Fourteen grants totaling £230,000 have been awarded through The Bertha Foundation and BRITDOC’s new Connect Fund and Documentary Journalism Fund.

The Connect Fund – aimed at supporting strategic outreach campaigns which can achieve real change on a local, regional or global level - has awarded grants to eight films.

They are: Sundance Film Festival 2012 award-winners Kirby Dirk’s The Invisible War and Macky Alston’s Love Free Or Die, Josh Fox’s Oscar-nominated Gasland, Penny Woolcock’s Birmingham gang project, What’s Going On?, Michael Collins’ Give Up Tomorrow, Yoav Potash’s Crime After Crime, Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright’s Call Me Kuchu and Katie Dellamaggiore’s Brooklyn Castle.

Six projects have also been awarded grants via the Documentary Journalism Fund – aimed at filmmakers from around the world working “at the intersection of film and investigative journalism.”

The projects are Egyptian/US director Jehane Noujaim’s The Square, Fredrik Gertten’s Big Boys Gone Bananas, Richard Rowley’s untitled Jeremy Scahill Project and Hopewell Chin’Ono’s Making the Case, Beatrice Mtetwa and the Rule of Law as well as two further confidential investigative projects.

The partnership between The Bertha Foundation and the BRITDOC Foundation was announced in November 2011 and is worth £1.5 million to filmmakers over the next three years across the two new funds.

Grants through the Bertha BRITDOC Documentary Journalism fund are awarded on a rolling basis. There will be a second round for the Bertha BRITDOC Connect Fund opening in May 2012.

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