Open City Docs School announces 2016 MA Ethnographic and Documentary Film graduate Minmin Wu as the winner of this year’s Student Award at the One World Media Awards for her graduation film Waste.

She was presented with the award by Ben Zand – head of the jury for the Student Award – at Tuesday’s awards ceremony celebrating journalistic excellence in international media coverage of the developing world for the 29th year.  Wu is the second Open City Docs School MA graduate to receive the award after Fernando González Mitjans’ win for his graduation film Limpiadores in 2016.

Her winning film, Waste, follows Yanin Ma, an 11-year- old girl living with leukaemia in China. Having spent the last month undergoing chemotherapy in Guangzhou City, she now wants only to go home. But Yanin’s hometown in Shantou is one of the most heavily polluted cities in the world and some believe this could be a cause of her illness.

Minmin Wu was one of 25 who formed the second cohort of Masters students in UCL’s new MA in Ethnographic and Documentary Film. Her film exemplifies the kind of work the MA’s tutors set out to encourage – rooted in the research culture of a great university but made in the highly personal voice and cinematic vision of the film maker.  

Hosted this year by Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the prestigious One World Media Awards took place at BAFTA and saw some of the world’s finest journalists, reporters and filmmakers – past, present and future – gather to celebrate the industry’s achievements.

Minmin Wu said: “I want to thank UCL, Open City Docs School, my tutors and my friends who helped me make this film. I made this film not just because I wanted to raise attention to environmental pollution in China but also because I had similar experiences to what the characters go through in my film. I wanted to share their feelings and story with a wider audience.”

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