From: Irish Times
An RTÉ Prime Time Investigates documentary has taken first prize at the New York Festivals International Television and Film Awards. The film, Ireland’s Illegal Cigarette Trade, won a Gold World Medal in the News Programme Best Investigative Report category at the awards on Tuesday.
The programme exposed the international crime networks which supply Irish criminal gangs with smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes, and saw reporter Paul Maguire infiltrate an underground network from factories in the Far East to small Irish towns.
Two other documentaries, also from RTÉ’s news and current affairs division, also won awards. Somalia – the Children’s Famine received a Gold World Medal in the Best Television Social Issues/Current Events category. Filmed during the visit of former president Mary Robinson to war-torn Somalia in 2011, the documentary revealed the conditions in which about 26,000 children died before international intervention.
Children Are Our Flowers, awarded a Silver World Medal in the Television Documentary Biography Profiles category, tells the story of two disabled girls abandoned by their parents and placed in a mental asylum.
Both documentaries were presented by RTÉ’s Jim Fahy and produced by Orla Nix.
