It is matter of great pride for the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) that a documentary film titled
‘Writing With Fire’ by Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh, both alumnus of AJK Mass
Communication Research Centre (AJK MCRC), JMI has won the prestigious Peabody
Award. It is a distinctive award that ‘honors the most intelligent, powerful and moving
stories of our times’, and the first Indians in the award’s 80-year history to win the
accolade.
Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh are Academy nominated filmmakers and co-founders of
Black ticket Films, an award-winning film production company based in New Delhi. They
have completed their MA in Mass Communication course at the AJK MCRC (2006-08
batch).
‘Writing With Fire’ was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021, where it won
the Audience Award and a Special Jury award. The film has gone on to screen in over
200 film festivals worldwide and won 40 awards, with the Washington Post describing it
as “The most inspiring journalism movie — maybe ever” and The New York Times
hailing it as a ‘NYT Critics’ Pick’. In 2022, ‘Writing With Fire’ became India’s first feature
documentary to be nominated for an Oscar.
Over the last 14 years, Rintu and Sushmit’s body of work has portrayed the contours of
human resilience in a rapidly changing world, with films that explore themes ranging
from the climate crisis, gender and sexuality to the role of women in democracies. In
2012, their short documentary, ‘Timbaktu’ won the National Award for Best Environment
Film. Their work has been shown and won awards at festivals worldwide such as
Sundance, IDFA, DOC NYC, Thessaloniki, Yamagata and also exhibited in partnership
with global forums such as the United Nations and The Lincoln Center for Performing
Arts. They are both members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences