Anvil! The Story of Anvil Sweeps IDAs

This popular documentary beat some heavy hitters, including Food, Inc., and Afghan Star, to take the top prize:

Anvil! The Story of Anvil claimed victory in the IDA’s Distinguished Feature category, while Australian film Salt took home the prize for Distinguished Short category during the 2009 International Documentary Association Documentary Awards tonight.

Hosted by Ira Glass, the event also presented awards to seven other previously-announced winners and special honorees (for a complete list of winners, nominees and honorees, click here). Glass started the evening by crediting doc filmmakers for taking the time needed to properly tell stories, getting to know their subjects and presenting it all to viewers in a palatable way.

“Watching the documentaries being honored tonight, I was struck over and over with how rare it is to enter the lives of these strangers so intimately,” he said. “The filmmakers spend so much time with these people, it’s rare to get so far inside somebody else’s experience.”

Anvil! The Story of Anvil took home two prizes, having already won the previously-announced IDA Music Documentary Award. During a taped introduction to the film, The Office actor Rainn Wilson called the film about the long-struggling metal band, a “heavy metal hymn to the human spirit.”

But, of course, it isn’t nominated for a documentary, and the only nominee that crosses over is Food, Inc. So it’s only real shot for the Oscar race is for Best Pic. Not entirely out of the realm of possibilities – if voters want to step outside the box and nominate a doc.