Discussion board, the celebrated trade part of main documentary competition IDFA, topped Hao Zhou’s “All Fastened Up” as Finest Pitch Challenge, with Kiva Liu’s “4 Comrades, One Echo” profitable Finest Challenge on the Producers Connection program. Nolwenn Hervé’s “The Wire” gained Finest Tough Lower Challenge, whereas the IDFA DocLab Discussion board Award for Finest Challenge went to Cris Bringas’ “Physique Depend.” Every award features a money prize of €1,500 ($1,750).
“All Fastened Up” is a Chinese language mission following a household who, struggling to “straighten out” their inheritor, pursues a dramatic masquerade that pushes the boundaries of care, identification, and cross-generational understanding. The Discussion board Pitch jury stated the mission had “a robust visible language” and “real intimacy which pushes the boundary of documentary cinema.” “All Fastened Up” acquired IDFA Bertha Fund Traditional: Manufacturing & postproduction assist in 2025.
The Netherlands’ very personal “4 Comrades, One Echo” sees 4 sisters “reunite by means of the daughter they raised collectively to rewrite one another’s lives.” “As desires, essays, and a propaganda opera intertwine, they collectively inform tales about sisterhood, motherhood and feminist resistance in China,” continues the mission logline. The Producers Connection jury praised the mission’s “distinctive perception, stunning cinematography and extraordinary bravery.”
“The filmmaker’s auteurship, coupled with a pointy and fantastic humorousness, additionally challenges Eurocentric feminist narratives by its very definition, whereas crafting a narrative that embodies each resilience and vulnerability,” continued the assertion.
French manufacturing “The Wire” is ready in Venezuela, chronicling the story of a “maternity warrior” dwelling inside “a damaged well being system the place life hangs by a thread.” “Drawing energy from a violent previous, she relentlessly preserves the important twine between pregnant girls and their infants,” additional highlights the mission synopsis. The Tough Lower Challenge jury referred to as “The Wire” “stuffed with soul.”
“It’s uncooked, deeply partaking, and anchored by a foremost character who’s as smooth as she is fierce,” the assertion learn. “The filmmaker captures her with such multidimensional tenderness that you just really feel invited into her world relatively than proven it from afar. Via assured, intimate digital camera work, we’re taken into the lifetime of a girl who, regardless of the chances, stands as a pillar for her group. A girl who carries others whereas navigating her personal storms. This can be a movie we can’t wait to observe in its full kind.”
The Tough Lower jury additionally granted a particular point out to hybrid Iranian doc “Goals of the Wild Oaks” by Marjan Khosravibaledi for its “excellent cinematic model” and “guarantees the telling of a poignant native story with common feelings.” The mission beforehand acquired IDFA Bertha Fund Traditional assist in 2024.
IDFA Discussion board winners, courtesy of Veerle Haan
The jury for DocLab Discussion board praised the workforce behind “Physique Depend,” a mission chronicling a Grindr hookup between a Filipino nurse and a former soldier in Berlin. “We felt that the winners of this prize employed the very self-discipline we’re all right here to grasp, compelling storytelling, to deliver the viewers into the world of their characters inside the very first minutes of the presentation. Earlier than we knew any of the logistics, the viewers had been satisfied that the story wanted to be informed.”
This 12 months introduced modifications to the Discussion board construction, with the pitching initiatives working alongside Producer Connection Shows on the competition hub of the Worldwide Theatre Amsterdam. Not solely did this modification permit trade visitor to attend each occasions, the relocation additionally made the trade actions really feel nearer to the competition itself, with attendees gathering in droves in all corners of the imposing ITA constructing. Talking with Selection forward of the competition, IDFA’s head of trade Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen hoped the format would get initiatives “way more visibility.”
