A new film about the life and writings of Flannery O’Connor will receive the first Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. The award was announced on Wednesday by the Better Angels Society, the Library of Congress and the Crimson Lion/Lavine Family Foundation.

The new prize, made possible by the nonprofit Better Angels Society and the Boston-based philanthropists Jonathan and Jeannie Lavine , was created to recognize documentarians who focus on some aspect of American history. The prize includes a $200,000 grant for costs associated with postproduction, outreach and marketing, as well as a consultation with Ken Burns and his production company, Florentine Films.

“I remember for me way back with my first film, that last money was the hardest to come in and such a relief” when it did , Mr. Burns said in a phone interview. He added the money could go toward “the final prints, the final corrections, the final edits, to pay the rights to the footage or the photographs or whatever it might be.”

Before selecting a winning film with the Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, six films were pared down from a total of 80 submissions and reviewed by a jury of academics and filmmakers. It was from those finalists that Mr. Burns and Dr. Hayden chose “Flannery,” a biographical documentary about the Southern Gothic writer directed by Elizabeth Coffman and Mark Bosco.