A High Note for a Highbrow Career: Sheila Nevins Celebrates Oscar Nom as She Ends 5-Year Run at MTV Documentary Films (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comAddie Morfoot Contributor Sheila Nevins has produced documentaries for most of her professional life. But at 84, she’s still notching career firsts.
Last month, Nevins added “Oscar-nominated director” to her résumé, having landed her first nod for co-directing the short “The ABCs of Book Banning” with Trish Adlesic and Nazenet Habtezghi.
Nevins’ first Oscars as a nominee take place at the same time she is wrapping up her run as the head of MTV Documentary Films.
Nevins joined the company in 2019 after 38 years at HBO. “I went there to raise the bar for the intellectual quotient of what MTV could produce in the documentary arena,” Nevins says. “I did highbrow and lowbrow at HBO, but when I got to MTV, I just did highbrow.” On Nevins’ watch, MTV produced 40 docs and landed five Oscar nominations, including a feature doc bid this year for “The Eternal Memory.” “Sheila Nevins is an extraordinary storyteller, pioneer and mensch,” says Chris McCarthy, president and CEO of Showtime/ MTV Entertainment Studios. “She continues to give countless generations the gift of understanding, laughter and love through the stories she tells.” The matchmaking between Nevins and MTV came through MTV Communications head Liza Burnett Fefferman, who worked with Nevins on the 2014 Oscar-winning feature doc “Citizenfour.” “Anyone who knows Sheila, knows that she can’t sit still so the fact that we got five years with her all to ourselves is both a professional and personal career highlight,” says Fefferman, who oversees the documentary wing with Nina Diaz, chief content officer for MTV Entertainment Group.
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