BEST DOCUMENTARY: GOLD AWARD
Don’t Hang Up 2: Nightlines (UK)
by Mark Burman
with presenter Alan Dein and series researcher Anne Smith

Would you pick up a ringing payphone and share your life with a complete stranger? Alan Dein hopes so.  Dialing into the deep night Dein encounters the lonely, the lost, the brave and the strange -  from a security guard in the Florida Everglades to a Kiwi transsexual in pigtails and onto a vision of violent, teenage hell on a Margate (UK) seafront.

Don’t Hang Up 2: Nightlines first aired on BBC Radio 4.

Note! Because of rights issues, we're unable to offer the full version of Don't Hang Up on our website. Enjoy the excerpt below!

BEST DOCUMENTARY: SILVER AWRD
A Fragile Son (Canada)
by Carma Jolly and Surjit Sachdev with senior producer Neil Sandell

Surjit Sachdev grew up in a conservative family in India. Surjit’s father was an engineer, and he’s an engineer, but the family tradition ended when Surjit's son was born with a severe mental disability. Through the years, Surjit's frustrations with his son increased until one day a major confrontation forced him to examine his competence as a father. 

A Fragile Son first aired on CBC’s Outfront.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: BRONZE AWARD
Grandpa (USA)
by Lu Olkowski with editors Jad Abumrad (host) and Ellen Horne

How do we deal with dying? Most of us look away, but in the case of the Zagar family, they look closer.  A father and son have a contest to take the best pictures of their dying grandpa; the result is an up-close portrait of death.


Grandpa first aired on WNYC’s Radio Lab.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: HONORABLE MENTION
The Search for Edna Lavilla (Australia)
by Sharon Davis and Eurydice Aroney with sound engineer
Russell Stapleton

In 1942 Edna Lavilla Haynes died from a backyard abortion.  After her death Edna was never mentioned again.  More than sixty years later Edna’s granddaughter looks for clues - a search that leads through police files and government records and down Sydney’s back alleys of the 1940’s, where one in four pregnancies ended in abortion and sometimes death.  

The Search for Edna Lavilla first aired on ABC Radio National’s Radio Eye.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: HONORABLE MENTION
American Icons: The Great Gatsby (USA)
by Emily Botein and Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, from PRI and WNYC

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tale of old money, new money, drinking, and adultery – a thin little book that critics panned – is still the best novel about the American Dream and its discontents.  As part of its American Icons series, Studio 360's Kurt Andersen chases the legacy of "The Great Gatsby" from St. Paul, Minnesota, to the gated communities of Long Island, to Iran under Islamic law. 

The Great Gatsby aired on PRI’s Studio 360.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: DIRECTORS' CHOICE
Before the War it Was the War (Australia)
by Anna Burns with sound engineer Louis Mitchell and executive producer Nicole Steinke

In the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and the state of Israel, one man took it upon himself to ‘resist with his pen’, to bear witness for his people and bring the world, in his words, ‘the real news from Beirut.”

Before the War It Was the War first aired on ABC Radio National’s Street Stories.

RADIO IMPACT AWARD
The Ground We Lived On (USA)
by Sarah Kramer with writer / narrator Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and executive producer David Isay

The Ground We Lived On documents the loving relationship between journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and her father, Adrian Leon LeBlanc, in the last months of his life. Using recordings LeBlanc made of her father from his hospital bed in the family living room, The Ground We Lived On is a story of loving and losing a parent and the record of a father's final gift to his daughter: helping her to conceive of a world without him.

The Ground we Live On was produced for Sound Portraits, and first aired on NPR’s All Things Considered.

BEST NEW ARTIST
The Dead Can’t Do You Nothin’ (USA)
by Katie Mingle

Producer Katie Mingle narrates her quest to find ghosts in a "pauper's graveyard" in New Orleans. Along the way, she meets a little boy who has lost his father, visits with some gravediggers who don't believe in ghosts and learns some haunting lessons about life and death in New Orleans.

The Dead Can’t Do You Nothin’ was first presented at the Center for Documentary Studies Gallery in Chapel Hill, NC.