Sudan-Egypt project Dry Sky, produced and directed by Ibrahim Omar, has won the IDFA Forum award for best pitch, including a €1,500 cash prize, at the co-production and co-financing market of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) today, November 21.
The documentary is about a man journeying back to his hometown to build what he has dreamed of his entire life but who realises that his fate is intertwined with his village’s past.
Jury members Dorota Lech and Malin Huber praised Dry Sky’s “subtle cinematic language” and described it as “a courageous proposal of healing…told through a unique and critical inside perspective.”
The €1,500 prize for best rough cut was awarded to Do You Love Me, an archive-based movie about Beirut produced by Lana Y. Daher.
The Producers Connection Award, a new prize also worth €1,500, went to Mozambique project Looking for the Mermaid by Yara Costa. The project is about a love promise made between a mermaid and a fisherman. Do You Love Me will also receive closed captioning and subtitles from inVision Subtitling.
IDFA DocLab Forum award went to UK project Amorphous by May Abdalla, with the jury citing its “use of play for a transformational purpose in relation to the crisis in self-image and body dysmorphia.”
Projects sparking interest
Among other titles to spark interest from funders and co-producers was Replica, a documentary from Chouwa Liang looking at the experiences of three Chinese women trying out a ‘never-ending’ love affair with AI avatars. Produced by Andy Huang for Axel Rise Films, it is being put together as a Chinese-Australian coproduction.
“It’s definitely very topical,” one producer commented after the pitch. “As we all start to experiment with AI, we can all see how seductive it will be to engage with a thing that is always on. People think these relationships with AI can be forever but she [Liang] said ‘no, they also break up with you.’”
A Forum pitch which delivered immediate results when it was presented on Tuesday morning was The Road, co-directed by Cecile Allegra and Antarès Bassis and produced by Estelle Robin You for Grande Ourse Films. It sees non-professional and professional actors re-enact their own stories about their gruelling and dangerous journeys from Africa to Europe. After the project pitch, the Doha Film Institute immediately confirmed its involvement.
Among the biggest budgets docs presented in Forum was Dutch film The Eighth Continent by Luuk Bouwman and Tomas Kaan. Expected to cost €1.7m, it is about the race to colonise the moon - and asks whether the Europeans are lagging behind Chinese, Russian and Americans.
Another title which panellists felt had a strong commercial future was Danish hybrid doc House of The Holy Father, billed as “a playful dance between documentary and fiction.” Produced through Pernille Rose Grønkjær and Emil Wergeland for Danish Documentary Production and directed by Andreas Koefoed and Adam Nielsen, it is an inside look at one of Denmark’s most notorious and manipulative Christian sects, Faderhuset. The doc, still in development, is being made in collaboration with some defectors from the sect. “Cults sell,” several broadcasters commented after the pitch.
Attendees also expressed enthusiasm for the pitch from Belgium-based Limerick Films for The Apologist directed by Kristof Bilsen. The doc asks if public apologies can lead to forgiveness, understanding, or indeed change. As Bilsen noted, “Many peoples and communities today are waiting for apologies, sometimes for events that occurred decades or even centuries ago. Public apologies have a significant impact on how history is told and by whom.” The project is coproduced by VRT Canvas, RTBF, VPRO and supported by Flanders Audiovisual Fund, Netherlands Film Fund, Centre de Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel, deAUTEURS. It is now in pre-production.
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