Millbrook High Students Win National Prize for Food Insecurity Documentary

Caroline Campbell and Audrey Long, students at Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh, won second place in a national student documentary competition for their film examining food insecurity in North Carolina and its impact on local communities.

The award extends a remarkable streak for the North Raleigh school. Millbrook Magnet students have earned national recognition in student documentary competitions in each of the past several years, building one of the most consistent records of any high school in the country. Prior Millbrook entries tackled subjects ranging from corporate pollution and environmental justice to land use and agriculture.

Campbell and Long turned their camera toward a subject that hits close to home in Wake County. North Carolina consistently ranks among states with higher-than-average food insecurity, and the documentary focused on how those pressures manifest at the local level, connecting statewide policy and economic conditions to the households and communities that feel them most directly.

The competition drew entries from more than 4,000 middle and high school students from across the United States, making the second-place recognition a significant achievement in a field of that scale.

Millbrook Magnet, which draws students interested in humanities and communication arts from across Wake County, has developed a faculty pipeline for student documentary work that few schools in the state can match. For Campbell and Long, the prize puts their reporting on food access and economic hardship in front of a national audience at a moment when those issues are drawing renewed attention at every level of government.