‘How the Holocaust Began’ shortlisted for Broadcast Awards 2024

Broadcast calls the finalists ‘standout shows’ emerging from ‘the highest volume of entries ever’.

‘How the Holocaust Began’ (2023), produced by Caravan for BBC Two and iPlayer, has been selected as a finalist in the Best Specialist Factual Programme at the Broadcast Awards 2024. The nomination acknowledges years of work by an unflagging team to produce a moving, insightful and important film.

In the film, historian James Bulgin reveals the origins of the Holocaust in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass murder, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution. It can currently be viewed on BBC iPlayer.

The full shortlist can be viewed here: https://broadcastawards.co.uk/shortlist-2024

The awards take place on 8 February at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House on Park Lane.

Caravan nominated for Broadcast Digital Awards

Caravan and ZANDLAND have been shortlisted in the Best Current Affairs Programme category at the Broadcast Digital Awards 2023 for ‘Untold: The Secret World of Incels’ (All 4).

Released in November 2022, filmmaker Ben Zand investigates the dark world of incels in this documentary. After a year-long investigation, Zand gains unprecedented access to the men behind the keyboards. Research finds the community is rapidly growing, and one of the most extreme incel forums has 18,000 members with around 2,500 from the UK.

The documentary also meets a British incel who has never had a proper conversation with a woman in real life. The investigation uncovers shocking extremism, which includes sharing extremely violent and bloody content.

View the full shortlist for the Broadcast Digital Awards 2023 here: https://www.broadcastdigitalawards.co.uk/shortlist-2023

The winners will be revealed at Broadcast’s live awards ceremony on 5 July at The Brewery, London.

5-star review for Caravan’s new Holocaust documentary

Caravan’s latest film, How the Holocaust Began, has been called ‘haunting, vital television’ in a 5-star review from The Times.

In the documentary, historian James Bulgin reveals the origins of the Holocaust in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass murder, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution. It premiered on BBC Two & iPlayer on Monday 23rd January.

Extracts of critic reviews:

★★★★★ – Carol Midgley, The Times
“If you watched How the Holocaust Began last night, a devastating but brilliant account of the chaotic, improvised origins of Hitler’s genocide in eastern Europe, it’s likely you didn’t sleep very well. Every single detail was horrific, obviously, but the account of the experimental killing site in a Polish forest, set up to establish more efficient ways to murder en masse without ‘traumatising’ Nazi soldiers too much, showed that, even now, the Nazis can still surprise you with their evil.”

★★★★ – Anita Singh, The Telegraph
“Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen death squads carried out many of these murders. But the chilling truth presented here was that they did not – in fact, could not – act alone. They needed not just the tacit support of the civilian population, but their active participation. It is crucial that we understand how the Holocaust was able to develop; blaming it all on the Nazis is to turn a blind eye to the darker side of human nature.”

Caravan Featured in Broadcast Hot Picks for MIPCOM

Caravan’s new true crime documentary, Drowning In Lies for Channel 5, has been featured in Broadcast’s ‘Hot Picks’ for International Co-Production & Entertainment Content Market, MIPCOM. The series will be distributed by Beyond Rights.

As reported in Broadcast, Drowning In Lies is a true-crime documentary about the case of Donald McPherson, who discovers the body of his wife Paula floating fully clothed in the pool at their holiday home in Denmark. Though at first sight the incident appears to be an accident, the ambulance crews notice worrying marks on Paula’s body and Donald is tried for murder. The case against him collapses – but it emerges that Donald McPherson is not his real identity.

The two-parter traces ‘Donald McPherson’s’ secret past in a larger-than- life tale that spans the globe. From his unusual upbringing in New Zealand, the journey takes viewers through the minimum 13 different identities he has held, a first wife and child who died in mysterious circumstances, a multimillion-dollar fraud, jail and connections to the American mafia.

‘There’s this huge mystery around it, and there’s a lot of demand for this kind of content’ Sarah Bickley, Head of Sales, Beyond Rights

Find us on Disney+

Caravan’s latest specialist factual film for National Geographic, Lost Cities with Albert Lin: The Great Flood, has been added to streaming service Disney+. In the special, Albert Lin goes on a global adventure, from icy Black Sea depths to the heights of the Peruvian Andes, searching for origins of Great Flood stories.

It joins Caravan series Buried Secrets of the Bible with Albert Lin, also for National Geographic, which debuted on Disney+ when the streamer launched in 2019.

Watch us on Disney+ here

Caravan Wins at New York Festivals TV & Film Awards

Two of Caravan’s latest films have won awards at the New York Festivals TV & Film Awards 2022. The Wimbledon Kidnapping, produced for Sky Documentaries, won Gold in the Feature Documentary category. The Anti-Vax Conspiracy, produced for Channel 4, won Bronze in the Current Affairs category. Both documentaries are distributed by All3Media International.

In the UK, ‘The Wimbledon Kidnapping’ is available to stream on NOW, whilst ‘The Anti-Vax Conspiracy’ is free to watch on All4.

See the full Winners Gallery here

Alaskan Dinosaurs
Premieres on NOVA

Caravan’s latest film Alaskan Dinosaurs premieres this week on NOVA / PBS in the USA. Discover how “life finds a way” with paleontologists making breakthrough discoveries in a breath-taking place. Congratulations to all crew and scientists involved in this fascinating documentary.

Alaska’s wild frontiers are the opposite of the luscious jungles and tropical swamps where most people think dinosaurs lived. Yet paleontologists are discovering a remarkable diversity of unique species lived above the arctic circle 70 million years ago – where they had to endure freezing temperatures, food shortages and at least four months of total darkness.

Now, Dr Pat Druckenmiller and Dr Gregory Erickson lead a pioneering crew on two gruelling expeditions, to the vast arctic tundra and unchartered alpine wilderness, in search of buried fossils and elusive trackways which overturn our understanding of the prehistoric world. Who lived here and how could they survive?

Working with world-class researchers they explore the geology and climate of an extinct polar environment and the adaptations – diet, hibernation, thermoregulation – which helped dinosaurs not only to survive but to thrive in it, even finding tantalising evidence of multiple species reproducing in the coldest parts of the planet. Using cutting-edge advances in paleontology, they can piece together the extraordinary lost world of arctic dinosaurs.

Watch here