Carol Leifer has starred in five of her own comedy specials that have aired on HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central and has written for the Oscars® telecast seven times. She is a four-time Emmy®-award nominee for her writing on Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show and Saturday Night Live. She also received the prestigious Writers Guild Award for her work on the number one comedy, Modern Family. She is the author of the bestselling When You Lie About Your Age, The Terrorists Win and her latest book How To Succeed In Business Without Really Crying.

The IDA will present its prestigious Career Achievement Award to Robert Redford, the acclaimed filmmaker and actor, ardent conservationist and environmentalist, and founder of the world-renowned Sundance Institute, dedicated to the support and development of independent film and theatre artists, and its Documentary Film Program, a leading creative and financial resource for contemporary-issue nonfiction filmmakers worldwide. Redford’s award winning work as actor, director, and producer spans genres and formats and includes some of the most iconic cinematic achievements of our time. His work in documentary film began with the Academy Award® nominated short The Solar Film, and includes the award-winning Yosemite: Fate of Heaven, and feature documentaries Incident at Oglala and The Unforeseen. In 2012, Redford formed Sundance Productions, and nonfiction work produced under its banner includes the Emmy® nominated All The President’s Men Revisited, nonfiction series Chicagoland and Death Row Stories for CNN, and the 3D Cathedrals of Culture with executive producer Wim Wenders.

The organization's Pioneer Award will be presented to Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, founders of World of Wonder Productions. With the simple belief that we are living in a World of Wonder, award-winning filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato set up their production company in 1991 to tell the often stranger-than-fiction stories of real life people: from real estate agents (Million Dollar Listing) to twerkers (Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce). They made a name for themselves with compelling documentaries about characters over-exposed yet under-revealed; from The Eyes of Tammy Faye to Monica in Black and White. They have never shied away from controversial material: Inside Deep Throat told the inside story of the world's most well-known adult film. Becoming Chaz documented Chaz Bono's transgender journey. RuPaul's Drag Race has proved to be a worldwide hit. They re-worked their Club Kid documentary Party Monster into a cult movie of the same name starring Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green. Declaring themselves screen agnostic, they have set up a strong digital presence with their blog, The Wow Report (www.worldofwonder.net), Youtube channel, and MCN WOW Presents.

Rithy Panh will receive IDA’s Preservation and Scholarship award, which recognizes individuals or organizations that have made notable contributions to preserving significant motion picture archives and educating the public and industry about the role nonfiction filmmaking plays in society. Panh, whose documentary The Missing Picture was nominated in 2013 for the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film, is co-founder of the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center located in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The Bophana Center collects film, television, photography and sound archives on Cambodia from around the world and grants free access to the public. The Center also provides vocational training in film and media and produces contemporary fiction and documentary work, with the goal of developing the audiovisual sector in Cambodia.

Houston native, Darius Clark Monroe is an award-winning filmmaker and MFA graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He's a National Board of Review, HBO Short Film, and Urbanworld Best Screenplay award recipient. Most recently, he was selected to the prestigious Screenwriters Colony, and chosen as a fellow at the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive. Monroe's feature debut, Evolution of a Criminal, World Premiered at SXSW 2014. The film received the Grand Jury Prize (Full Frame), Center for Documentary Studies Filmmaker Award (Full Frame), Special Jury Prize (Dallas International Film Festival), and the Best Feature Award (Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival).

The winner receives $5,000 in cash and a donation of post-production services valued at $50,000, made possible by Red Fire Films and Modern VideoFilm.