'The Silence of Others' Wins Best Documentary at News and Doc Emmy Awards

16 Shots, Midnight Traveler, The Serengeti Rules, The Nightcrawlers among night's other winners

The Silence of Others, the Oscar shortlisted film about Spain's willful act of amnesia over the horrors of the Franco era, won two awards at the News and Documentary Emmy ceremony Tuesday night, including Best Documentary.

The film directed by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar also won Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary at the virtual event.

"We are really super-thrilled," Carracedo commented after the announcement of Best Documentary, a category that included 16 Shots, The King, Under the Wire, and At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal. Bahar added, "We dedicate this award to all our protagonists."

The 41st. Annual News & Documentary Emmy® Awards honors programming content from more than 2000 submissions that originally premiered in calendar-year 2019, judged by a pool of 875 peer professionals from across the television and streaming/digital media News & Documentary industry.

--From the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences

Among those protagonists is elderly María Martín, whose mother was killed in the early years of Franco's fascist rule, which extended from 1939 until the dictator's death in 1975, and Chato Galante, who was tortured by the regime's police state in 1968. After Franco's passing, Spain transitioned to democracy and the national legislature adopted a "pact of forgetting" meant to formally ignore the past and ignore its traumas, but Martín and Galante were among the many who refused to accept papering over state-orchestrated crimes.

Evidence of those atrocities is scattered around Spain, though often unmarked.

"There's still more than 100,000 bodies buried in mass graves," Bahar told Nonfictionfilm.com, referring to dissidents wiped out during Franco's reign. Carracedo noted, "[It] was basically a systematic repression, a systematic sort of extermination and repression of not just political opponents, but anyone who dared to think different."

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Related:
>The 'Pact of Forgetting' exploded in Oscar-shortlisted The Silence of Others 

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PBS led the way with five awards at the News and Documentary Emmys. HBO followed with three awards. Netflix and National Geographic earned two apiece.

In other categories presented Tuesday night, Showtime's 16 Shots was named Outstanding Investigative Documentary. Rick Rowley's film interrogates the killing of African-American teenager Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer in 2014, and the coverup that ensued.

Midnight Traveler won Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary. Outstanding Historical Documentary went to Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists, about the late journalists Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill.

True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality earned the Emmy for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. Stevenson, author of the memoir Just Mercy and co-founder of  the Equal Justice Initiative, has become a leading activist against systemic racial injustice in the judicial system. 

​The Serengeti Rules was named Outstanding Nature Documentary.

The Nightcrawlers won Outstanding Short Documentary, besting a field that included the Oscar-winning Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl). Alexander Mora's film explores the extra-judicial killing of thousands of alleged drug suspects in the Philippines under the rule of President Rodrigo Duterte.

The News and Documentary Emmys are separate from the PrimeTime Emmy Awards, which includes its own documentary categories. For a report on the primetime winners from last week, click here. 

This is the full list of News and Documentary Emmy winners:

OUTSTANDING CURRENT AFFAIRS DOCUMENTARY

Midnight Traveler
POV/PBS

Director/Cameraperson
Hassan Fazili
Executive Producers
Sally Jo Fifer, Justine Nagan, Chris White
Supervising Producer
Michael Ehrenzweig
Producers
Su Kim, Emelie Mahdavian
Co-Producers
Nikki Heyman, Fatima Hussaini, Ahmad Imami, Nicole Tsien
Editor
Emilie Mahdavian
Camerapersons
Nargis Fazili, Zahra Fazili, Fatima Hussaini


OUTSTANDING POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTARY

The Silence of Others
POV/PBS

Directors
Robert Bahar, Almudena Carracedo
Executive Producers
Agustín Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar, Sally Jo Fifer, Esther García, Justine Nagan, Sandie Viquez Pedlow, Chris White
Co-Executive Producers
Steven Silver, Robin Smith, Neil Tabatznik
Supervising Producer
Michael Ehrenzweig
Producers
Robert Bahar, Almudena Carracedo
Co-Producers
Nikki Heyman, Nicole Tsien


​OUTSTANDING SOCIAL ISSUE DOCUMENTARY

True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality
HBO

Producer/Director/Executive Producer
Peter Kunhardt
Producer/Directors
George Kunhardt, Teddy Kunhardt
Executive Producers
Nancy Abraham, Trey Ellis, Jacqueline Glover, Lisa Heller
Producer
Maya Mumma


OUTSTANDING INVESTIGATIVE DOCUMENTARY

16 Shots
Showtime

Director
Richard Rowley
Executive Producers
Michael Bloom, Dan Cogan, Brian Kenney, Lisa Leingang, Vinnie Malhotra, Ken Nolan, Adam Pincus, Jenny Raskin, Jacqueline Soohen, Geralyn White Dreyfous 
​Co-Executive Producers
Steve Cohen, Paula Froehle
Supervising Producer
Jeff Seelbach
Producers
Karim Hajj, Jamie Kalven
Editor
Francisco Bello

OUTSTANDING HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY
Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists
HBO

​Director/Producers
Jonathan Alter, John Block, Steve McCarthy
Executive Producer
Nancy Abraham
HBO


OUTSTANDING ARTS AND CULTURE DOCUMENTARY

ReMastered: The Lion's Share
Netflix

Director
Sam Cullman
Executive Producers
Irving Azoff, Ben Cotner, Adam Del Deo, Lisa Nishimura, Stu Shreiberg, Jeff Zimbalist, Michael Zimbalist
Co-Executive Producers
Sudi Khosropur, Stuart Sender
Coordinating Producers
Tallie Johnson, Ethan Ogilby
Supervising Producer
Alexandra Orton
Line Producer
Kirsty Robson
Archival Producers
Barbara Gregson, Vicki Marquette
Story Producer
Jordan Bogdonavage
Editor
Mark Harrison
Director of Photography
Dominic Black
Cinematographer
Carlos Carvalho


OUTSTANDING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DOCUMENTARY

Going Viral: Beyond the Hot Zone
National Geographic

Executive Producer
Betsy Forhan
Senior Producer
Leslie Schwerin
Editor
Paige Smith Lee
Directors of Photography
Patrick Anderson, Jeremy Rothman


OUTSTANDING NATURE DOCUMENTARY

The Serengeti Rules
PBS

Directors
Nicolas Brown, Alex West
Executive Producers
David Guy Elisco, Fred Kaufman, Jared Lipworth
Series Producer
Bill Murphy
Series Editor
Janet Hess
Story Producers
David John, Joe Loncraine, Catherine Walting
Producers
David Allen, Gaby Bastyra
Line Producers
Heather Forbes, Christian Holland


OUTSTANDING BUSINESS AND ECONOMIC DOCUMENTARY

The Myth of the Medallion
FX Networks

Producer/Director
Suzanne Hillinger
Executive Producers
Sam Dolnick, Ken Druckerman, Stephanie Preiss, Mary Robertson, Mat Skene, Jason Stallman, Banks Tarver
Supervising Producers
Singeli Agnew, Hanaan Sarhan
Managing Editors
Dan Barry, Liz O. Baylen, Liz Day
Producers
Kevin Vargas, Lizzie Blenk
Reporters
Emma Graves Fitzsimmons, Brian Rosenthal
Line Producer
Angi Kuhn
Director of Photography
Adam Beckman
Video Editor
Pierre Takal


OUTSTANDING SHORT DOCUMENTARY

The Nightcrawlers
National Geographic

​Director
Alexander A. Mora
Executive Producers
Carolyn Bernstein, Ryan Harrington, Rebecca Lichtenfeld,
Lisa Marie Russo, Sandra Whipman
Producers
Abigail Anketell-Jones, Doireann Maddock, Joanna Natasegara Editor
Michael Nollet


BEST DOCUMENTARY

The Silence of Others
POV/PBS

Directors
Robert Bahar, Almudena Carracedo
Executive Producers
Agustín Almodóvar, Pedro Almodóvar, Sally Jo Fifer, Esther García, Justine Nagan, Sandie Viquez Pedlow, Chris White
Co-Executive Producers
Steven Silver, Robin Smith, Neil Tabatznik
Supervising Producer
Michael Ehrenzweig
Producers
Robert Bahar, Almudena Carracedo
Co-Producers
Nikki Heyman, Nicole Tsien


OUTSTANDING NEW APPROACHES: DOCUMENTARY

Awavena
VR on Demand-Viveport
​
Director/Producer
Lynette Wallworth
Executive Producers
Nico Daswani, Sandy Herz, Marcie Jastrow, GIgi Pritzker
Producer
Nicole Newnham
Digital Producers
Brian Frager, Mars Wong
Co-Producers
Laura Yawanawa, Tashka Yawanawa
Editors
Adam Cosco, Katrina Taylor Cinematographer Greg Downing



OUTSTANDING CINEMATOGRAPHY: DOCUMENTARY
Epic Yellowstone 
Smithsonian Channel

Camera
Dawson Dunning, Jeff Reed, Rick Smith, Thomas Winston


OUTSTANDING EDITING: DOCUMENTARY

Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops
HBO

Editor
Toby Shimin


OUTSTANDING GRAPHIC DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION

CNN Digital Style Origins
CNN

​Art Director/Motion Graphics
Ignacio Osorio
Motion Graphics
Agne Jurkenaite, Isobel Lester, Ana Pérez López, Alexander Sears


OUTSTANDING MUSIC COMPOSITION

306 Hollywood
POV/PBS

Composer
Troy Herion


OUTSTANDING SOUND

Fire in Paradise
Netflix

Sound Designers
Lawrence Everson, Cindy Takehara Ferruccio
Re-recording Mixer
Bob Edwards
Dialogue Editor
Matt Rigby


OUTSTANDING PROMOTIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Shark Week 2019 Shark Scream
Discovery Channel
​
Executive Producer
Teresa Antista
SVP Marketing
Josh Kovolenko
VFX Animator
Stanley Ng
VP Marketing, Creative
Jason Turner
VP Marketing, Strategy
Megan DeSouza
Creative Director
Peter McKeon
Marketing Director
Curtis Smith
Senior Director, Production
Daniel Oleksiuk
Senior Writer/Producer
Peter Lanier
Producer
Alex Weidner
Editor
Michael Johnson
Additional Character Animation
Method Studios
Director of Animation/VFX
Quico Encinias