PGA Awards unveil documentary feature nominees
The Producers Guild of America (PGA) nominated seven films for its top documentary award — ‘Chasing Coral’, ‘City of Ghosts’, ‘Cries From Syria’, ‘Earth: One Amazing Day’, ‘Jane’, ‘Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower’ and ‘The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee’.
The winner will be named January 20 at the 29th annual Producers Guild Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. The PGA is a trade group with more than 8,100 members. The organization has not yet determined the producers of the nominated films, Variety reported.
Nominations in the other film and TV categories will be announced January 5. ‘O.J.: Made in America’ won the PGA’S documentary award this year for Ezra Edelman and Caroline Waterlow, then went on to win the Academy Award.
‘Chasing Coral’ explores the disappearance of coral reefs and is directed by Jeff Orlowski. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Netflix in July.
‘City of Ghosts’ centers on the Syrian media activist group ‘Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently’, directed by Matthew Heineman.
‘Cries from Syria’ is about the impact of the Syria, directed by Evgeny Afineevsky. TV rights were acquired by HBO just prior to Sundance.
‘Earth: One Amazing Day’ is directed by Peter Webber, Lixin Fan and Richard Dale for BBC Earth.
‘Jane’ is directed and written by Brett Morgen about primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall. The film has grossed more than $1 million domestically since its October 20 release by Abramorama.
‘Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower’ is about Joshua Wong, a teenager who rallies Hong Kong youth in dissent during the 2014 Hong Kong Occupy Movement. Netflix bought worldwide rights for the documentary.
‘The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee’ is about the late executive editor of The Washington Post. Bradlee passed away in 2014. Prominent titles that were overlooked include Cannes Film Festival documentary winner ‘Faces Places’, directed by Agnes Varda and JR: ‘One of Us’ from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady; and Turkish cat documentary ‘Kedi’. “If we want to respect Iqbal we have to get united,” he said. The Iranian diplomat added that body of Iqbal belongs to Pakistan but his soul belongs to both Iran and Pakistan and the Iranian nation is proud of him.
“We must look towards our culture and great heritage rather than looking towards the culture of the West,” he noted.
Muhammad Iqbal, widely known as Allama Iqbal, was a poet, philosopher, and politician, as well as an academic, barrister and scholar in British India who is widely regarded as having inspired the Pakistan Movement. He is called the spiritual father of Pakistan and is considered one of the most important figures in Urdu literature, with literary work in both Urdu and Persian. Iqbal is admired as a prominent poet by Pakistanis, Iranians and other international scholars of literature. Though Iqbal is best known as an eminent poet, he is also a highly acclaimed Muslim philosophical thinker of modern times.