Best Documentary Short in Social Media - Shorty Awards

12th Annual Shorty Awards Categories

The final deadline to vote for your favorite nominee or to enter your brand or organization was on Thursday, February 20th, 2020.

Influencers

Honoring the most notable and viral influencers and creators from 2020. See below for official categories.

Brands & Organizations

The Shorty Awards honor the talented agencies, brands, and industry leaders behind the best and most innovative work on social media channels, campaigns, websites and applications.

From the 4th Annual Shorty Social Good Awards Best Documentary Short

This award honors the most creative and effective use of a short, documentary-style film to bring awareness to a social good campaign, initiative or project.

See previous winners and honorees here.

Winner

Documentary Short

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention there were an estimated 1.4 Million suicide attempts in the United States in 2017. Suicide is also on the rise in the United States, which has significantly increased national media attention. The problem with this coverage is that it's often sensationalized, and as a result it's triggeri…

Finalists

Documentary Short

Female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that involves altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons, is internationally recognized as a human rights violation. Globally, an estimated 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone some form of FGM. Protecting girls and women from FGM will take a significant push t…

Documentary Short

Behind the Lens: Living with a Rare Blood Cancer

Every year, millions of patients, families and caregivers are impacted by cancer in the U.S. Some cancers are more well-known than others, but for those impacted by rare blood cancers, including myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), it counts to have somewhere to turn to for reliable information and support. As a part of ongoing efforts to raise aw…

Documentary Short

Blue Habits: Trinidad

As a non-profit dedicated to ocean conservation for 50 years, Oceanic Society has come to realize that all ocean conservation problems share a common cause: human behavior. In short, people put too much in and take too much out of the seas. Our focus is on changing the human behaviors that damage ocean health so that the oceans can thrive. Blue…

Documentary Short

Love Calls Back

Coming out to family and friends is one of the most nerve-wracking moments in the lives of LGBTQ+ people. Many LGBTQ+ youth feel safer calling. Although some of these calls go well, many people are met with rejection and it can be the last time they every speak to family. 4 out of 10 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are reject…

Documentary Short

WORLD'S WATER CRISIS IS TOTALLY SOLVABLE

You haven't even left for work yet, and you've already used more water than some villagers in rural India use in 8 weeks. In 2018, Cape Town, South Africa was dangerously close to becoming the world's first city to run out of H2O. Completely. Why should you care? What if we told you that, in just over 30 years, there's a good chance that you won't…

Nominees

Documentary Short

ALABAMA'S SEWAGE CRISIS

This video presents a growing public health crisis wherein hookworm, a disease thought only to affect the developing world, is thriving in some parts of the rural US. And if you think racism has something to do with it, you're right… In a recent study, 35% of the residents surveyed in Lowndes County, Alabama tested positive for this parasitic disease that A…

Documentary Short

Generation Zika: Three Years Later

Three years ago, thousands of pregnant women were infected with the mosquito-borne virus, Zika. The story dominated the headlines. Then, just as quickly as it swept into the American consciousness, media coverage of the crisis seemed to disappear. Now, their babies are becoming toddlers – and they say the world has forgotten them. For its "Down To Earth"…

Documentary Short

Hotel Silverado: A Family Affair

Chevrolet’s role was to work with the American Cancer Society (ACS) to identify a recipient and create a short film of their journey to share as a way to help others struggling with cancer. This film, Hotel Silverado, would recognize a member of the ACS’s “Relay For Life” program in order to spread awareness about the need for cancer patients and their fami…

Documentary Short

LEBANON: TINY COUNTRY, BIG TRASH PROBLEM

It piles up in landfills, it’s dumped in the ocean, it's burned. Lebanon is drowning in trash and doesn't know what to do about it. Waste-Ed created this short documentary to raise awareness and show a positive blueprint for change with the example of local waste management engineer Ziad Abi Chaker, who says: “It's not an evil material. You just need som…

Documentary Short

The Pardon: Jason Spyres

Jason Spyres got arrested for selling cannabis in Illinois. He understood that he broke the law, but he never imagined he'd serve a 30-year sentence. The sentence was severe, and once he finally served his time he met a new challenge that came with the sentence: $68,000 in fines and ruined financial credit due to those unpaid fines. Our goal of telling J…

Documentary Short

For Revolutio Creative's Apple commissioned #shotoniphone branded documentary, the studio was able to rely on its experience with surf photography. The project took executive producer / director Sven Dreesbach and his crew through a one of a kind oceanic experience. The challenge was to document the iOS assisted work of a Maldives-based marine wildlife rese…

Documentary Short

When Neurodiversity Works

Companies today are looking to get increasingly complicated applications to market faster, with fewer defects and at a lower cost. This requires fresh approaches and solutions to these ever-evolving challenges. To answer this need, IBM’s IGNITE Application Testing offering launched a program in 2017 to bring more neurodiversity into the workplace to bring n…

About the Shorty Awards

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media.

Millions of people participate in The Shortys to recognize individuals and organizations producing great content on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, and the rest of the social web.

the 12th annual shorty awards will take place on may 3rd.