Latest in MTV Documentary Films

Filmmakers behind the documentary Sabaya are rebutting a published report claiming they failed to properly obtain consent from some of the victims of sexual enslavement who appear in the award-winning film, about Yazidi women and girls seized by ISIS fighters in Iraq. "Director Hogir Hirori and I have received…

Two years and four months after MTV launched the MTV Documentary Films division headed by Sheila Nevins, the former longtime president of HBO Documentary Films, the unit landed its first Emmy Award with 76 Days.  The film, produced by Hao Wu and Jean Tsien, on Sunday during the Creative Arts Emmys won the Exceptional…

For a film that almost didn't get made, 76 Days has racked up an impressive number of awards. The documentary directed by Hao Wu, Weixi Chen and a Chinese filmmaker who remains anonymous, and produced by Wu and Jean Tsien, earned a spot on the Oscar shortlist earlier this year, claimed the Audience Award at AFI Fest…

There are many poignant moments in 76 Days, Hao Wu's moving documentary about medical workers in Wuhan, China and the patients they treated as the city went through lockdown last year over Covid-19. For producer Jean Tsien, one moment in particular stands out. "The first scene…with the nurse [who] lost her father…That…

Skye Fitzgerald’s experience making films about human rights issues in the Middle East prepared him for one practical aspect of making Hunger Ward. “There was only ever going to be one way we were going to be able to shoot this film, and that was by being really, really small,” the director said during a session at…

EXCLUSIVE: A wider audience is about to get the chance to see director Skye Fitzgerald's Hunger Ward, the Oscar-nominated short film from MTV Documentary Films. The film, an unsparing look at the suffering of children in Yemen who have been reduced to starvation during the country's civil war, will premiere on the…

EXCLUSIVE: The brutal civil war in Yemen has become a proxy fight between Saudi Arabia and Iran, each regional power backing rival forces in the contest for control over the Middle Eastern country. As always in war, those who suffer the worst are innocent civilians. Skye Fitzgerald's Hunger Ward, the Oscar-shortlisted…

EXCLUSIVE: MTV Documentary Films is adding Skye Fitzgerald's Hunger Ward to its portfolio of Oscar-contending films. The MTV division led by Sheila Nevins announced Tuesday it has acquired the short film, a devastating look at children suffering starvation in Yemen as a direct result of war in the Middle Eastern…

EXCLUSIVE: A year on from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Director Hao Wu is opening up about the emotional toll of making his Oscar-contending documentary 76 Days. The feature from MTV Documentary Films goes inside hospitals in Wuhan, China in the early days of the outbreak as medical workers tended to…

EXCLUSIVE: A Life Too Short, the MTV Documentary Films movie about the honor killing of one of Pakistan’s first social-media stars that resulted in changes to the laws there, will debut on Friday, January 22 at 7 p.m. ET on Pluto TV. The short, produced by two-time Oscar winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, directed by…

UPDATED with video: Qandeel Baloch, the subject of MTV Documentary Films' A Life Too Short, became a new kind of celebrity in her native Pakistan. Beautiful and outspoken, she challenged the norms of her society by daring to post semi-nude photos of herself and to voice provocative opinions. "She was this huge social…

UPDATED with video: Politics and Covid-19 have been intertwined ever since the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China a year ago. But when director Hao Wu made 76 Days, his harrowing film documenting hospital workers and Covid patients in Wuhan as the city went through lockdown, he left political questions…