When a young man mysteriously dies in a Santa Rita jail, his mother, Barbara Doss, begins a determined quest to find out what happened to him, but quickly runs into the opaque and powerful position of American sheriffs.

Director and producer Lucas Guilkey’s (‘19) thesis film, “What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?” was awarded the top prize in the 2020 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Student Film Awards.

The recognition follows a string of successes for the film, a deeply reported and beautifully filmed story about a mother’s quest to find out why her son died in an Alameda County, Calif., jail.

“What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?” was nominated for a Social Impact Media Award (SIMA) and has screened at the Oakland International Film Festival, the United Nations Association Film Festival, the (In)Justice for All Film Festival in Chicago (where it won a Special Recognition award), the Justice on Trial Film Festival in Los Angeles (where it won Best Short Documentary), the March on Washington Film Festival in Washington, D.C. (where it won Best Student Documentary), and at community gatherings throughout the Bay Area.

It also won a 2019 North Gate Award for Excellence in Documentary Production, the most prestigious award bestowed on students annually by Berkeley Journalism’s documentary faculty.

Read a Q&A with Lucas here.