Today, Columbia Journalism School named two FRONTLINE documentaries — 20 Days in Mariupol and Afghanistan Undercover — 2024 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award finalists. 

According to the duPont-Columbia Awards website, the prestigious awards, established in 1942, “uphold the highest standards in journalism by honoring winners annually, informing the public about those journalists’ contributions and supporting journalism education and innovation.”

 20 Days in Mariupol, made in partnership with The Associated Press, is a visceral, first-person account of the beginning of the war in Ukraine, told through the perspective of Ukrainian filmmaker and AP video journalist Mstyslav Chernov. The film follows Chernov as he and his Ukrainian AP colleagues become trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol and struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. 

Chernov and his colleagues, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, were the last international reporters who remained in Mariupol as Russian troops attacked the city. Together, the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists documented what would become some of the most defining images of the war in Ukraine.

Produced and edited by Michelle Mizner, with producers Raney Aronson-Rath (FRONTLINE’s editor-in-chief and executive producer) and Derl McCrudden (AP’s vice president of news and head of global news production), the duPont-Columbia Award-nominated film draws on Chernov’s daily news dispatches and personal footage of his own country at war.

Earlier this year, 20 Days in Mariupol had a decorated run on the 2023 film festival circuit — including winning the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary and the Tim Hetherington Award at Sheffield International Documentary Festival. The documentary premieres on PBS on Tuesday, November 21 at 10/9c (check local listings), and will also be available to stream on YouTube, FRONTLINE’s website, in the PBS App and on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. 

From a team including award-winning correspondent Ramita Navai and director and producer Karim Shah, Afghanistan Undercover investigates the Taliban’s crackdown on women in Afghanistan since the group’s August 2021 takeover of the country.

In the film, Navai reveals the harsh realities of life for women under the Taliban’s rule. She meets a group of female lawyers forbidden from working, rides along with an underground network of female activists on a rescue mission, secretly films in a Taliban prison where women are being held without trial or charge — and confronts Taliban officials about what she’s found.

Earlier this year, Afghanistan Undercover was honored with a Gracie Award and a News Emmy Award in the “Outstanding Investigative News Coverage: Long Form” category. A Quicksilver Media production for GBH/FRONTLINE in association with ITV, the documentary aired on PBS in August 2022, and is now streaming on FRONTLINE’s website, YouTube, in the PBS App and on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. 

“We are grateful to Columbia Journalism School for naming 20 Days in Mariupol and Afghanistan Undercover as duPont-Columbia finalists,” says Aronson-Rath. “This recognition is a testament to the unflinching work of the films’ on-the-ground journalists — Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko, as well as Ramita Navai and Karim Shah —  who risked death and imprisonment to keep filming and tell these critical stories. We share this great news with our partners at The Associated Press and ITV, as well as with GBH, PBS, CPB and our viewers who support our journalism everyday.”

The winners of the 2024 duPont-Columbia Awards will be announced on Thursday, January 25, 2024. You can read a full list of this year’s finalists here.

You can explore our duPont-Columbia Award nominated documentaries below:

20 Days in Mariupol:

Afghanistan Undercover: