{"id":589035,"date":"2026-09-03T17:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T17:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/589035\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T17:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T17:48:14","slug":"oscar-contender-the-boys-and-the-bees-acquired-by-pov-shorts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/589035\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Contender ‘The Boys And The Bees’ Acquired By POV Shorts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: POV Shorts<\/a> has acquired The Boys and the Bees<\/a>, the Oscar-contending documentary directed by Arielle Knight<\/a> that won the Grand Jury Prize for nonfiction short at Sundance. The film produced by Knight and Sean Weiner offers \u201can intimate portrait of a Black family on a small farm in rural Georgia, sharing their love of nature and beekeeping while restoring their homestead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPOV Shorts also announced that Oscar-nominated filmmaker RaMell Ross<\/a> (Hale County This Morning, This Evening; Nickel Boys) and Emmy winner Stacey Reiss<\/a> (The Andy Warhol Diaries, The Eagle Huntress) are joining the project as executive producers. In addition to winning Sundance, which qualified The Boys and the Bees for Oscar consideration, the documentary has won awards at the Atlanta Film Festival, Nevada City Film Festival, Ouray Film Festival in Colorado, and Salute Your Shorts in Los Angeles. It also screened as an Official Selection at DC\/DOX, the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Telluride, CO, Sheffield DocFest in the UK, and True\/False Film Fest in Columbia, MO.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film centers on brothers Carver Ray, 6, and Aaro Ray, 4, as they learn important life lessons from their parents, Eliza and Nehemiah Ray, who envision their farm as a place of bounty and refuge for their boys and successive generations of the family. Some of the lessons relate specifically to beekeeping (Carver bravely announces at one point that he would like to be stung by a bee, so he will no longer be the only family member lacking that distinction).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat an absolute joy to join The Boys and the Bees team,\u201d said Ross. \u201cI was taken back by the film, its gift of time, its abundance of pathos, and the space to witness the Ray family emerge into themselves. I think there is something elevated about this observed tale, something almost mythical in its unfolding. It\u2019s also just a space where the personal, the poetic, and the larger history of Black communities in America can all exist simultaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"L-R<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tL-R Carver Ray, Eliza Ray, and Aaro Ray birdwatch in \u2018The Boys and the Bees.\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPOV Shorts<\/p>\n

\n\tReiss added, \u201cWe can all learn so much from this exquisitely crafted film \u2014 the value of family,\u00a0 our relationship with the natural world and the bonds that hold all of us together. The kindness and trust displayed between Arielle and the Ray family demonstrates her astute ability as a filmmaker and talented storyteller.\u00a0I\u2019m very proud to support her and her film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKnight previously directed A Song of Grace in 2021 and she has contributed her producing talents to Sons of Detroit (2025), Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (2023), and Beba (2021).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018The Boys and the Bees\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPOV Shorts<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis film is an offering to the South, to Georgia, where I grew up, and to those brief, awe-filled moments of youth,\u201d Knight observed. \u201cIt\u2019s a testament to the power of cinema to widen our collective imagination \u2014 offering a more expansive representation of Black boyhood unburdened by stereotypes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Boys and the Bees is a GoodKnight Films and Untitled Filmmaker Org (UFO) co-production.<\/p>\n

\n\tProducer Sean Weiner, co-founder and co-director of UFO, commented, \u201cThe Ray family brings so much joy to the heart of this beautiful short film, which explores how we connect with those around us\u2014whether they are our closest family or the animals with whom we share this planet. What is truly moving is how the Ray family\u2019s warmth radiated beyond the camera and into the care with which Arielle and her team crafted this story. The spirit of collaboration and care permeated the entire project, and our team at UFO felt incredibly lucky to have been welcomed into this very special creative process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe acquisition deal was negotiated by Opal H. Bennett for American Documentary\/POV Shorts.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Boys and the Bees is a beautifully observed portrait about the small acts of courage that make a person \u2014 from a boy beekeeper\u2019s rite of passage to parents choosing a life rooted in the land,\u201d noted Bennett, executive producer of POV Shorts and senior producer at POV. \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of film we want to platform at POV Shorts and Arielle Knight is the kind of filmmaker we want to champion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Boys and the Bees is directed by Arielle Knight and produced by Knight and Sean Weiner. The director of photography is Fernando Rocha; editors are Sean Weiner and Omar Guzman. Sound design is by Thomas Becka. Executive producers include RaMell Ross, Stacey Reiss, and Opal H. Bennett, Erika Dilday, and Chris White for American Documentary\/POV. <\/p>\n

\n\tPOV Shorts launched in 2018 as one of the first PBS series \u201cdedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries.\u201d The series has broadcast Emmy Award winner The Love Bugs, Academy Award winner Days of Waiting, Academy Award-shortlisted films A Broken House and \u00c1guilas, and Emmy-nominated Earthrise, Water Warriors, and The Changing Same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: POV Shorts has acquired The Boys and the Bees, the Oscar-contending documentary directed by Arielle Knight that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[289880,156,409,111,139,69,289881,289882,289883,289884],"class_list":["post-589035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-arielle-knight","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pov-shorts","tag-ramell-ross","tag-stacey-reiss","tag-the-boys-and-the-bees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}