“Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” “Better This World” honored in NYC

November 29, 2011 by Realscreen Staff

Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog’s 3D effort Cave of Forgotton Dreams has been named the best non-fiction film by the New York Film Critics Circle, while Kelly Duane and Katie Galloway’s Better This World has collected the best doc prize at the IFP’s annual Gotham Independent Film Awards.

The Gotham Awards also honored a documentary in the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You category, with Scenes of a Crime, directed by Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock, taking the honors.

The win for Herzog (pictured above) comes with Cave having notched up significant U.S. box office takings throughout the year. Talking to realscreen about the film’s success earlier this year, Herzog said: ““It’s strange; no one would have predicted it because it’s about Palaeolithic people doing paintings and art 32,000 years ago.

“A French cave with French scientists who speak French, filmed by a Bavarian. Who in the United States would rush and buy a ticket to see a film like that, for God’s sake? Yes, that’s quite an uphill battle.”

The New York Film Critics Circle was founded in 1935, and its members are comprised of the city’s critics from daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, magazines, and qualifying online general-interest publications. Every year the members from publications such as The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Time and The Huffington Post meet in New York to vote on awards for the previous calendar year’s films.

In past years the Circle has named Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job, James Marsh’s Man on Wire, Steve James’s Hoop Dreams and Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line as best documentary films.

The awards will be handed out in a ceremony in Manhattan on January 9.

Tags: Better This World, Blue Hadaegh, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Gotham Awards, Gotham Independent Film Awards, Grover Babcock, IFP, Katie Galloway, Kelly Duane, New York Film Critics Circle, Scenes of a Crime, Werner Herzog