Zane Karram (’25) and Kelsey Oliver’s (’25) thesis documentary, “Strangers on Our Land,” has been selected for the longlist of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts prestigious Student BAFTA Awards, the international student equivalent of the Student Academy Awards.
The documentary investigates the killing of Raymond Mattia, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, by U.S. Border Patrol outside his home in May 2023.
This year’s BAFTA Student Awards had submissions from more than 600 universities globally in the film, games and immersive categories. A review group of 300 global BAFTA members selected the 44 titles to move to the final round of selection. Three finalists in the documentary category will be announced on June 22.
Kelsey Oliver and Zane Karram filming their thesis project less than a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border, southwest of Tucson in 2024.
“Zane and Kelsey’s commitment to this documentary was inspiring to witness,” said filmmaker and Professor Jennifer Redfearn, director of the documentary program. “The subject matter was sensitive, as was navigating access to the body camera footage. But they directed and produced the film with such thoughtfulness and a strong eye for craft. I could not be more proud of them both, and of the nonfiction filmmaking legacy we’ve built at the school.”
BAFTA’s recognition follows the film’s nomination for the Television Academy’s 45th College Television Awards in the Nonfiction Series category.
Zane Karram and Kelsey Oliver being interviewed on the red carpet at the College Television Awards in Los Angeles in March.
“Strangers on Our Land” premiered at the Austin Film Festival and screened at the Red Nation Film Festival.
Recognized for his talent early on in graduate school, Karram was awarded the Marlon T. Riggs Fellowship in Documentary Filmmaking to support his education costs and documentary thesis, and the film was one of five student thesis projects at Berkeley Journalism that received grants from partners at the Berkeley Film Foundation.
This is the fourth BAFTA Awards cycle in which students at Berkeley Journalism have been recognized. In 2020, Lucas Guilkey’s (‘19) thesis film, “What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong?” was named one of three documentary finalists. Three other students were shortlisted: Sarah Cahlan for “TheirStory,” exploring assumptions about gender roles in prehistory anthropology scholarship, and Karla Caraballo-Torres and Lorin Eleni Gill for “School Crossing,” on the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and its impact on educating the country’s children.
In 2018, Brad Bailey’s film “Hale,” about Hale Zukas, the grandfather of the disability movement in Berkeley, was one of three finalists for Best Documentary. In 2017, Daphne Matziaraki won not only BAFTA’s Student Award for Documentary but also the Special Jury Prize for her work “4.1 Miles” on the refugee crisis in her native Greece.
