A very well deserved congratulations to all 14 members who have been shortlisted for The Grierson Trust awards 2015.

There are members in pretty much every category (obviously, no surprise there…)

Up for the ‘Best Documentary on a Contemporary Theme’ are Ruth Nicklin with Excluded: Kicked out of School Ep.1 and Brian Woods with Raining in my Heart. Brian is also looking at picking up the ‘Best Science or Natural History’ award for Curing Cancer.

Curing Cancer – Brian Woods

The success run for Laura Poitrais’ Citizenfour, distributed by SP and Britdoc’s Luke Moody, is still going strong – it’s up for ‘Best Documentary on a Contemporary Theme – International’. James Bluemel with The Romanians Are Coming is also in the running.

Shortlisted into the arts category is 20,000 Days On Earth, by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard (also shortlisted for ‘Best Newcomer’). Ben Steele, who won ‘Best Documentary on Current Affairs’ last year, has another film up for the same award this year – Gypsy Matchmaker:

Everyone loves a little bit of history – this year Joanna Lipper with The Supreme Price is in the mix for ‘Best Historical Documentary’. In the ‘Best Entertaining Documentary’ category is Colin Rothbart‘s Dressed as a Girl, which premiered at BFI Flare earlier this year.

Virunga – Orlando Von Einsiedel

Up for the ‘Best Cinema Documentary’ award is Jesse Moss‘ The Overnighters. Also in this category is Oscar and BAFTA nominated Virunga, directed by long time SP member Orlando Von Einsiedel. We caught up with Orlando earlier this year – on top of his invaluable filmmaking career advice, he had a rather amusing story involving gorillas to tell.

In the ‘Best Newcomer’ category, members Chloe Fairweather with Mr Alzheimers and Me, and Andrew Hinton and Johnny Burke with Tashi and The Monk have both been shortlisted. The Wolf, The Ship and the Little Green Bag, by Kathryn MacCorgary Gray has been shortlisted for the ‘Best Student Documentary’ award.

Of course, they’re not out of the woods yet and nominations will be announced on Tuesday 15th September. 2015 has been such a strong year for documentaries, with much competition, so it’s a huge achievement to be shortlisted. Making SP proud guys – wishing you the best of luck.