Former POV Producer Yance Ford’s Strong Island Also Makes List of 15
Dec. 8, 2017 — Feras Feyyad’s Last Men in Aleppo, which premiered on PBS this past summer on POV’s 30th season, has made it to the shortlist of 15 films being considered for the Documentary Feature Oscar for the 90th Academy Awards.
The shortlist comes out of a preliminary round of voting by the Documentary Branch of the Academy, which pared down an initial list of 170 films. Documentary Branch members will now select the five nominees from among the 15 titles.
‘Strong Island,’ created by former POV producer Yance Ford, also made the shortlist.
Last Men in Aleppo, which debuted on POV and pov.org on July 10, 2017, follows the White Helmets, a group of volunteer rescue workers who have stayed behind in the Syrian city torn apart after five years of war.
The film was created by Syrian filmmaker Feras Fayyad, and has received numerous accolades and nods in the past year, including a 2017 Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, the Critics’ Choice Documentary Award for Most Innovative Documentary and the IDA Documentary Awards’ Courage Under Fire Award. It also received a nomination from the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Winners for that showcase will be announced in March 2018, while the final list of nominees for the 90th Academy Awards will be announced in January.
