

SCREENWRITERS TRIBUTE
- NFF's annual gala celebration and most esteemed awards recognize writers and filmmakers from film and television for their significant contributions to the art of storytelling. This year we are thrilled to honor and pay tribute to these amazing screenwriters and storytellers who've propelled the medium forward, Nicole Holofcener (ENOUGH SAID, YOU HURT FEELINGS), Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST, HEMINGWAY), and Jenny Han (THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY, TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE).
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HOSTED BY:
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Brian Williams, a familiar face at the Nantucket Film Festival and a former NFF Board member, is a 40-year veteran of television news, and is among the most highly-decorated journalists of his generation. After |
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SCREENWRITERS TRIBUTE AWARD:
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For three decades, award-winning filmmaker NICOLE HOLOFCENER has been instrumental in both defining the dramedy genre and staking out women’s inner lives as the terrain of serious filmmaking. Acclaimed for her relatable writing and personal directing style, she has created seminal films about relationships, class, loyalty, and love with realistic and multidimensional characters—films like Friends with Money, Please Give, and Enough Said, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini. A sought-after collaborator, she has produced films like the Oscar®-nominated screenplay Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which she co-wrote with Jeff Whitty, and the National Board of Review-winning film The Last Duel, directed by Ridley Scott. In addition, Holofcener has directed numerous television series, including Mrs. Fletcher, Enlightened, Lucky Hank, and the upcoming Extrapolations, starring Marion Cotillard, Tobey Maguire, and Forest Whitaker. Her most recent film, You Hurt My Feelings, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michaela Watkins, and Tobias Menzies will screen at the Festival.
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SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN DOCUMENTARY STORYTELLING AWARD:
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KEN BURNS has been making documentary films for over 40 years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Burns has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The War, The National Park: America’s Best Idea, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, Jackie Robinson, The Vietnam War, and Country Music. Future film projects include The American Buffalo, Leonardo Da Vinci, The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & The Great Society, among others. Burns’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including sixteen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and two Oscar® nominations; and in September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Burns was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
LYNN NOVICK has been making landmark documentary films about American life and culture for more than 30 years. She has created nearly 100 hours of acclaimed programming for PBS in collaboration with Ken Burns, including The U.S. and the Holocaust, Hemingway, The Vietnam War, Baseball, Jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, The War, and Prohibition. These landmark series have garnered 19 Emmy nominations, and Novick has received Emmy, Peabody, and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Awards. College Behind Bars, Novick’s debut as a solo director, premiered at the New York Film Festival and aired on PBS in 2019. Novick’s next project as solo director and writer is a multi-part PBS series on the history of crime and punishment in America, slated for release in 2026. Following The U.S. and the Holocaust, she is collaborating with Burns, Sarah Botstein, and writer Geoffrey C. Ward on a six-hour series on the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. READ MORE > |
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NEW VOICES IN TELEVISION WRITING AWARD:
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JENNY HAN has become a great chronicler of the journey from adolescence to adulthood for a generation of young women. Han is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling series To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and The Summer I Turned Pretty. Her books have been published in more than 30 languages. For television, she created two series based on these books—Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, which she executive produced and co-showran, and the upcoming XO, Kitty, a spinoff of the To All the Boys universe, which she also executive produced and co-shown. READ MORE > |