Faltin wins RIAS TV prize for story on GIs in post-war West Germany

Sigrid Faltin won the RIAS Media Prize Best TV award in 2022 for her report on the history of the lives of African American soldiers stationed in West Germany in the early decades after World War II who were living alongside and with West Germans called “Ein Hauch von Amerika – die Doku“ or “A Touch of America — the documentary film”. It was a documentary film that was broadcast at the end of a fictionalized four part-series about a small West Germany town near a major US military base after the war and during the early years of the Cold War. It aired on December 21, 2021. The documentary explored the racism that American GIs sometimes experienced in the small West German towns.

This is what the jury had to say about her story: Just when it seemed that just about everything was already known about the post-war history of American GIs in West Germany, Sigrid Faltin and her colleagues have delivered a stirring, fascinating and at times even disturbing look into little-known aspects about life in small West German towns after the United States armed forces arrived — first as occupation forces and then as allies during the Cold War. The documentary uses archival footage and interviews with women who fell in love with and had children with American soldiers to explore their special hardships.

Here is a link to her story: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/ein-hauch-von-amerika/ein-hauch-von-amerika-dokumentation-s01-e07/das-erste/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL2Vpbi1oYXVjaC12b24tYW1lcmlrYTEvOTdmNjE5MzctZDk1Zi00MzA0LWJlZmEtYzhmNzUzNGJhOTY5

The binational RIAS Berlin Commission jury was made up of five distinguished journalists from the United States and Germany: Co-chair Michael Gargiulo (WNBC TV, New York, USA), Co-chair Anja Heyde (ZDF/MDR, Berlin/Magdeburg, Germany), Helge Fuhst (ARD, Hamburg, Germany), Yami Virgin (Fox 29, San Antonio, Texas, USA), Christian Wilp (NTV/RTL, Berlin, Germany), Melissa Eddy (The New York Times, Berlin, USA)

The RIAS Berlin Commission is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The RIAS Media Prize ceremony will be held for the first time since in 2019. The Covid-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the annual awards ceremony in 2020 and 2021. An independent jury of journalists continued to pick winners in the television, radio and digital categories for German-American exchange program.