Sharmeen Obaid's 'A Girl in the River' wins best documentary at the Emmys

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's documentary A Girl In The River has won the Best Documentary award at the 38th annual news and documentary Emmy Awards.

Sharmeen announced the good news from New York, where the award ceremony took place:

A Girl In The River, which is the story of a young survivor of an honour killing attempt, has triumphed over four PBS documentaries, including Children of Syria, Welcome to Leith, Thank You For Playing and The Look of Silence, to win the award.

In her acceptance speech last night, Sharmeen spoke of the courage of the subject of her documentary, "A 17-year-old girl had the bravery to stand up and the commitment to fight a system and because of that, a law was changed in Pakistan. And you had newspapers and television channels reporting honour killings reporting on honour killings in a different way. And it only took the commitment on one single person to do that."

A Girl in the River was also nominated in two other categories at this year's Emmys, Outstanding Short Documentary and Outstanding Music and Sound.

In 2016, the documentary earned Sharmeen her second Best Documentary Short Oscar after she won Pakistan's first Academy Award for Saving Face in 2012. She has also won Emmys for Children of Taliban and Saving Face.

Mohammed Naqvi's Among The Believers was also nominated at this year's Emmys in category Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary, but lost out to PBS' The Choice 2016.