Announcing Our Film & TV Funding Award Shortlist 2024
We are thrilled to announce the shortlist for the Film & TV 2024 Funding Awards.
This year, we received an unprecedented number of exceptionally high-quality applications from across the globe. Our criteria emphasises director-led stories featuring unique access to compelling characters in unconventional or remote locations, offering fresh perspectives on the world — and we were inundated with these!
After extensive deliberation, we have carefully curated a shortlist of 14 projects that have captivated us with their originality and promise (listed below in alphabetical order). This shortlist will now undergo rigorous review by our esteemed panel of industry judges, including Fozia Khan, Head of Unscripted, Amazon Studios UK, Robin Smith, CEO Blue Ice Docs, David Green, TV and Film Director, and also Alan Whickers longest serving Producer, and Ibrahim Nash’at, multi-award winning Egyptian Documentary filmmaker. Once the judges have made their careful selection, we will unveil the five finalists who will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas pitch at Sheffield DocFest 2024.These finalists will compete for our prestigious £100,000 top award, as well as a runner-up contribution of £20,000.
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the applicants who have participated in this award. The continued increase in the number of submissions each year is a testament to the thriving creativity within the documentary filmmaking community. Thank you, and best of luck to all!
Without further ado, here is the shortlist for the Film & TV 2024 Funding Awards:
Black Sea, White Noise | Black & Forth Collective (Yulia Kovanova, Oleksandr Belinskyi and Kieran Gosney) | Ukraine / UK
In the Ukrainian port of Odesa, a rebellious teenage girl joins the underground music scene, searching for purpose in the shadow of war and attracted by the chaotic forging of a new Ukrainian voice in defiance of Russian aggression.
Camels of the Sea | Vikram Singh| India
Adam Abdrehman’s family are amongst the last in the world to herd a special breed of swimming camels called the Kharai. In the face of rampant and often illegal industrialisation on India’s western coast, Adam struggles to keep his family, his camels and his sense of self together.
Children of Honey | Jigar Ganatra | Tanzania
When you’re growing up in the oldest tribe on Earth and everything you know is being swallowed by the modern world and the effects of climate change, how will life turn out? Trying to understand where they truly belong, three young hunter-gatherer friends discover the answers they seek lie deep in the natural world, if you just know where to look.
Daddy | Hannah Myers | United States
One family’s coming-of-age story that began as an old man’s coming out story. In September 2020, the filmmaker’s 70-year-old father came out as gay; as he forges a new life with his partner in the American South and her mother deals with the end of their 45-year marriage, she relearns how to be a daughter.
Highness & Excellency | Sajad Imani | Iran
In a conservative Iranian town, Rahim and Halima face infertility, prompting Rahim to turn to illegal boxing to fund fertility treatments. When hope dwindles, they defy societal norms by hiring a surrogate and staging Halima’s pregnancy, navigating love, sacrifice, and the unwavering pursuit of their deepest desire: to build a family.
Homeboys | Luis Alonso Garibay Serrano and Alejandro Bernal | Mexico
The hidden story of deportees from the U.S. who arrive in Mexico with no spoken Spanish and no support. Roberto, an ex-gang member and drug user, opens the doors of his ‘Casa de Vida’ to these homeboys; he offers a place where they can seek a second chance and an escape from a life of gangs and drugs or, as Roberto calls it, a chance to achieve ‘The Mexican Dream’.
Hope is a Word | Maria Galliani Dyrvik | Norway
Oil spills keep devastating the Niger Delta, but even after a lifetime of struggle poet Nnimmo Bassey refuses to lose hope. He trains a new generation of voices to fight oil extraction and to imagine a different future.
Los Puesteros | Matias Bolla | Australia
Across the vast pampas and piercing mountains of Chilean Patagonia, a handful of Gauchos continue to live their isolated and traditional lifestyle in distant outposts. Matias Bolla’s unique access offers an intimate and unseen perspective of the iconic South-American cowboy, revealing the vulnerabilities and honesty that lie behind their stoic portrayal.
One of Us | Rachel Close | United Kingdom
Adopted in the 90s by a family from Teesside, Rachel returns to Romania to help a stranger search for her birth mother. Forced to confront truths about her own adoption from one of Ceaucescu’s ‘dungeons of neglect’, Rachel’s search evolves into a transformative personal reckoning after uncovering the truth about her own mother’s role in the traumatic fates that befell her and her sisters.
Replica | Chouwa Liang | China
Realising she could never meet her ex-boyfriend’s lofty expectations for long legs, perfect cooking skills, and endless patience, the filmmaker turned to seek a more reliable relationship with her AI boyfriend. Millions of women in China, just like her, are taking risks by entrusting their deepest secrets to AI lovers due to a profound yearning for unconditional love, this is their story.
Singing Wings | Hemen Kladedi | Kazakhstan
Through the intertwined destinies of a wounded stork and an elderly Kurdish woman, whose daughter contemplates migrating to the UK, Singing Wing weaves a poetic parallel between animal and human migration.
The Cord | Myriam Guillot | France
In Venezuela, Maracaibo see that the health system is broken and life hangs by a thread. In her make-shift ambulance, ex-revolutionary figure and former gang leader, Carolina, relentlessly maintains the vital cord between pregnant women and their babies.
The Quiet Part | Rachel Mueller | United States
The arrival of a white supremacist pagan church ignites a struggle for the soul of an American town. An unsettling look at the conditions that allow overt racism to fester, the film considers the meaning of belonging and what’s at stake when this security is lost.
We had the Moon! | Pamella Edouard | Mauritius / UK
A chance encounter with an elderly lady on a bus leads the Mauritian filmmaker to film harrowing testimony from Chagossians forcibly deported by the UK government in the 1960s to make way for a US military base. As the present-day UK Government reneges on promises and ignores UN resolutions and rulings, the filmmaker attends the funeral of her fellow bus passenger and discovers the grandchildren of Chagos are continuing the fight for justice.