The International Documentary Association (IDA) has named its 2001 distinguished achievement awards to be presented on Dec 7 in Los Angeles. Edet Belzberg's Children Underground and Startup.com co-directed by Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujam share the top honours in the feature length competition.

Eric Simonson's On Tiptoe: Gentle Steps To Freedom won the short category for films under 40 minutes, David Grubin's Abraham And Mary Lincoln: A House Divided won the limited series competition for segments of a series with a specific continuing theme or subject; and Kirk Wolfinger's Hitler's Lost Sub won the continuing series competition for documentaries that are part of an ongoing series.

The critically acclaimed Children Underground, distributed by HBO, chronicles the lives of abandoned Romanian children who live below the streets of a Bucharest train station. Startup.com, which was a domcestic box office hit for Artisan Entertainment, looks at the fall and rise of a dot com company.