At the 2017 Academy Awards, Netflix won their first ever award. The streaming-service-turned-creator is paving the way for non-traditional content.
Winning an Oscar for best Documentary Short, The White Helmets, is a big step for the content streaming giant Netflix. Another Netflix documentary,13th, was nominated for an Oscar in the Feature Length Documentary category, but unfortunately didn’t win.
In the 40 minute documentary, there is a lot of heavy and emotional content. Considering the current state of immigration, it seems like a very timely win for the team who produced this film.
Although the win was a first for Netflix, it wasn’t all happy times, because The White Helmets cinematographer, Khaled Khateeb, wasn’t allowed into the country because of President Donald Trump’s Executive Order.
The documentary is about a group of life-saving volunteers who have been helping during the ongoing Syrian conflicts. Considering the nature of the film, it is very sad to know that Khateeb was unable to attend the awards ceremony.
Hopefully with the publicityThe White Helmets receives because of their win, this will encourage people to watch the documentary and get some insight into what’s happening in other parts of the world.
Bringing worldly issues to the forefront of people’s day is a very important outcome of the Academy Awards win for the film. Hopefully Netflix continues to create content that brings issues from other parts of the world into the discourse of the North American people.
With all the original content that Netflix is producing, it seems in a not so distant future, Netflix could be coming away with a lot more than just one win.
if you want to watch The White Helmets, the documentary is streaming on Netflix.
