Hollywood Reporter. With echoes of Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, the film illustrates the power of truth-twisting doublethink of media and government in totalitarian regimes. 

THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR. Winner of the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and coming to Netflix in the fall, The Perfect Neighbor explores the 2023 killing of Ajike Owens, a black woman, by her white neighbor in Florida, after a seemingly minor dispute. Using bodycam footage from dozens of police visits, the film bears witness to a tight-knit community navigating one neighbor’s relentless harassment. But her hostility takes a sinister turn when it escalates into a fatal crime. The film explores the vulnerability and impact of the controversial Stand Your Ground gun laws when individuals feel emboldened by the law to act on their fear and prejudice. Roger Ebert wrote, “I don’t think there was a documentary in the Sundance program this year more buzzed about than Geeta Gandbhir’s excellent The Perfect Neighbor.”

SEEDS. Winner of the Grand Jury Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Seeds is director Brittany Shyne‘s moving portrait of centennial farmers in the geographical south. Using lyrical black and white imagery, this meditative film examines the decline of generational black farmers and the significance of owning land. Through these inter-generational stories, we see the cycles of inequity and embedded racism that persist to this present day, and the signs of hope and renewal with younger generations of farmers. “A languid, loving portrait of Black farmers in the South, Seeds is a mixture of celebration and lament,” wrote Variety.