Shine Global to award filmmakers a $2,500 cash prize and additional support; Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker RaMell Ross and Emmy® Award winner Stacey Reiss have joined the film as executive producers

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September 10, 2026 — Shine Global and American Documentary (AmDoc), the nonprofit  organization behind America ReFramed, POV Shorts, and POV, American television’s longest-running independent documentary series, today announced a new partnership to recognize a POV Shorts film with the Shine Global Resilience Awards AmDoc Prize, an honor celebrating powerful documentary storytelling centered on the resilience and strength of children and families.

The inaugural award will go to the recently acquired POV Shorts film, The Boys and the Bees, directed by Arielle Knight and produced by Sean Weiner. The short documentary is an intimate portrait of a Black family on a small farm in rural Georgia, sharing their love of nature and beekeeping while restoring their homestead. The film won the Oscar®-qualifying Short Film Jury Award: Non-Fiction at the Sundance Film Festival in January among several other awards and will be available to audiences as part of POV Shorts upcoming ninth season in November

As the inaugural Shine Global Resilience Awards AmDoc Prize recipient, the filmmakers will receive a $2,500 cash prize from Shine Global, along with additional support from the nonprofit organization to help amplify the film and its impact.

“Short documentary is where some of the most inventive nonfiction work is happening, and it's also the work that struggles most to find support,” said Opal H. Bennett, Executive Producer POV Shorts and Senior Producer, POV. “Helping to close that gap is the work American Documentary has done for almost 40 years, and POV Shorts is one of the series where we put it into practice — curating films like this one and standing behind the people who make them The Shine Global Resilience Award AmDoc Prize adds real resources to that, and The Boys and the Bees is a perfect first recipient. Arielle Knight and Sean Weiner have made a gem of a film we'll be championing for a long time.”  

“Shine Global has always believed in the power of documentary storytelling to illuminate not only the challenges young people face, but their strength and agency,” said Alexandra Blaney, Co-CEO and Creative Director of Shine Global. “We are thrilled to partner with AmDoc, an institution that has championed independent filmmakers and nonfiction storytelling for nearly four decades, to create this new Resilience Awards Prize and help more exceptional films centering children to reach and move audiences.”

Blaney continued, “The Boys and the Bees is a beautiful choice for the inaugural award because its vision of resilience is both quiet and profound. Through Carver and Aaro’s experience of childhood, and Eliza and Nehemiah’s intentional work to build a family life connected to the land, the film shows resilience not simply as surviving adversity, but as creating a sense of belonging and love. We are honored to recognize the filmmakers and support this deeply moving story.”

The Boys and the Bees follows a year in the life of a Black family on a small farm in rural Georgia. Through a patient, verité lens, the film moves at the pace of two young boys, alive with curiosity, as they wander fields, tend hives, and grow in their relationship with the land around them. Their parents, Eliza and Nehemiah Ray—partners in life, parenthood, and beekeeping—set out to reimagine Black family life, rooting it in the wisdom of the natural world. As they work toward restoring their homestead, the film traces their quiet efforts to raise their sons, Carver, 6, and Aaro, 4, close to the land, transforming the rhythms of daily life into a tender meditation on childhood, inheritance, and legacy. From small, luminous moments—a frightened boy finding the courage to tend a beehive—a larger story unfolds: one of reparative healing and the deliberate work of building a family bound to the land. The Boys and the Bees is a tender yet radical portrait of self-determination, kinship, and love.

Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker RaMell Ross (Nickel Boys, Hale County This Morning, This Evening) and Emmy® Award-winner Stacey Reiss (The Andy Warhol Diaries, The Eagle Huntress) have recently joined The Boys and the Bees as Executive Producers.

The partnership extends Shine Global’s Resilience Awards program, which recognizes exceptional storytelling about children and young people whose courage, creativity, and determination offer a fuller picture of what resilience can mean. Through the new collaboration with POV, Shine Global will provide the winning filmmakers with financial support as well as additional opportunities designed to extend the reach and impact of their work.

This partnership builds on a history of previous POV films and Shine Global’s Resilience Awards. In 2024, POV’s Name Me Lawand (Edward Lovelace) was named the Shine Global Resilience Awards Grand Prize winner, and in 2023, Aurora’s Sunrise (Inna Sahakyan) was a Grand Prize nominee.

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