NYU News & Documentary

09/08/2026

Join us in a discussion about the Academy-award nominated film, The Perfect Neighbor, with its director Geeta Gandbhir

08/05/2026

I'm very excited to announce that Lara Dihmis is a medal winner for the Student Academy Awards for her thesis documentary, the Last People of Petra. She makes our 13th News and Documentary Student Academy Award winner. Congrats Lara!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYx_aytSp5c

06/25/2026

I was just invited to be a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Documentary division. What an honor. It is in recognition of my nurturing young documentary filmmakers and the 12 Student Academy Awards they've won. So I share this honor with all of my students and their hard work and talent. Thanks to NYU and Journalism for giving me the space to grow with these students.

06/19/2026

Exciting news: Lara Dihmis and Assaf Yona Olshansky-Gefen were short-listed for the Student Academy Awards for their thesis films.

06/19/2026

Elena Lecun Xiang is developing her thesis doc into a feature with the help of CNEX CCDF and the FIRST International Film Festival Documentary Lab. Alum Dongnan was one of the jurors for the FIRST lab! Nice NewsDoc connection. Congrats!

CNEX CCDF: https://ccdf.cnexdoc.com/en/news/5505/ (in September)
FIRST Documentary Lab: https://www.firstfilm.org.cn/en/production-cultivation/documentary-lab/ (in July)

FIRST Documentary Lab encourages documentary filmmakers to explore culturally diverse issues，create works with social-cultural values and promote the healthy and diverse development of the documentary market.

05/29/2026

Hooray, Contessa!

05/29/2026

Congrats to contessa Gayle’s and her Emmy win!

Outstanding Art Direction/ Set Decoration/Scenic Design: Documentary Songs From the Hole.
Contessa with another NewsDoc nominee, Claire Ward.

05/25/2026

Congrats again to Shehzad!
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1B9yASfdRH/

Legendary Pakistani documentary filmmaker Shehzad Hameed Ahmad has won two gold awards for his investigative documentary films “Addicted: The Synthetic Curse” and “Vapours of Death” at the New York Festivals 2026 in New York City. This marks Shehzad’s total tally of 12 world medals at the New York Festivals alone, inching closer to a global world record. Both films highlight the growing global crisis of substance abuse amongst the youth and the devastating impact of illegal trafficking networks on communities across the globe.

Shehzad’s experience that spans over 20 years, directing over 100 documentaries, pushing the understanding of the world by filming with some of the most difficult to access stories ranging from exposing illegal gold miners in Brazil's protected Amazon rainforests, filming underwater to unearth the coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef's to filming the battle between the Afghan Taliban and Afghanistan National Army in Afghanistan.

Shehzad was previously honoured with the Prince of Asturias Award from the King of Spain in 2014. His documentaries have won 4 Global Media Awards in Germany, Green Image Award in Japan, 2 Handle Climate Change Film Awards in China, Singapore's Gender Equality Impact Change-maker Award 2020. Shehzad is a Fulbright scholar with a MA in Documentary Filmmaking from NYU.

05/15/2026

Catch the last film of this year’s Inside Lens series on May 15.