Daily Times

NEW YORK: Two-time Academy Award and Emmy Award winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has won the coveted Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, as announced by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism on Thursday for her Oscar winning documentary ‘A Girl in the River – The Price of Forgiveness’.

Indeed, this is Sharmeen’s second duPont-Columbia Award having previously won it for her documentary ‘Pakistan – Children of the Taliban’ in 2010.

Established in 1942 and administered since 1968 by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award honours the best in broadcast, documentary and online reporting. Considered as a broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, the duPont Awards Centre upholds the highest standards in journalism by honouring winners annually, informing the public about those journalists’ contributions and supporting journalism education and innovation, thereby cultivating a collective spirit for the profession.

For its 75th Anniversary Celebration, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism announced the 14 winners of the 2017 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, including ‘A Girl in the River – The Price of Forgiveness’, who will be awarded at Low Memorial Library on January 25, 2017. These 14 winning programmes appeared on air, online or in theatres between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016.

Sharmeen had previously won an Oscar and the American Spirit Award for Activism in the Arts from The Common Ground earlier this year and this December 2016, she released the sequel to Pakistan’s first full-length animated motion picture ‘3 Bahadur – The Revenge of Baba Balaam’, to much acclaim.

Through her work onscreen as an Oscar and Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker and her efforts off screen, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has indeed become an important part of the global conversation in support of women’s issues and human rights in her native country and around the world.