The Golden Rock Documentary Award went to Dirty Wars by Richard Rowley. This documentary follows journalist Jeremy Scahill as he investigates covert military operations on several fronts. Scahill also received the Courage in Filmmaking Award from the Little Rock Film Festival.
The Dirty Wars website describes the film:
What begins as an investigation into a US night raid gone terribly wrong in a remote corner of Afghanistan quickly transforms into a high-stakes global investigation into one of the most secretive and powerful military units in American history… As Scahill digs deeper into the activities of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), he is forced to confront painful truths about the consequences of a war without end that extends through Republican and Democratic administrations. Pulled deeper into the stories he investigates and the lives of the people he meets along the way, Scahill realizes that the investigation has transformed him…
Tracing the rise of JSOC, the most secret and elite fighting force in U.S. history, Dirty Wars reveals cover operations unknown to the public and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and will never appear before Congress. In military jargon, JSOC teams “find, fix and finish” their targets, who are selected through a secret process. No target is off limits for the “kill list,” including U.S. citizens. Dirty Warstakes viewers to remote corners of the globe to see first-hand wars fought in their name and offers a behind-the-scenes look at a high-stakes investigation. We are left with haunting questions about freedom and democracy, war and justice.
The other nominees for Golden Rock Documentary were 12 O’Clock Boys by Lotfy Nathan, The Kill Team by Dan Krauss, Pussy Riot-A Punk Prayer by Mike Lerner & Maxim Pozdorovkin, and These Birds Walk by Omar Mullick & Bassam Tariq.
