IDFA Forum Award 2025 winners announced

All Fixed Up by Hao Zhou won the IDFA Forum Award for Best Pitch Project. Four Comrades, One Echo by Kiva Liu won the IDFA Forum Award for Best Producers Connection Project. The Cord by Nolwenn Hervé took home the IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut Project, and the IDFA DocLab Forum Award for Best Project went to Body Count by Cris Bringas. Each award includes a cash prize of €1,500.

The Cord will also receive closed captioning and subtitles from inVision Subtitling. Dreams of the Wild Oaks by Marjan Khosravibaledi was additionally recognized with a Special Mention for the IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut Project.

“The project has strong visual language and also genuine intimacy which push the boundary of documentary cinema,” said jury members Sona Jo and Thorvald Nilsen about All Fixed Up by Hao Zhou. The project received IDFA Bertha Fund Classic: Production & postproduction support in 2025.

“This project convinced us with its unique insight, beautiful cinematography and extraordinary bravery. The filmmaker’s auteurship, coupled with a sharp and wonderful sense of humor, also challenges Eurocentric feminist narratives by its very definition, while crafting a story that embodies both resilience and vulnerability. We hope this award will help the filmmaker find the right partners to realize this exciting project,” said jury members Lena Nitsch and Ilyas Yourish about Four Comrades, One Echo by Kiva Liu.

About The Cord by Nolwenn Hervé, the jury—consisting of Riham Ezzaldeen and Asako Fujioka —said: “The winning film for Best Rough Cut Project is one we kept coming back to, almost instinctively, describing it as full of soul. It’s raw, deeply engaging, and anchored by a main character who is as soft as she is fierce. The filmmaker captures her with such multidimensional tenderness that you feel invited into her world rather than shown it from afar. Through confident, intimate camera work, we are taken into the life of a woman who, despite the odds stands as a pillar for her community. A woman who carries others while navigating her own storms. This is a film we cannot wait to watch in its full form. A film that deserves to be seen widely, so the world can witness women on the front lines: creating and saving lives, pushing against systems that rarely consider their wellbeing, and doing so with love, vulnerability, and a hand extended to the next person. Congratulations, and thank you for the passion, heart, and honesty you brought to this presentation.”

The jury additionally recognized Dreams of the Wild Oaks by Marjan Khosravibaledi with a Special Mention for the Best Rough Cut Project: “The jury gives a Special Mention to a project that has outstanding cinematic style and promises the telling of a poignant local story with universal emotions.” The project previously received IDFA Bertha Fund Classic support in 2024.

The IDFA DocLab Forum jury, consisting of Toby Coffey and Ellen Kuo, said about Body Count by Cris Bringas: “A pitch or presentation is an essential tool in the development of any new work. Increasingly it needs to communicate the story-world, production process, financial plans, audience demographics, and throughput of the project, to name a few. But, a great presentation will do more than that. In the hands of the right presenter, it will capture the hearts and minds of an audience. We felt that the winners of this prize, employed the very discipline we are all here to master, compelling storytelling, to bring the audience into the world of their characters within the very first minutes of the presentation. Before we knew any of the logistics, the audience had been convinced that the story needed to be told.”

IDFA Forum is made possible by Creative Europe Media and Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

The IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut is supported by inVision Subtitling.

Producers Connection is supported by Eurimages, Council of Europe, and BUMA Music in Motion.

Producers Breakfasts are hosted by Korea Communications Agency and Korea Radio Promotion Association.

Forum Lunches are hosted by Chiledoc, DocOrg and Telefilm Canada, and FeverFilm and PostaVermaas.