Feature doc Hidden Letters, produced by Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas, is nominated for Best Documentary, and Anders Hammer’s short doc The Takeover is nominated in the Outstanding Short Documentary category.

Two Norwegian documentaries are nominated at the 45th News and Documentary Emmy Awards. The awards honour the best of American news and documentary programming of the previous year.

Nominated in the category of Outstanding Short Documentary, The Takeover was directed by Norwegian filmmaker and journalist Anders Hammer, who also serves as the film’s cinematographer, editor and producer. The Takeover is produced by Hammer and Charlotte Cook for production house Field of Vision, which is also distributing the doc through its website.

Filmed as the Taliban retake control of Afghanistan in 2021 and 2022, The Takeover documents the country’s rapid transformation and the women who refuse to lose their rights, the synopsis reads.

Hammer’s short documentary Do Not Split, which documented the 2019 Hong Kong protests and was also made for Field of Vision, received an Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary Short Subject category in 2021.

The Takeover won the international short film competition’s Grand Jury Award at the Sheffield Int. Documentary Festival last year. The film’s production countries are USA, Afghanistan and Norway.

“I filmed for a year in Afghanistan after the Taliban took power, and tried to get as close as possible. I hope the Emmy nomination brings more attention to the critical human rights situation in Afghanistan depicted in our documentary. Almost three years have gone by since the Taliban took full control of the country, and there is no sign of improvement for Afghan women and others who are not part of the Taliban. The fundamentalist movement does not respect freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and quickly resorts to violence against those who oppose them. Afghan girls are still not allowed to attend school beyond the sixth grade,” Hammer says in a press release from the Norwegian Film Institute.

The other nominated films in the Outstanding Short Documentary category are: Birthing a Nation: The Resistance of Mary Gaffney, Deciding Vote, Last Song from Kabul and The Silent Witness.

The feature doc Hidden Letters is nominated in the category of Best Documentary.

Through two young women, the film tells the story of the secret Chinese language of Nüshu. This is a written language developed by and for women, so that they could express themselves during the long period when females were not allowed to read or write.

Hidden Letters was directed and produced by Violet Du Feng and co-directed by Zhao Qing, with Norwegian Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas as one the film’s central producers. This Chinese/US/Norwegian/German doc was co-produced by Fish and Bear Pictures, Munthe-Kaas’ company Ten Thousand Images, and Independent Television Service (ITVS) in association with Bird Street Productions, Chicken & Egg Pictures, EST Media and NiKA Media.

Munthe-Kaas also produced Nowhere to Hide, which won the top prize at IDFA for Best Feature-Length Documentary in 2016 as well as several other awards. In 2019, Nowhere to Hide was nominated for the News & Documentary Emmys in two categories: Best Documentary, and Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary.

Hidden Letters had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022, and was aired on the PBS series Independent Lens in March 2023. In addition to several awards and nominations, the film was shortlisted in the feature documentary category for last year’s Academy Awards.

“The idea for the film came from conversations between my mother and me here in Norway, and I am grateful that director Violet Du Feng jumped on board. She has done a fantastic job creating a beautiful film that touches so many across cultures and borders. As far as I know, this is one of the first co-productions between Norway, China, and the USA, and it is also special that the film is being distributed in China, something that has been long worked on,” says Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas in the press release on the Emmy nomination, and adds:

“As someone who has produced many international films, both thematically and content-wise, I am happy that Hidden Letters joins the long line of recognition for Norwegian documentaries, showing that our stories can reach and engage a global audience.”

The other nominated films in the Best Documentary category are: Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover, Free Chol Soo Lee, Freedom on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, Great Photo, Lovely Life: Facing a Family's Secrets, January 6th, Lakota Nation vs. United States, Mourning in Lod, Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage & Reckoning and The Stroll.

The 45th News and Documentary Emmy Awards will be presented in two ceremonies on September 25 and 26, respectively. The Emmy winners in the Documentary categories will be announced at Palladium Times Square in New York on September 26, and will be live-streamed at watch.theemmys.tv.