documentary

The RTS Student Master­classes drew a crowd of more than 300 this month to hear four of the industry’s top talents talk about their careers and offer first-hand advice on how to make a start in television.

Journalism

Inzamam Rashid, a Sky News correspondent based in the north of England, told the packed Journalism masterclass: “I always wanted to do the news, [as] a reporter, a newsreader or [working] behind the scenes.”

The first Masterclass saw @SkyNews Correspondent @inzyrashid discuss his work covering national and international affairs, from the 2017 Manchester Arena attack to the 2022 earthquake in Afghanistan, with Media Consultant @helengscott.

“From the moment I got the results… I had a lot of questions I didn’t know what to do with. I thought… if I put it all into the structure of a film... then I could make sense of it.… Films have always saved me.” This was RTS Futures Award nominee Luke Davies, co-producer and subject of BBC Three’s life-affirming documentary Stranger in My Family.

Those results were from Davies’s DNA test. His journey to redefine his identity, uncovering two key, long-buried secrets that would turn his and his extended family’s worlds upside-down, was documented over the next four years.

Russia’s Lost Sons (working title), an hour-long programme, was filmed over a year by filmmakers for ROMB, an independent Russian media outlet. 

Women looking for their sons, brothers and husbands join forces as they contend with mostly unresponsive government offices. They are left searching morgues and trawling social media for news, in desperate hopes of finding those they have lost. 

In a recent poll, 73% of Britons showed support for doctor-assisted euthanasia for the terminally ill. This comes alongside the ever-growing debate surrounding assisted suicide.

Carr (Silent Witness, Good Omens) has long campaigned against a change in the law, worrying that disabled people are scarcely consulted about the issue. Carr, who wrote and presented the documentary, said: “Too many disabled people will have had the experience of someone, often a complete stranger, telling them, ‘If I was like you, I’d rather be dead'.

In one of the instalments, Whitmore will explore the world of ‘involuntary celibates’ or ‘incels’, a male-dominated online community where men who find it difficult to interact with women engage in anti-women discourse. In recent years these forums have moved off the internet and into the real world; in both the UK and US, incels have sought ‘vengeance’ for their feelings of rejection in the form of violence, including mass shootings.

Actor and activist Tommy Jessop was born with Down Syndrome. Having always dreamed of having a leading role, Jessop felt his career was on the right path after starring in the fifth series of Line of Duty. Since then, however, further top roles have yet to materialise for Jessop, so he has decided to take the matter into his own hands.

The rapt audience were shown Grabsky’s multiple-award-winning feature documentary My Childhood, My Country: 20 Years in Afghanistan, before being treated to a 90-minute discussion.

My Childhood, My Country won the Documentary prize at the RTS Southern Awards in 2022 and then the Bafta for Best Single Documentary.

The director explained how the film was a follow-up to two previous documentaries following Mir, initially a boy of seven, into his twenties.

Dooley is no stranger to frontline investigations, having previously embedded herself in the all-female Yazidi battalion in Stacey on the Frontline: Girls, Guns and ISIS. But her new feature-length documentary Stacey Dooley: Ready For War? will bring her closer to home.

The Ukrainian civilians first arrive in Britain to engage in five weeks of the British Army’s rigorous training programme. Dooley will see first-hand the emotional and physical challenges the young recruits go through as they learn survival skills and fighting strategies.