Event Coverage Highlight

Left to right: Kavitha Chekuru, Laila Al-Aria and Ashraf Mashharawi.

Join us for an online discussion with the team behind The Night Won’t End, recipient of this year’s Peter Jennings Award for best TV, video or documentary about international affairs with a run time over 20 minutes.

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The product of more than five months of reporting and investigation, this Al Jazeera English documentary lays bare the human cost of the war in Gaza, documenting attacks on civilians by the Israeli military and the role of the United States in the conflict. The Night Won’t End is a remarkable, gut-wrenching yet cinematically beautiful film, with reporting anchored in the first-hand experiences of three Palestinian families who recount the horrors they endured as Gaza came under attack. It was one of the first feature-length films to be produced from Gaza after Oct. 7, and is notable for its Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) reporting as well as the collaboration with Palestinian filmmakers living in Gaza. The hour-long film was also recently honored with both a Peabody and Royal Television Society award, as well as two Emmy nominations. 

The team will discuss the logistics, challenges and editorial importance of their collaboration, and walk us through the tools they used to document strikes and identify weaponry in partnership with Airwars, Forensic Architecture and Earshot. 

Please watch the film in advance of our conversation here.

Panelists:

Kavitha Chekuru is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker whose reporting focuses on human rights and justice. She is the producer and director of The Night Won’t End. In addition to this year’s Peter Jennings Award, Chekuru was also part of the team that won the OPC’s Edward R. Murrow Award for reporting on immigration in 2018.

Laila Al-Arian is an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and executive producer of Fault Lines, an award-winning program on Al Jazeera English. Fault Lines has produced several documentaries on Israel’s war on Gaza, including The Night Won’t End, Starving Gaza, Kids Under Fire, and All That Remains about a child amputee from Gaza. Al-Arian has won multiple OPC accolades for her work, including two Edward R. Murrow Awards for 2022 and 2018, and a citation for excellence (runner-up) for work in 2021.

Ashraf Mashharawi is an award-winning Palestinian filmmaker and journalist whose documentaries cover war and human rights in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Libya, and other conflict zones. Media Town, the production company he founded and directs, is dedicated to telling human-centered stories from Palestine and the broader Middle East, and has directly and indirectly contributed to the production of more than 80 films.

Singeli Agnew, an OPC governor and independent documentary filmmaker, will moderate.