Danish producer Signe Byrge Sørensen was presented October 28 the APA World Excellence Award during the 30th Ji.hlava IDFF. Previous winners of the prize include Joslyn Barnes (US), Ada Solomon (Romania), Jacques Bidou (France) and Heino Deckert (Germany). The award recognises Byrge Sørensen’s extraordinary contribution to creative documentary film production.
Head and co-founder of the Final Cut for Real in Copenhagen, Signe Byrge Sørensen is the four-time Oscar-nominated producer of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence (both for Best Doc Feature) and Flee, nominated for Best Doc and Best Animated Feature.
Accepting the award, she thanked the Czech Audiovisual Producers Association and Ji.hlava IDFF, and acknowledged the award’s previous recipients, one of whom was Jacques Bidoux, former Head of EURODOC, which Byrge Sørensen attended in 2003.
“That opened my world in many different ways. I didn’t go to film school, so I had never actually been in the same room with a lot of producers, and especially not a lot of international producers at that point,” she said. “And suddenly I learned that there was this whole world out there and I was starting to learn how other people were doing what I was trying to do.”
“And then I saw that there was Ada Solomon,” Byrge Sørensen cited another former recipient of the award. “She is an amazing both fiction and documentary producer from Romania. And Joslyn Barnes in the US whom I have been lucky enough to work with on several films. So I am very, very honoured to go in their footsteps with this award.”
“And I also want to say something else,” she continued. “Because when you get a microphone you shouldn’t let go of it. I think it is really important…that I take this moment to thank the European public, the audiences out there whose tax money we are actually spending when we are making our films.
“Because such is the system in Europe, we are lucky still that we have public service television and we have film funds in Europe. And both these things are pillars upon which we build our democracy.”
She acknowledged the recent professional and public protests about cuts to public service television in the Czech Republic. “I think that fight is so important. And it is so important for all of us everywhere. Because democracy comes from people actually having an alternative to the tech oligarchs. Not just TikTok videos but real reflection, real debate, real discussions. And hopefully that is what our films can help do. But we can’t make them without public service television and we can’t reach our audiences without them.
“And we also can’t make artistic contributions the way we want if we don’t have the film funds and Creative Europe,” she added. “So we really need to fight for these structures all around Europe in the years to come. Because unfortunately we have Fascism raising its ugly face both in the West, in the US and in the East, and in our own communities.”
‘So the fight is out there and I hope you all want to join me in that struggle,’ she ended.
