RTE documentary receives fourth US award

The RTÉ television documentary, 'Sept 11th - Stories from the Twin Towers', has won another major award at one of the biggest film festivals in the US.
The programme received the Gold World Medal for 'Best 9-11 Documentary' at The New York Festival’s 45th Annual Television Programming Awards ceremony.
The festival, which is regarded as a showcase for the world's best television programmes, attracted a total of 2,400 entries from filmmakers in 50 countries. The special September 11 documentary category was added to this year's festival to honour the most outstanding documentaries made by television stations in the United States and world-wide in the aftermath of the New York and Washington terrorist attacks.
'Sept 11th- Stories from the Twin Towers', produced by Caroline Bleahen and presented by RTÉ’s Western Correspondent, Jim Fahy, won the Best Documentary Award for what the adjudicators described as its “powerful and sensitive portrayal of the events surrounding the attack on the World Trade Centre and its aftermath”.
The 36-minute documentary, first broadcast on RTÉ One in December 2001, tells the story of three families - two Irish and one Irish-American - who were caught up in the attack on the Twin Towers.
One of the most poignant is the story of Cork-born Ron Clifford who rescued a badly-burned office worker from the debris of the South Tower only to discover that his sister Ruth and her four year old daughter Juliana were in the hijacked plane which crashed into the building.
The New York Gold World Medal is the fourth award the programme has received in the US. It won the 'Best Documentary' at the prestigious 2002 'Hope and Dreams Film Festival' in Hope, New Jersey, and has received awards from the Pennsylvania Film Festival and the Columbus International Film Festival in Ohio.
(GB)