Event Coverage Highlight

On June 12, the OPC hosted an online discussion with the team behind the Al Jazeera English documentary, The Night Won’t End, recipient of this year’s Peter Jennings Award.

The film is available to watch here.

Click the window above to watch a playlist of video clips from the program.

Panelists were Kavitha Chekuru, an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker who was producer and director of the film; Laila Al-Arian, an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and executive producer of Fault Lines; and Ashraf Mashharawi, an award-winning Palestinian filmmaker and journalist who founded Media Town. Singeli Agnew, an OPC governor and independent documentary filmmaker, moderated.

The project was a collaboration with partners including Media Town, Airwars, Forensic Architecture, and Earshot.

The film documented civilian casualties caused by Israeli military strikes and examined the role of the United States in the war in Gaza. Grounded in the testimonies of three Palestinian families, it was among the first feature-length films produced from Gaza after Oct. 7. The documentary stood out for its use of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and its collaboration with Palestinian filmmakers. In addition to the OPC’s Jennings Award, the film received a Peabody Award, a Royal Television Society Award, and two Emmy nominations.

During the program, the group talked about the beginning stages of the project in the aftermath of Oct. 7, the challenges of reporting under tight control and scant resources, their use of investigative tools developed with partners including Airwars, Forensic Architecture, and Earshot, the training of staff at Media Town and how they maintain a cohesive visual style, the team’s methods in using visual forensics to examine violence against civilians, and field questions from the audience about a range of topics including how they remain motivated in their reporting in the face of atrocities and protracted violence.