In the last year Callum Macrae has directed and presented a number of films which have made headlines and won awards. He directed Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields

(ITN for Channel 4) – containing shocking revelations about the Sri Lankan government slaughter of as many as 40,000 civilians at end of the civil war in 2009. Shown on TV stations and screened at events around the world, the film has had a huge impact and has been raised in parliaments worldwide including India, the UK and Australia. It has been nominated for number of awards including the RTS, Broadcast and Bafta. The film is next being screened at the international Human Rights Film Festival in Geneva in March.  He is currently working on a follow-up film to be TXed in Feb/March this year.

He presented from Japan and location-produced a film Japan Tsunami: How it Happened for Pioneer which was shown in the UK on Channel 4 and the US as part of the flagship NOVA strand.

 It has won two of the most prestigious broadcast awards in the US.  The American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for the best long-form science documentary of the year and the Dupont-Columba prize for Broadcast Journalism (described as the Pulitzer Prize for broadcast journalism and awarded by the same organisation).  See background video here

Through Outsider he has made two films in the last year.  The first, Sudan:War and Independence was made for AlJazeera and TXedin July

To make the film Callum Macrae and John D McHugh travelled secretly into South Kordofan defying a Khartoum imposed no-fly zone to find evidence of the bombing of civilians in the Nuba Mountains.  There,in a world exclusive,Callum interviewed the leader of the rebel SPLA-N forces, Abdel Aziz Al-Hilu

In October Outsider made a 10 minute short for Channel 4 News about Lt Col Nicholas Mercer, who was the British Army’s top lawyer in Iraq at the time of the coalition invasion in 2003.  It was Col Mercer’s job to make sure UK forces obeyed international laws of war. But when he tried to prevent the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and ensure that UK forces acted lawfully he was blocked, vilified and silenced by his superiors in the MOD. In this exclusive interview he describes what happened.

At the beginning of the year Callum also spent a couple of weeks in Los Angeles directing and filming some of the early events in the trial of Dr Conrad Murray over the death of Michael Jackson for a documentary on the doctor’s trial which has been transmitted around the world in the last three months.

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For next year we have been developing a number of projects including a science documentary for the UK and US and a Fact-Ent format show.

It has been a busy year for Outsider. In the last year Callum Macrae has directed and presented a number of films which have made headlines and won awards.