All time bumper year for entries: Announcing Our Film & TV Funding Award Shortlist 2026
We are delighted to announce the shortlist for the Film & TV 2026 Funding Awards.
In our 11th year, we have received more entries than ever before! With well over 500 applications from 90 different countries, we are well and truly blessed to have spent time reading and watching stories from every corner of the globe.
Our selection criteria emphasises that we are looking for director-led stories that offer unique access to compelling characters in interesting locations, bringing fresh perspectives on the world. And you have delivered! We have been invited into so many new and interesting, eye-opening worlds – it has been a huge task to select just 15 projects for our shortlist.
The final 15 projects were chosen for their originality, their skill and their promise. You can find them listed below in alphabetical order.
This shortlist will now undergo rigorous review by our panel of expert judges who represent various strands of the documentary industry. The panel comprises Fozia Khan, Head of Unscripted, Amazon Studios UK, David Green, TV and Film Director, and also Alan Whicker’s longest serving Producer, Anna Berthollet from international sales and distribution company Lightdox and Sam Soko, Nairobi-based documentary filmmaker. Our two resident judges, Raul Niño Zambrano, Creative Director Sheffield DocFest and Jane Mote, Consultant Editor, The Whickers return once again this year.
Once the judges have made their careful selection, we will unveil the 5 finalists who will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas at Sheffield DocFest 2026. These finalists will compete for our prestigious, and increased, top prize of £120,000, as well as a runner-up development contribution of £25,000.
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 2026 Funding Awards:
All Fixed Up | Hao Zhou | China
After struggling to “straighten out” their queer heir, a Southwest Chinese family stages a face-saving masquerade, leading the family into a reconciliation with lies, identity, and a changing vision of their future.
Ashes | Daham Alasaad | Syria, France
Amjad Job, a Syrian in exile, tracks war criminals in Europe. He travels to Syria with director Daham Alasaad after the fall of the regime, to dig in the ashes of justice.
Children of Honey (Olanakwe Sa Ba’alako) | Jigar Ganatra and Emanuel Musa Marco | Tanzania
In a remote Tanzanian valley, three friends come of age inside one of the world’s last hunter-gatherer societies. As the precious honey they depend on becomes harder to find, they film their lives. Will this next and possibly last generation of Hadza youth hold onto the wisdom learned across millennia?
Excoded | Javier Lovera | Canada
Amidst the steady creep of facial recognition technology into policing, immigration, and even schools, people harmed by AI—aka the “excoded”—are taking on a system that’s rapidly rewriting the rules of public life.
Finding Feruza | Yeyoung Kim | South Korea
After losing contact with Feruza, a young Ethiopian woman she befriended a decade agom animator Yeyoung reconstructs their relationship through years of messages and recordings, traveling to post-war Ethiopia to find her. In the process, she confronts a painful question: was she drawing Feruza, or an uneasy self-portrait?
Harbinger | Greg Eggebeen | United States
Harbinger follows a 74-year-old musician forced to confront his role in creating and enabling a teen doomsday sex cult through his spellbinding music. As he reunites with former disciples and uncovers buried truths, he must reckon with the harm he helped unleash and the meaning of redemption.
How Love Moves | Pallavi Paul | India
In a century old graveyard in New Delhi, the slow seeping poison of communal hatred and the everyday beauty and brutality of the city come to a head, while an unassuming gravekeeper wages a lone struggle to preserve the sanctity of the dead.
Maï & Miles, The Jazziest story about physics ever told | Lea Hejn | United Kingdom
A nouvelle vague inspired scientific and musical documentary set in Paris and LA following the captivating and romantic love story between a French quantum physicist and an American jazz musician.
Mexico is Ours | Eoin Wilson | Mexico
Two young members of an Indigenous community in Mexico are forced to take up arms in defence of their once-idyllic homeland as organised crime wages a campaign of terror fuelled by corruption, state collusion, and transnational mining.
Reclaiming Time | Fuad Hindieh | Palestine, France
When a Palestinian filmmaker tries to legally change his birthdate, his absurd bureaucratic quest becomes a visually stunning heist to reclaim time stolen by occupation.
Shields | Jan Stöckel | United Kingdom, Germany
In an English coastal town on the edge of economic crisis, local and migrant fishermen struggle to keep their community afloat, revealing the enduring yet shifting spirit of a working class in transition.
Street Poets | Shadi Tabibzadeh | Iran, Germany
With borders closing and repression rising, three Afghan rappers in Tehran use forbidden music as testimony against erasure. Filmed in cars, homes, and hidden studios, Street Poets reveals how rap becomes a means of survival when public life is denied.
The Last Guató | Thamys Trindade | Brazil
In Brazil’s Pantanal, a river both separates and connects Vicente, the last fluent speaker of the Guató language, and Francisca, a young local teacher. Their encounters unfold through silence, gestures, and words shaped by a changing landscape.
The Useful Time Machine | Eno Enefiok | United Kingdom
An AuDHD filmmaker discovers DV tapes of stolen memories and spends years tracking down their rightful owner. After reuniting the owners (a family) with their past, she is propelled on an unexpected journey back to her native Nigeria to confront her own.
Welcome to Our Bathhouse | Tommaso Barbetta | Japan
Ayako grew up in one of Tokyo’s oldest bathhouses, where her father served neighbors for decades. Now, as the city modernizes and gathering places vanish, she fights to keep the bathhouse and its small community alive.