POV Shorts, the newest series from American Documentary, debuts its fourth season on September 6, 2021 on PBS and streaming online at POV.org. With 13 new short nonfiction films packed into seven unique episodes, POV Shorts continues to program innovative and diverse stories that capture longing for community and identity and difficult reconciliations with family history. In just its 3rd season, POV Shorts was named the ‘Best Short Form Series’ at the 36th annual IDA Documentary Awards.
Season 4 begins on September 6th with a collection of films about family roots and the connections we feel to home, including Canadian Screen Award winner Sing Me a Lullaby directed by Tiffany Hsiung, acclaimed short A Broken House directed by Jimmy Goldblum, and MFA student film standout Joychild directed by Aurora Brachman. The season concludes on January 24, 2022 with Team Meryland directed by Gabriel Gaurano, accompanying the broadcast of POV's Not Going Quietly. The story follows a twelve-year-old boxer from the projects of Watts training to be crowned the 2019 Junior Olympics champion while her immigrant parents work tirelessly to give their child a shot at her dream.
Other notable season 4 films include Seahorse, directed by Nele Dehnenkamp, about a young Yezidi girl who wrestles with her traumatic memories of the Mediterranean Sea, SXSW documentary shorts award winner Águilas, directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Maite Zubiaurre, about a group of searchers who work to recover the missing migrants on the Southern border of Arizona, and Le Frère, directed by Jérémie Battaglia, about a boy who is living with an illness that is causing him to lose the use of his body and the dreams he continues to carry. POV Shorts will also broadcast two films from the POV Spark series Otherly, a collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada that first premiered on Instagram Stories.
“This is a deeply-affecting group of films, particularly given the challenges of the past year” said POV Shorts producer Opal H. Bennett. “We see reunion and redemption, grace and compassion, and displays of inimitable human spirit. Our fourth season aims to bring you stories that will linger long after their screening.”
The home for acclaimed documentary shorts, past award winners and nominees from POV Shorts include A Night at the Garden, which received an Academy Award nomination, Earthrise, from POV Shorts' inaugural season, and last season’s The Love Bugs, both of which received nominations for Best Short Documentary Emmys. POV Shorts have screened at the Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, Hot Docs, DOC NYC, True/False film festivals, among others.
Launched in 2018, POV Shorts sources films through a variety of channels, particularly its open call for entries page (cfe.pov.org). POV Shorts has almost 40 titles in its catalog. In addition, the strand works with major short-form digital distributors such as Field of Vision and has worked with others including The New York Times Op-Docs and Condé Nast’s The New Yorker.
