Bestowed annually by the Librarian of Congress in partnership with The Better Angels Society, a prize of $200,000 is awarded to one winner, a secondary prize of $50,000 to one runner-up, and $25,000 to each of four finalists. 

The 2026 Prize for Film is open from March 2 at 9:00 a.m. PT until May 3 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Please sign up for our newsletter to stay updated throughout the process.

Photo: Ken Burns, Luis Valdez, David Alvarado, Jeannie & Jonathan Lavine, Robert Newlen, American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez – 2025 Winner

Does your film qualify?

The Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film (Prize for Film) was established in 2019 by the Library of Congress and The Better Angels Society, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging Americans with their history through documentary film. Now in its eighth year, the Prize for Film recognizes exemplary documentary films that tell compelling stories about American history.

Films supported by the Prize for Film must focus on an American historical subject, issue, or person within a time frame occurring at least twenty years prior to submission and must present a variety of perspectives grounded in extensive and thorough research. The majority of the film must be historically focused to qualify, and the prize invites submissions employing a broad range of storytelling devices and archival materials. The Prize for Film accepts both rough and fine cut submissions and is awarded in part based on a film’s potential for widespread distribution and impact.

Applicants to the Prize for Film can indicate interest in the Better Angels Lavine Fellowship, a customized mentorship program and cash prize of $5,000. 20-minute submissions will be considered for the Fellowship only. Learn more about the Fellowship.

Before submitting to the Prize for Film, please review the complete Eligibility and Application Criteria and FAQs. Due to the number of applicants, we cannot accept phone calls at this time.

A National Prize for U.S. History Documentary Filmmaking

The six finalists are selected by a National Jury of esteemed scholars, filmmakers, and film executives, and the winner and runner-up are selected by the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Robert Newlen, in consultation with renowned filmmaker Ken Burns. Over more than forty years of filmmaking, Burns has made immense contributions to our collective understanding of American history, and his inclusive and engaging storytelling encourages us to find common ground as we explore the lessons of our past. The Prize for Film joins other awards bestowed by the Library of Congress, including the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the Prize for American Fiction, and the Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity.

Core underwriting for The Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film is made possible by a generous donation from Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine through the Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation, which supports organizations that strengthen society through education, research, innovation, public policy, direct service, and advocacy. Additional funding is provided by The Better Angels Society. 

Winners and Finalists

AMERICAN PACHUCO: THE LEGEND OF LUIS VALDEZ

Winner
Directed by David Alvarado

From farm fields to Broadway, Luis Valdez transformed American theater during the turbulent 1960s and 70s. This documentary chronicles how one man’s visionary artistry illuminated the Mexican-American experience through powerful stagecraft and created landmark films, including La Bamba, that forever altered our national cultural landscape and collective identity as Americans.

DIAMOND DIPLOMACY

Runner-Up
Directed by Yuriko Gamo Romer

150 years ago, a bat and a ball forged a bond between two nations, inspiring such unexpected ambassadors as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Masanori Murakami, Warren Cromartie, and Ichiro Suzuki. DIAMOND DIPLOMACY reveals how the iconic American pastime lands in Japan, endures war and racism, and becomes Japan’s national pastime.

THE INQUISITOR

Finalist
Directed by Angela Tucker

THE INQUISITOR examines the life of Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, whose electrifying voice and moral clarity during President Richard Nixon’s impeachment process captivated the nation. From the 5th Ward of Houston to the halls of Congress, Jordan offers a compelling blueprint for navigating one of America’s most turbulent political chapters.

ONE MORE MISSION

Finalist
Directed by Edward Gray

Soldiers who survive a war take on another risky mission. ONE MORE MISSION tells the stories of some of the thousands of veterans of the U.S. war in Vietnam who joined together to try to convince their fellow Americans to stop it.

SOUL PATROL

Finalist
Directed by J.M. Harper

When Vietnam’s first African American special operations long-range patrol (LRP) team reunites after 50 years of silence, they embark on one final mission: bearing witness to their untold chapter of American history.

THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT

Finalist
Directed by Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk

Three decades ago, the world was poised to stop global warming. Using exclusively archival material, THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT tells the origin story of the climate crisis and how a political battle in the George H.W. Bush administration changed the course of history.

CARTOONING AMERICA

Winner
Directed by Asaf Galay
Click the photo above for an exclusive preview. 

The Fleischer brothers were a family of New York Jewish immigrants whose inventions helped create America’s animation industry. Their cartoons were hilarious and strange, reflecting the world they lived in. It’s a rags to riches to rags again story, of a family whose influence on animators working today was profound.

MAGIC & MONSTERS

Runner-Up
Directed by Norah Shapiro

Founded in 1965, the Minnesota Children’s Theatre Company gained worldwide acclaim. However, in the 1980s, its founder was convicted of child sexual abuse, revealing a dark history within the theater. Now, a group of former child actors seeks justice and healing, offering a blueprint for reckoning with institutional trauma post-#MeToo.
Former ‘Area 2’ Police Station on the South Side of Chicago

AREA 2

Finalist
Directed by James Sorrels
Click the photo above for an exclusive preview. 

City leaders tacitly permitted Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his “Midnight Crew” of detectives to torture dozens of Black detainees in his notorious “Area 2” police station between 1972 and 1991. Area 2 chronicles the epic fight for justice through the journeys of three Midnight Crew torture survivors.

BEHIND THE LINES

Finalist
Directed by John Benitz

Based on The New York Times bestselling books, Behind the Lines is a documentary about a passionate historian who travels around the world to find and preserve letters written during times of war. The film becomes an examination of war itself as told by those who witnessed it firsthand.

DORY PREVIN: ON MY WAY TO WHERE

Finalist
Directed by Julia Greenberg & Dianna Dilworth

Dory Previn was a successful lyricist for Hollywood films in the 50s and 60s who in the 70s transformed into an influential cult singer-songwriter, and famously went public about her schizophrenic diagnosis, ultimately accepting her voices and anticipating a modern-day neurodiversity movement.

WEDNESDAYS IN MISSISSIPPI

Finalist
Directed by Marlene McCurtis

Throughout Freedom Summer of 1964, teams of activist Black and White women from northern cities risked all to fly into deadly Mississippi, conducting undercover civil rights work to leave a lasting legacy for local empowerment and national progress. This was Wednesdays in Mississippi, a landmark all-women achievement too long overlooked.

DROP DEAD CITY – NEW YORK ON THE BRINK IN 1975

Winner
Directed by Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn

DROP DEAD CITY documents the NYC Fiscal Crisis of 1975, an extraordinary, overlooked episode in urban American history that saw an already-crumbling city of 8 million people brought to the edge of bankruptcy and social chaos by a perfect storm of debt, greed, ambitious social policy, and poor governance.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MISS SCOTT

Runner-Up
Directed by Nicole London

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MISS SCOTT tells the story of the incredible Hazel Scott, jazz darling, Hollywood star, and civil rights pioneer years before the formal civil rights movement began. The first African American with a network TV show. Wrongfully accused of Communist sympathies, her career shattered. Soon after, she was in exile, erased.

BUCKLEY

Finalist
Directed by Barak Goodman

BUCKLEY (working title) is a biography of one of the 20th Century’s most charismatic, controversial and influential political figures, William F. Buckley, Jr. Featuring a large cast of contemporaries, acolytes, and critics, the film reveals how WFB practically invented the modern conservative movement.

THE HARVEST

Finalist
Directed by Sam Pollard and written/produced by Douglas Blackmon

THE HARVEST is a deeply personal documentary depicting one southern town’s painful struggle to integrate its public schools at the height of the civil rights movement and the manifold repercussions of those events continuing to the present day. The film is grounded in journalistic inquiry and historical scholarship.

MAX ROACH: THE DRUM ALSO WALTZES

Finalist
Directed by Sam Pollard and Ben Shapiro

MAX ROACH: THE DRUM ALSO WALTZES explores the life and music of the legendary drummer, bandleader, and social activist – a remarkable series of creative peaks, personal struggles, and reinventions – from Jim Crow to the Civil Rights years, from the heady days of post-war modern jazz to hip hop and beyond.

MODERNISM INC.: THE ELIOT NOYES DESIGN STORY

Finalist
Directed by Jason Cohn

MODERNISM INC. tells the story of Eliot Noyes, the influential architect of comprehensive corporate design programs in the mid-20th Century. Noyes is most noted for his work at IBM, where he transmitted Modernist thinking, set the standards for corporate design, and played a critical role in the rise of computers.

BELLA!

Winner
Directed by Jeff L. Lieberman
In 1970, Bella Abzug entered Congress ready for a fight. With her trademark hat and Bronx swagger, the first elected Feminist upended the Washington patriarchy, battling for women’s equality, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ protections. Despite Nixon and the FBI’s attempts to silence her, Bella persisted – revolutionizing the blueprint for America.

Philly-on-Fire-Still

PHILLY ON FIRE

Winner
Directed by Ross Hockrow, Tommy Walker
On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia Police dropped a bomb on a row house, burning down an entire neighborhood. 11 people died, five of them children. 61 homes were destroyed, 250 people became homeless. How could this have happened?

Virgil-Thomson-Still

VIRGIL THOMSON: CREATING THE AMERICAN SOUND

Finalist
Directed by John Paulson
Dubbed “father of American music” by Aaron Copland, composer/critic Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) is largely unknown to the public. This biography, featuring new and archival music performances, establishes Thomson’s originality, versatility and influence not only as creator of the American classical sound but as an insightful critic of our cultural scene.

IMAGINING THE INDIAN: THE FIGHT AGAINST NATIVE AMERICAN MASCOTING

Finalist
Directed by
Aviva Kempner and Ben West
Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting aims to inform and educate about the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in sports and beyond, which has had damaging effects on the self-esteem of Native people. It is a comprehensive examination of the long-standing movement against mascoting.

RAYMOND LEWIS: L.A. LEGEND

Finalist
Directed by Ryan Polomski (Dean Prator, Co-Director)
RAYMOND LEWIS: L.A. LEGEND tells the true story of the mythical basketball phenom from Watts, California — who many say was blackballed from the NBA in the early 70’s for demanding equality — and the never-told-before tale of his unlikely and heartbreaking journey towards becoming a hoops legend.

Cannabis Buyers Club Still

CANNABIS BUYERS CLUB

Finalist

Directed by Kip Andersen and Chris O’Connell
Cannabis Buyers Club tells the story of Dennis Peron, a Vietnam vet who returned from war to become San Francisco’s biggest pot dealer. After losing his lover to AIDS, Peron launched the first public cannabis dispensary in the nation, uniting a community and leading the fight to legalize medical marijuana.

Congratulations to the 2021 Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film Winner: Gradually, then Suddenly: The Bankruptcy of Detroit, Directed by Sam Katz and James McGovern.

GRADUALLY, THEN SUDDENLY: THE BANKRUPTCY OF DETROIT

Directed by Sam Katz and James McGovern
Winner
Once heralded as the spirit of American manufacturing, music, and democracy, Detroit kicked its fiscal can down the road for decades plummeting into insolvency, culminating in the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. GRADUALLY, THEN SUDDENLY is the inside story of how a state-appointed Emergency Manager and the people of this iconic American city– confronting financial ruin–followed a treacherous path towards a new beginning.

FREE CHOL SOO LEE

Directed by Julie Ha and Eugene Yi
Runner-up
After a Korean immigrant is wrongly convicted of a 1973 San Francisco Chinatown gang murder, Asian Americans unite as never before to free Chol Soo Lee. A former street hustler becomes the symbol for a landmark movement. But once out, he self-destructs, threatening the movement’s legacy and the man himself.

THE PICTURE TAKER

Directed by Phil Bertelsen
Finalist
A million snaps of the shutter, six decades of history, Ernest Withers’ photos captured southern Black life and spread the news of civil rights.  They also appeared in FBI files, provided by informant ME-338-R:  Ernest Withers. DOUBLE EXPOSURE unravels his mystery and motives, raising questions about power and patriotism in very troubled times.

EXPOSING MUYBRIDGE

Directed by Marc Shaffer
Finalist
Brilliant, ambitious and mischievous, the 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s breakthrough photographs of running horses set the course for the development of cinema and transformed the camera into a machine of unmatched perception and persuasion. But hiding in Muybridge’s work are clues that provoke an enduring question: Can we believe what we see in a photograph?

THE FIVE DEMANDS

Directed by Greta Schiller
Finalist
THE FIVE DEMANDS tells the story of the 1969 student strike at the City College of New York that changed the face of higher education. While the late Sixties are known as an era of student activism, largely by white, middle-class students against the war in Vietnam, these Black and Puerto Rican students were at the vanguard of a little-known national Black student movement that transformed the culture, mission, and curriculum of higher education.

BONNIE BLUE: JAMES COTTON’S LIFE IN THE BLUES

Directed by Bestor Cram
Finalist
Born in 1935 on Bonnie Blue plantation in Tunica, Mississippi, apprenticing with Sonny Boy Williamson II and Howlin’ Wolf, and schooled by Muddy Waters, James ‘Super Harp’ Cotton became a mentor to harp players around the globe as he brought the delta blues into mainstream rock ‘n roll. Cotton’s music made history; his musical voice was unique, and the blues were never the same.

HOLD YOUR FIRE

Winner
Directed by Stefan Forbes
In 1973, four young men stealing guns for self-defense were tragically mistaken by the NYPD for violent revolutionaries. A gunfight ensued and a police officer was killed. Despite the NYPD’s policy of deadly force, Dr. Harvey Schlossberg managed to resolve the conflict peacefully and invent modern hostage negotiation.

CURED

Runner Up
Directed by Patrick Sammon & Bennett Singer
Until 1973, doctors automatically classified every gay man and lesbian as mentally ill. CURED tells the David-versus-Goliath story of the activists who challenged this diagnosis — and won.

AFTER ANTARCTICA

Finalist
Directed by Tasha Van Zandt
After Antarctica follows polar explorer Will Steger’s journey as an eyewitness to the changes in the polar regions of our planet. Thirty years after his expedition across Earth’s coldest continent, Steger is not only known for being the first in history to complete this feat – he is also the last.

BEETHOVEN IN BEIJING

Finalist
Directed by
Jennifer Lin & Sharon Mullally
Dispatched by President Nixon in 1973 to help open the “bamboo curtain” separating the Chinese and American people, the iconic Philadelphia Orchestra now turns to its past as a cultural ambassador to strengthen its precarious future at home.

PUNCH 9 FOR HAROLD WASHINGTON

Finalist
Directed by Joe Winston
“Punch 9 for Harold Washington” will tell a national audience, for the first time, the story of how Washington became Chicago’s first African-American mayor, opened up government to everyone, and paved the way for future political leaders, including Barack Obama.

STORMING CAESARS PALACE

Finalist

Directed by Hazel Gurland-Pooler

STORMING CAESARS PALACE is an intimate portrait of Ruby Duncan who built a grassroots anti-poverty movement of low-income black mothers in Las Vegas. Championing a Universal Basic Income in 1969, they led their own War on Poverty — and almost won, challenging notions of the “Welfare Queen.”

FLANNERY

Winner
A gothic story fueled by televangelists and girls with wooden legs, “Flannery” covers the biography of writer Flannery O’Connor with archival footage and creative motion graphics. A devout Catholic who walked with crutches, O’Connor wrote about the enduring prejudices of the post-war south. Mystery and manners abound in this work. Directed by Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco, S.J.

MAE WEST: DIRTY BLONDE

Runner-Up
MAE WEST: DIRTY BLONDE is a feature-length historical documentary film developed by Peeled Grape Productions LLC for PBS’ American Masters. The film explores the extraordinary career and legacy of this complex cultural figure, who left an indelible imprint on American entertainment as a writer, performer, and agitator for social change. Directed by Sally Rosenthal & Julia Marchesi.

MR. SOUL!

Finalist
Before Oprah, before Arsenio, there was Mr. SOUL! An in-depth look at the late 1960s WNET public television series SOUL! and its producer Ellis Haizlip, who provided expanded images of African Americans on television, shifting the gaze from inner-city poverty and violence to the vibrancy of the Black Arts Movement. Directed by Melissa Haizlip.

THE ADVENTURES OF
SAUL BELLOW

Finalist
This is the first major documentary on one of America’s greatest writers, Saul Bellow.  The film examines Bellow’s influence on American literature, explores Bellow as a public figure, and looks at how he dealt with key issues of his time, including race, gender, and the Jewish and immigrant experience. Directed by Asaf Galay.

THE FIRST
ANGRY MAN

Finalist
The First Angry Man tells the story of political outsider Howard Jarvis and the California property tax revolt he led during Governor Jerry Brown’s first term in 1978. Historians credit Jarvis’ campaign for Proposition 13 with triggering a national anti-tax, anti-government movement with immeasurable and enduring consequences. Directed by Jason Cohn & Camille Servan-Schreiber.

9 TO 5: THE STORY
OF A MOVEMENT

Finalist
This historical documentary tells the story of a grassroots national movement of women clerical workers who endured low pay, disrespect and sexual harassment. By the early 1970s, they had had enough. They gathered their courage, rose up against their bosses and started fighting for a better life. Directed by Steven Bognar & Julia Reichert.

2026 National Jury

Douglas Brinkley

Jacqueline Glover

Dr. Claudrena Harold

Jaie Laplante

Annie Polland

Yoruba Richen

Betsy West

Peter Yost

Past Ceremonies