Winners of the 18th Annual Homer Documentary Film Festival were named on Oct. 6. The top honor, “Audience Favorite Award,” went to “Hallelujah; Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song.”
The festival spanned a week, Sept. 22 through Sept. 29 — beginning with an opening night gala. Six films were shown, described in a press release as the “best documentaries of 2022.” These included “Hallelujah,” “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down,” “Gratitude Revealed,” “Jazz Fest, A New Orleans Story,” “Fire of Love” and “Hockeyland.”
On each of the festival days, three of the six featured documentaries were shown, at varying times at the Homer Theatre. Attendees were asked to rate each film on a scale of one to five, the average of these scores were used to determine the audience favorite, with a score of 4.72, “Hallelujah.”
“Hallelujah” depicts the life of late singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, and the process of creating the iconic song. It has received honors at many other festivals, including Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival.
In addition to “Hallelujah,” the press release from the festival says that “five of the six movies received average scores close to or above 4.5.” These are, the release says, the highest scores by the highest number of films in the festival’s history.
With the exception of “Hockeyland,” which scored 3.4, all of the other films landed between 4.42 and 4.72.
In addition to “Audience Favorite,” awards were also given for “Best of the Fest” and “Director’s Award.” Both of those honors went to “Gratitude Revealed,” a film about living “a more meaningful life” through “intimate conversations,” according to the festival website.
The release says the film received applause after each of its four showings, and says some attendees saw it up to three times.
This year, over 100 festival passes were sold — good for attendance to any festival showing — and attendance was described as “much higher than last year.”
More information about the festival and the featured films can be found at homerdocfest.com.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
