This film looks to shed light on the rigor behind journalism and why it's all worth it. It’s a piece of work about pursuing the truth wherever it may lead and bringing that truth back in word form for the world to read. The film looks at Southeast Asia Bureau Chief Hannah Beech as she tries to uncover the truth surrounding rumors of genocide in Myanmar. Over and over, she encounters an uncooperative government, belligerent armed guards and signs of a massacre that had been hastily covered up—using journalistic instinct, empathy and resolve to get the truth no matter what. The spot was released at a time of heightened discussions about the subject matter, making it even more critical to reiterate the importance of the truth and the value of NYT journalism.

This was a story that launched at a time when the issue of government transparency was more crucial than ever. The script had to bring the emotion of this heavy story while balancing the journalistic integrity of The New York Times. The script puts us in the reporter's stream of consciousness, adopting her tone of voice while also maintaining The Times’s inimitable house style. The script itself, a connected thread of words that appears on screen, creating the effect of a continuously rewriting headline, was central to putting the viewer in the psyches of the journalist as she uncovers the truth about the genocide of the Rohingya people of Myanmar.

The film’s art direction is centered around a unique typographic treatment of continuously rewriting headlines paired with emotive mixed media and found footage. By using this headline construct and supporting it with this real footage from the reporting, we were able to put viewers in the shoes of the journalist as she worked, making them experience all the fears, doubts and triumphs that go into reporting a Times story. In this way, the art direction made tangible a genocide that, without the work of Times journalists, might have been forgotten.