2025 Atticus Award Winners

A documentary film about international and transracial adoption and how one young adoptee, after surviving a life-threatening congenital condition, is redefining what family means in America.

A broken father races to find his runaway son and the ashes of the woman who once held them all together.

What does a novelist, actor, photographer, and entrepreneur have in common? Fatherhood. The peaks, the valleys, and all the moments in between. Being a father is an extraordinary privilege that transforms your perspective on the world. "A Letter from the Fathers" is a touching, captivating, and emotive movie that presents the audience with the fatherhood journeys of four men.

A girl comes home angry. Her dad tries to cheer her up, but nothing seems to work.

DEATH & TAXES is a feature documentary about wealth, inequality, and the American Dream, viewed through the lens of the estate tax. It is also the very personal story of a father and son at odds over what kind of inheritance we want to leave our kids and our country. Filmmaker Justin Schein’s father, Harvey Schein, liked to say he lived the so-called “American Dream”: rising from poverty in Depression-era Brooklyn to great financial success as one of America’s top CEOs of the 1970s. But Harvey Schein also spent the last 20 years of his life fixated on trying to keep his hard-earned wealth from the taxman—an obsession that almost broke the Schein family apart. More broadly, inherited wealth and the tax system that shields it have badly distorted American democracy, perpetuating racial and economic inequity in the country. Filmed over more than 20 years and weaving intimate family footage with interviews with prominent experts from all sides of the debate, DEATH & TAXES tells this crucial story through the tale of one American family.

A grieving teen must reconcile his family when his father reincarnates as a balloon.

RARE unveils what stands between the families fighting rare disease, hoping for treatments, and the emerging groundbreaking therapies available. RARE highlights the neglect faced by families battling rare diseases within the broader healthcare system. Due to the rare nature and thus limited profit margin of these conditions, large pharmaceutical and biotech companies often turn a blind eye towards developing treatments.

Adam, a divorced, Jewish father originally from Chicago, embarks on a journey to fulfill a promise to his only daughter never to abandon her. Living in a small, German town steeped in the shadows of Antisemitism and Nazi history, Adam attempts to open a Jewish deli, to establish a link to his upbringing and try to find comfort and connection in his town.

Grown Up Dad is the first docuseries to explore parenting from the father's perspective. Host Joseph Gidjunis embarks on a deeply personal journey—determined to be a more present and engaged father than his own. Along the way, he seeks guidance from experts and fellow dads on the challenges of parenting today, from navigating screen time obsession with his son to redefining modern masculinity, friendship, and loneliness.