The ITN team behind Channel 4’s revelatory film Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize

The hour-long documentary which was posted at ENVY featured harrowing footage that appeared to show atrocities against civilians in the closing weeks of the civil war in 2009.

Jon Snow presented the programme, directed by Callum Macrae, which was broadcast at 11.05pm and drew more than double C4’s usual audience at the time - despite including some of the most horrific content ever shown on the channel.

The film was screened at the UN in Geneva and New York and since being broadcast has prompted international calls for an independent investigation into the alleged atrocities. The documentary included footage which appeared to show extra-judicial killings by Sri Lankan soldiers as war trophies, the aftermath of shelling in civilian camps and hospitals alleged to have been deliberately targeted by Sri Lankan government forces and dead female Tamil Tigers who appear to have been systematically raped.

The judges nomination said: At a time when the failure of existing UN institutions is increasingly noted in relation to safeguarding human life and preventing brutal wars, the contribution of a documentary such as Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields in bringing to light not only this failure in the context of the war, but also promoting the need for reviewing and revitalising the UN’s capacity in cases similar to the Sri Lankan war, are immense. By bringing to light the breaches of international conventions by the Government of Sri Lanka in a bold manner and by piecing together numerous forms of evidence in a coherent way, the value of independent journalism to the building of a peaceful global order in the century ahead has been amply demonstrated by the ITN team.