Come See Me in the Good Light strengthened its case for an Oscar nomination, winning two awards at the Cinema Eye Honors in New York tonight, including Outstanding Feature.
The film directed by Ryan White, which tells the love story of poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley and their courage, grace and humor responding to Gibson’s terminal cancer diagnosis, faced stiff competition in the feature category from 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Afternoons of Solitude, Cover-Up, The Perfect Neighbor, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, and Seeds. Come See Me in the Good Light also won Outstanding Original Music Score, recognizing the work of composer Blake Neely.
Comedian Tig Notaro, who produced Come See Me in the Good Light along with Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave, and Stef Willen, accepted the Cinema Eye trophy on behalf of the team. She acknowledged it initially required some effort convincing White and Hargrave to take on the project.
(L-R) Producer Stef Willen, producer Tig Notaro, producer Jessica Hargrave and producer-director Ryan White attend the ‘Come See Me In The Good Light’ premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2025.
Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
“When I pitched this to Jess and Ryan, they were like, ‘Huh, okay. Yeah, a poet with cancer, let us get back to you,’” Notaro recalled. “And it was just really like, ‘Listen, if you just look into Andrea and Meg just even a little bit, you’re either going to be in or out.’ And three days later, they called me and they were like, ‘Oh man, we are buying our plane tickets, and we are going out there [to Colorado] next week.’ And I remember Ryan saying, ‘We can’t pitch this to any streamers. We have to raise money independently and make the most beautiful film that we can possibly make.’ And we did that.”
Eventually, the film in fact was embraced by a streamer – Apple TV. Last month, it earned a spot on the coveted shortlist of feature documentaries that remain in the running for Oscar recognition (nomination voting begins on Monday).
The Cinema Eye Honors, now in its 19th year, celebrates the documentary art form in multiple categories. Scroll for the full list of the night’s winners.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (center, seated) in ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics‘
Netflix
Cinema Eye cast a wide glance across the nonfiction space, awarding prizes to multiple films. The award for Outstanding Production resulted in a tie between HBO’s The Alabama Solution and the Netflix feature Apocalypse in the Tropics. The latter film, directed by Petra Costa and produced by Costa and Alessandra Orofino, examines the rise of Christian nationalism in Brazil, a movement that played a key role getting right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro elected president in 2018. After Bolsonaro lost his bid for reelection in 2022, he allegedly attempted a stage a coup – an effort to subvert democracy that earned him a lengthy prison term.
Accepting the award, Costa alluded to those developments in her home country.
“We had our Trump of the tropics, and we filmed him being defeated,” Costa shared. “We filmed him intimately in many moments and it was wonderful to see him lose. And it was wonderful to see him after that — well, not wonderful to see him… trying to kill the current president and in an assault similar to yours [of January 6]. But then he was condemned to 27 years in prison where he is now.”
‘The Alabama Solution’
HBO Documentary Films
Director-producers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman accepted the Outstanding Production award for The Alabama Solution, an investigative film that exposes brutal conditions in Alabama’s state prisons. Jarecki related how he and Kaufman gained rare access to the grounds of a prison through the good offices of a preacher who holds annual barbecues/revival meetings at some of the state’s correctional institutions. He suggested the filmmakers come ostensibly as volunteers helping put on a barbecue.
“I pressed [the pastor] and I said, ‘So, if I go back to New York and I get Charlotte Kaufman and we come back down here and you take us into the prison, what will we see?’” Jarecki recalled. “And he sort of thought for a second and then very cautiously said, ‘If you come back, I’ll take you on the death row at Holman Prison and you’ll see it’s a slave ship.’ And it was such a powerful moment. And at that moment, I just thought films choose you, you don’t choose these films.”
(Jarecki and Kaufman will appear on the next episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast on Tuesday to discuss their Oscar-shortlisted film).
Walking Productions
Geeta Gandbhir won Outstanding Direction for her searing Netflix documentary The Perfect Neighbor. That Oscar-shortlisted film also won Outstanding Editing, recognizing the work of Viridiana Lieberman. Seeds, the Oscar-shortlisted feature documentary directed by Brittany Shyne, won two awards – for Outstanding Debut and Outstanding Cinematography.
Also claiming multiple awards was Social Studies, the FX series directed by Lauren Greenfield — winner for Outstanding Nonfiction Series and Broadcast Editing.
Outstanding Nonfiction Short went to Joshua Seftel’s All the Empty Rooms, a Netflix film (it’s shortlisted for the Oscars as well).
Other films on the Oscar Feature Shortlist receiving honors include Co-Existence My Ass!, Cover-Up and Mr. Nobody Against Putin.
“Acclaimed Danish editor Janus Billeskov Jansen was presented with the inaugural Cinema Eye/Con Award for Career Achievement,” the event noted, “and four films were added to Cinema Eye’s Legacy Film Canon: Burden of Dreams, Portrait of Jason, Sans Soleil and Tongues Untied.”
The 19th Annual Honors were once again held at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem and were live streamed on Cinema Eye’s YouTube channel. The night’s presenters (Cinema Eye refers to them as “guides”) included six previous Cinema Eye winners: Mila Aung-Thwin (Last Train Home); Diane Becker (Navalny); Sigrid Dyekjær (The Cave); Contessa Gayles (Songs from the Hole); Su Kim (Hale County This Morning This Evening), and Caroline Waterlow (OJ: Made in America). The awards ceremony capped a week of events in New York that attracted nominees from around the world.
This is the full list of winners on the night:
Feature
Come See Me in the Good Light
Ryan White, Jessica Hargrave, Tig Notaro, Stef Willen, Brandon Somerhalder, Berenice Chávez, Blake Neely, Dave Richards, Brent Kiser, Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley
Direction
Geeta Gandbhir
The Perfect Neighbor
Editing
Viridiana Lieberman
The Perfect Neighbor
Production
(tie)
Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman
The Alabama Solution
and
Petra Costa and Alessandra Orofino
Apocalypse in the Tropics
Cinematography
Brittany Shyne
Seeds
Original Music Score
Blake Neely
Come See Me in the Good Light
Sound Design
James LeBrecht, Greg Francis and Nina Hartstone
Deaf President Now!
Visual Design
Sara Gunnarsdóttir, Josh Shaffner and Kevin Eskew
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
Debut
Seeds
Directed By Brittany Shyne
Audience Choice Prize
The Tale of Silyan
Directed By Tamara Kotevska
Nonfiction Short
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
Unforgettables Honorees:
Noam Shuster-Eliassi/Coexistence, My Ass!
Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley/Come See Me in the Good Light
Seymour Hersh/Cover-Up
Sara Shahverdi/Cutting Through Rocks
Pavel Talankin/Mr. Nobody Against Putin
Jacinda Ardern/Prime Minister
Fatma Hassona/Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk
Broadcast Film
Pee-wee as Himself
Directed by Matt Wolf
HBO | Max
Nonfiction Series
Social Studies
Directed by Lauren Greenfield
FX on Hulu
Anthology Series
Conan O’Brien Must Go
Executive Producers Conan O’Brien and Jeff Ross
HBO | Max
Broadcast Editing
Social Studies
FX on Hulu
Edited by Alyse Ardell Spiegel, Helen Kearns, Catherine Bull and Charles Little II
Broadcast Cinematography
Omnivore
Director of Photography Tom Elliott, Sy Turnbull and Jurgen Lisse
Apple TV+