Graduate filmmaker wins BAFTA Student Award for documentary

Nyal Mueenuddin, a UWE Bristol graduate, has won a prestigious 2024 Yugo BAFTA Student Award – a global competition which celebrates the next generation of talented and innovative storytellers.

Nyal won the BAFTA Student Award for his documentary ‘When the Floods Come’, which tells the stories of people living with flood and drought along the Indus in Pakistan.

A Pakistani-American filmmaker and photographer, Nyal completed the MA Wildlife Filmmaking course in Bristol in February 2024. With an educational background in environmental science and South Asian studies, he has been working on telling stories of Pakistan’s natural diversity and environmental challenges.

Universities and colleges worldwide were invited to submit their best projects for consideration; BAFTA members viewed 800 submissions from 109 schools across 37 countries, with Nyal’s documentary chosen as the overall winner from a shortlist of three.

Nyal said: “I am unbelievably honoured to have won a Student BAFTA for my documentary and I’d like to thank the team who worked alongside me on this project.

“In the aftermath of the 2022 floods in Pakistan, I felt bewildered that in all the coverage of this climate disaster, displacing tens of millions and crippling countless families and communities across the country, I did not see a single personal testimony of the real people impacted by this calamity.

“I hoped that by tapping into the most intimate stories of the lives of Pakistanis, living in a rapidly changing world, and by sharing them as far and wide as we could, perhaps we could touch the remaining threads of humanity within the people who hold the power to make the changes needed to protect our people from an unhabitable future.”

The ceremony took place in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles on Friday 12 July – a stark contrast from his recent filming location in the highlands of Pakistan.

“We are immensely proud of this year’s winners.” said Courtney LaBarge Bell, Executive Director BAFTA North America. “The 802 submissions we received highlight extraordinary talent and exemplary work. The Yugo BAFTA Student Awards provide a vital platform for this artistry to be showcased to the entertainment industry on a global stage. For the past 20 years, we have dedicated ourselves to amplifying the voices of the next generation of storytellers, and we look forward to continuing this mission for many years to come.”

Jacqueline Butler, Dean and Head of School of Arts at UWE Bristol, added: “Nyal’s film is truly extraordinary and tells an incredibly powerful story. To win this award amongst this talented group of global filmmakers is something he should be very proud of. It also demonstrates how our graduates from the School of Arts at UWE Bristol are shaping the future of filmmaking, nurturing talent and readying of our creative graduates to be successful in this industry. Congratulations Nyal.”

UWE Bristol’s MA in Wildlife Filmmaking, which was co-designed and is accredited by BBC Studios NHU, is immensely successful with 94% of its graduates finding employment each year.