Viewing: February 06,2025
Watch Trailer
Director: Tom Jennings
Writer(s): Will Lyman, Erika Kinetz, Michael Biesecker
The E.W. Scripps School of Journalism and WOUB Public Media will sponsor a screening of the award-winning “FRONTLINE” documentary “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes“
The film has received these awards: three Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards (International Television, International Print and Grand Prize), Investigative Reporters and Editors Tom Renner Medal, Overseas Press Club Roy Rowan Award, and the Scripps Howard Excellence in National/International Investigative Reporting Ursula and Gilbert Farfel Prize
A Q&A session with the producers will follow.
Admission is FREE – Tickets are required
About the film
“FRONTLINE” and The Associated Press go inside Russia’s war on Ukraine, tracing a pattern of atrocities committed by Russian troops with a focus on the Kyiv suburbs, such as Bucha, where some of the most shocking carnage was found.
From award-winning director Tom Jennings, producer Annie Wong, AP global investigative reporter Erika Kinetz and her AP colleagues, the joint documentary draws on exclusive original footage, as well as interviews with Ukrainian citizens and prosecutors, top government officials and international war crimes experts.
FRONTLINE and the AP uncover exclusive and harrowing evidence that links possible war crimes in Bucha through the chain of command to one of Russia’s top generals — evidence that prosecutors hope might help build a case against Russian President Vladimir Putin in court. But the joint investigation also explores the challenges of trying to hold Putin and other Russian leaders to account.
[Description taken from PBS.org]
About the speakers
Tom Jennings
Tom Jennings is a native of Athens, Ohio, and holds a Master of Science degree from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. He has been making documentary films for 25 years for a variety of outlets but since 2009 has produced for PBS “FRONTLINE.” Jennings’ first “FRONTLINE” documentary, “Law and Disorder,” about police shootings in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, won the George Polk Award. He then directed “A Perfect Terrorist” and its sequel, “American Terrorist” (2011, 2015) and was a team producer on the landmark documentary series, “Money, Power & Wall Street” (2012). Jennings and wrote and directed “Being Mortal” (2015), with The New Yorker writer, and fellow Athenian, Atul Gawande.
He directed “Right to Fail” (2019), about people with severe mental illness living independently, “Opioids, Inc.” (2020) and, with Jelani Cobb at Columbia University, produced “Whose Vote Counts,” which won the 2021 Peabody Award and National Association of Black Journalists Award. Jennings’ next film, “Boeing’s Fatal Flaw” (2021), an investigation with The New York Times into the 737-MAX airliner crashes, received an Emmy Award. In 2022, with producing partner Annie Wong and in collaboration with Erika Kinetz of the Associated Press, he made “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes,” a 90-minute investigation detailing Russian military atrocities. It received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Grand Prize, The Overseas Press Club Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award and was nominated for an Emmy for the best documentary of the year.
With producing partner Annie Wong, Jennings is now making a film about global online violent extremism.
In all, his work has received the Peabody Award, three Emmy Awards, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, two George Polk Awards, the duPont-Columbia Award, the National Association of Black Journalists Award, two Overseas Press Club Awards, the Deadline Club Award, the Gerald Loeb Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, a Scripps Howard Farfel Prize and six Writers Guild of America Awards.
Eika Kinetz
Erika Kinetz is an investigative reporter for the Associated Press based in Rome. She worked with the PBS series “Frontline” and New York-based SITU Research as correspondent and a producer for “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes,” a 90-minute film, as well as “Crime Scene: Bucha,” a visual investigation of a Russian cleansing operation. Kinetz also helped establish War Crimes Watch Ukraine, a collaboration with PBS “Frontline” to gather, verify and document evidence of potential war crimes in Ukraine. This work won Overseas Press Club, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and Scripps Howard Farfel Prize awards, among others, and was a finalist for an Emmy for Best Documentary.
She lived in Asia for 15 years, winning awards for her work in China, India, Myanmar and Cambodia. Kinetz showed how China’s rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts, uncovered labor abuses in Ivanka Trump’s China supply chain and broke news about transnational criminal networks, Myanmar’s crony businessmen, Cambodian slave labor and abuse in India’s microfinance industry. Before joining the AP, she wrote for The New York Times and contributed to The Washington Post, Newsweek, NPR, the International Herald Tribune and Harper’s magazine, among others.
Kinetz has trained journalists from China, Turkey, Bosnia, Montenegro, Poland and the Czech Republic. She graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College.
Annie Wong
Annie Wong is an Emmy- award winning documentary producer and director.
She started her career working at National Geographic Television and over the years produced a wide range of documentaries shown on PBS, Netflix, Discovery Channel and the Sundance Channel. Among the highlights, Wong has worked with Bill Moyers on his documentary series “Close to Home” about addiction and recovery. She directed, wrote and produced for the PBS series “Exposé: America’s Investigative Reports” and was a producer for the Academy Award-winning French filmmaking team Denis Poncet and Jean Xavier DeLestrade on “Sin City Law,” an 8-part verité series examining the criminal justice system in Las Vegas.
In 2019, Wong joined Tom Jennings as a producing partner on a number of films for the PBS “Frontline” series: “Opioids, Inc.,” “Putin’s Attack on Ukraine: Documenting War Crimes,” “The Discord Leaks” and a current film on online violent extremists to be released in spring 2025.
She has received an Emmy Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, the Scripps Howard Farfel Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, the Sigma Award, an International Documentary Association Award and the Gerald Loeb Award.
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