The Grand Jury prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition was awarded to Shaunak Sen for All That Breathes (India/UK). In the film, against the darkening backdrop of Delhi’s apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protect one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the Black Kite.
Simon Lereng Wilmont’s A House Made Of Splinters (Denmark) won the Directing Prize. The film concerns the children and staff in a Ukrainian institution for children who have been removed from their homes while awaiting court custody decisions. Staff do their best to enable the children to have as safe and supportive life as possible.
Alex Pritz’s The Territory was awarded both the Audience Award and Special Jury Award: Documentary Craft. In the doc, after a network of Brazilian farmers seizes a protected area of the Amazon rainforest, a young Indigenous leader and his mentor must fight back in defence of the land.
The Special Jury Award for Excellence In Verité Filmmaking was handed to Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing for Midwives (Myanmar), which tells the story of two midwives working side-by-side in a makeshift clinic in Myanmar.
In US Documentary Competition, the Grand Jury Prize was given to The Exiles by Ben Klein & Violet Columbus, in which director Christine Choy tracks down three exiled dissidents from the Tiananmen Square massacre in order to find closure on an abandoned film she began shooting in 1989.
The Directing Prize went to Reid Davenport for I Didn’t See You There, in which the disabled filmmaker launches into a meditative journey exploring the history of freakdom, vision, and (in)visibility.
The Audience Award was given to Navalny by Daniel Roher, about the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny and events related to his poisoning.
The Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award was given to Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput for Fire Of Love, about intrepid scientists and lovers Katia and Maurice Krafft who died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: unravelling the mysteries of volcanoes by capturing the most explosive imagery ever recorded.
The Special Jury Award: Impact for Change was given for Aftershock bu Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee, while the Special Jury Award: Creative Vision was given to Margaret Brown for her Descendant.
