Documentary festival DOC NYC has announced the honorees for its 13th annual Visionaries Tribute, to be held at New York’s Gotham Hall on November 11. Lifetime Achievement honors will be presented to the Oscar Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Musk; Taxi to the Dark Side) and the veteran sound recordist, filmmaker, and executive director of Third World Newsreel JT Takagi. The Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence will go to Stephen Maing (The Great Experiment; Union), and the Leading Light Award will go to Raney Aronson-Rath, the executive producer of PBS’s flagship investigation series FRONTLINE.
DOC NYC’s 2026 festival will take place both in person and online. The in-person events will take place November 11-19 in New York City at IFC Center, SVA Theatre, and Village East by Angelika. The festival’s online presentations will extend through November 29, with online screenings available to viewers across the U.S.
“The Visionaries Tribute is an annual reminder of the breadth and depth of talent in our field,” said DOC NYC co-founder and director of special projects Thom Powers, who oversees the event. “This year’s honorees exemplify a spirit of truth-telling against the odds. Alex Gibney has made several of the most attention-getting documentaries of the 21st Century. JT Takagi has a remarkable career as both a sound recordist and leader of Third World Newsreel. Stephen Maing has upheld a standard of excellence in observational filmmaking through his works. And Raney Aronson-Rath has led PBS’s FRONTLINE to excel despite deep funding cuts to public television.”
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
The Lifetime Achievement Award honors individuals with a substantial body of documentary film work. Past recipients are Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, Lois Vossen, Alan Berliner, Marcia Smith, Michael Moore, Deborah Shaffer, Werner Herzog, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Joan Churchill, Raoul Peck, Sam Pollard, Jean Tsien, Martin Scorsese, Michael Apted, Wim Wenders, Orlando Bagwell, Sheila Nevins, Errol Morris, Stanley Nelson, Jonathan Demme, Barbara Kopple, Jon Alpert, Frederick Wiseman, D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Albert Maysles.
The 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award goes to:
Alex Gibney is an Oscar-, Emmy-, Grammy-, Peabody-, and WGA Award-winning filmmaker. His latest film Musk, an unvarnished examination of Elon Musk, is set to premiere at Venice and TIFF, and be released to theaters in fall 2026. His celebrated works include Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room; Taxi to the Dark Side; Client 9; Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God; We Steal Secrets; The Armstrong Lie; Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief; Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine; Sinatra: All or Nothing at All; The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley; Citizen K; Totally Under Control; In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon; and Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie
JT Takagi is an award-winning independent filmmaker, sound recordist, and the executive director of Third World Newsreel, a progressive alternative media center. Her own films are primarily on Asian/Asian American and immigrant issues, including Bittersweet Survival; Homes Apart: Korea; The Women Outside; and North Korea: Beyond the DMZ, which aired nationally on PBS. As a sound engineer, she has recorded numerous public television and theatrical documentaries that have earned Emmy and Cinema Audio Society awards, including Yance Ford’s Strong Island and Stanley Nelson’s Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. She teaches at The New School and City University of NY.
ROBERT AND ANNE DREW AWARD FOR DOCUMENTARY EXCELLENCE
The Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence is named for the pioneering husband-and-wife filmmaking team. The award includes a $5,000 cash prize contributed by Drew Associates. The award honors a mid-career filmmaker or partnership that excels in observational filmmaking. Three of the past six recipients of the award have gone on to win the Oscar for Best Documentary. Past honorees include Elizabeth Lo, Lucy Walker, Maite Alberdi, Ondi Timoner, Peter Nicks, Alexander Nanau, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Dawn Porter, Kim Longinotto, and Laura Poitras.
The 2026 Robert and Anne Drew Award goes to:
Stephen Maing is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, cinematographer, and editor based in New York City. His most recent film, The Great Experiment (directed with Eric Daniel Metzgar), is a poetic portrait of America during the first Trump administration. His other films include Union (directed with Brett Story); Crime + Punishment; High Tech, Low Life; and The Surrender.
Jill Drew, the general manager of Drew Associates, who established this award at DOC NYC, said, “Observational documentary demands patience, perseverance, and precision planning. Stephen Maing has proven to be a master of the form. He is also a filmmaker for our times, focusing on characters who confront oppressive power structures. He has a gift not only for wielding a camera, but also for using it as a tool of empathy.”
LEADING LIGHT AWARD
The Leading Light Award honors an individual making a critical contribution to documentary in a role other than as a filmmaker. The past recipients are Carlos A. Gutiérrez, Jenni Wolfson, Erika Dilday, Sonya Childress, Chi-hui Yang, Yvonne Welbon, Cynthia Lopez, Tabitha Jackson, Cara Mertes, Molly Thompson, Tom Quinn, and Dan Cogan.
The 2026 Leading Light Award goes to:
Raney Aronson-Rath is an Oscar-winning producer and a leading voice in documentary filmmaking and distribution as editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE, PBS’ flagship investigative journalism documentary series. She also leads the GBH Documentary Unit, which includes FRONTLINE, NOVA, and American Experience. Aronson-Rath has spearheaded FRONTLINE’s expansion into the theatrical documentary space with global reach. Producing more than 20 films each year on the defining issues of our time, select highlights during her tenure include: winning the Academy Award® for 20 Days in Mariupol and receiving Academy Award® nominations for Abacus: Small Enough to Jail and For Sama. Under her leadership, FRONTLINE Features produced and distributed One in a Million, which follows the 10-year journey of a Syrian refugee and won the Sundance Audience Award and jury prize for directing.
