The winners of the 2026 Cinema Eye Honors were announced at a ceremony in New York on January 8, 2026, celebrating the best in documentary filmmaking from the past year. The Apple Original Films documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light” was the biggest winner of the night, taking home the top prize for Outstanding Nonfiction Feature. The event highlighted a diverse group of films and series, with other major winners including “The Perfect Neighbor,” “Seeds,” and the broadcast film “Pee-wee as Himself.” The Cinema Eye Honors are voted on by more than 800 documentary film professionals and are considered a significant indicator of success in the upcoming awards season.
2026 Cinema Eye Honors Main Film Category Winners
Here is the complete list of winners from the major film categories at the 2026 Cinema Eye Honors.
- Outstanding Nonfiction Feature: Come See Me in the Good Light (Directed by Ryan White)
- Outstanding Direction: Geeta Gandbhir for The Perfect Neighbor
- Outstanding Editing: Viridiana Lieberman for The Perfect Neighbor
- Outstanding Production: TIE: The Alabama Solution (Andrew Jarecki, Charlotte Kaufman) and Apocalypse in the Tropics (Petra Costa, Alessandra Orofino)
- Outstanding Cinematography: Brittany Shyne for Seeds
- Outstanding Original Music Score: Blake Neely for Come See Me in the Good Light
- Outstanding Debut Feature: Seeds (Directed by Brittany Shyne)
The featured documentary, “Come See Me in the Good Light,” follows poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley as they navigate Gibson’s cancer journey. The film also won honors for its original music score. In a notable achievement, director Brittany Shyne won two awards for her film “Seeds,” a documentary about Black farmers in the American South, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Special Award Winners and Broadcast Categories
Beyond the main competition, the Cinema Eye Honors present several special awards that recognize unique contributions to nonfiction storytelling.
- Audience Choice Prize: The Tale of Silyan (Directed by Tamara Kotevska)
- Outstanding Nonfiction Short Film: All the Empty Rooms (Directed by Joshua Seftel)
- Spotlight Award: To the West, in Zapata (Directed by David Bim)
- Heterodox Award: The Voice of Hind Rajab (Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania)
The organization also honored seven real-life subjects from the year’s documentaries with the “Unforgettables” award. This year’s honorees included poet Andrea Gibson, journalist Seymour Hersh, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and Palestinian artist Fatma Hassona, among others. Two of these honors were given posthumously to Gibson and Hassona.
For television and streaming, the winners in the broadcast categories were:
- Outstanding Broadcast Film: Pee-wee as Himself (HBO | Max)
- Outstanding Nonfiction Series: Social Studies (FX on Hulu)
- Outstanding Anthology Series: Conan O’Brien Must Go (HBO | Max)
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Historic Nominations and Career Achievement Honors
The path to the awards began with nominations announced in late 2025. “Come See Me in the Good Light” led all films with six nominations, followed by “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” “Cover-Up,” and “Seeds,” each with five.
Director Geeta Gandbhir made Cinema Eye history by earning nominations for three different projects in a single year: “The Perfect Neighbor” (Feature and Direction), “The Devil Is Busy” (Short Film), and “Harlem Ice” (Anthology Series). Veteran editor Janus Billeskov Jansen was honored with the inaugural Cinema Eye-Con Award for Career Achievement. The Danish editor is known for his work on acclaimed documentaries like “The Act of Killing” and “Flee,” as well as the Oscar-winning fiction film “Another Round.”.
“I see myself as a storyteller,” Jansen said in a statement. “In fiction I can reshape characters freely, but in documentary films I hold a moral responsibility: the people in our films are real individuals whose lives continue long after the credits.”
The ceremony also added four classic documentaries to its Legacy Award canon: “Portrait of Jason” (Shirley Clarke), “Burden of Dreams” (Les Blank), “Sans Soleil” (Chris Marker), and “Tongues Untied” (Marlon Riggs). The 19th annual ceremony was held at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem.
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