Impact Days 2025: it’s a wrap!
The unique event which brings together filmmakers, NGOs, international organisations and philanthropists, is thrilled to announce its 2025 prizewinners.
FIFDH Impact Days has just concluded another record-breaking year! This year we:
- Welcomed over 200 impact participants from 30 countries for global case studies, panels, training sessions and curated networking opportunities.
- Facilitated 115 one-to-one meetings, matching potential partners on social justice and environmental issues.
- Ran our now-famous pitching session to an overflowing theatre, giving 12 selected impact projects targeted exposure.
- Brought to Geneva organisations such as: DocSociety (UK), Aflamuna (Lebanon), Documentary Africa (Kenya); impact distributors such as Together Films; specialised streaming platforms such as WaterBear; impact practitioners such as Impact Social Club, The Good Media Network, Brought to Geneva organisations such as: DocSociety (UK), Aflamuna (Lebanon), Documentary Africa (Kenya); impact distributors such as Together Films; specialised streaming platforms such as WaterBear; impact practitioners such as Impact Social Club, The Good Media Network, Think-Film Impact Production, and many more.
- Received increased support from national and international partners including the City of Geneva, Fondation Leenaards, Haas Foundation, Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, The StoryBoard Collective, Philanthropia Fondation, the Federal Office for Culture via Media Desk Suisse, Swiss Perform, SWISS FILMS, Sublimages, Fonds Culturel Sud and the US-based Ford Foundation.
- Launched our new Swiss Focus event, for connection and dialogue between Swiss impact stakeholders of all language regions, our international Impact Days guests, and Swiss filmmakers.
- Brought together Human Rights Watch, UNICEF and UNDP amongst others – a unique opportunity to hear from organisations on how they each produce short films for advocacy and fundraising.
- Ran an audience engagement session with the Global Impact Producers Alliance – GIPA – collectively exploring the impact potential for the art and activism-blending documentary series ICEBERG, by filmmaker Amanda de Luis.
And the winners are…
Following our October 2024 call for impact-driven documentary projects, we received 196 submissions from 77 countries, with all 5 continents represented. Twelve of these were selected to participate in our annual Impact Lab by a committee based in Kenya, Denmark, Jordan and Switzerland.
The teams worked online for several weeks with tutors from Australia, Kenya, Germany, USA, the Philippines, Belgium, UK and Colombia, to produce an impact strategy and pitch for presentation to potential partners and funders in Geneva. Together with the four projects selected for our Swiss Focus event, these twelve projects received several awards.
Through the stories they have chosen to tell and the impact campaigns developed, our 2025 prizewinning teams are fighting for cultural preservation of the Hadzabe hunter-gatherer people; turning first-hand testimonies of wartime rape in Ukraine into powerful weapons; and highlighting the crushing effects of the spiral of debt for individuals, even in one of the wealthiest countries we know.
The StoryBoard Impact Award of 10,000 CHF was presented to:
Children of Honey by Jigar Ganatra and Immanuel Musa Marco (Tanzania)
Three young Hadza friends—Nd!uba, Nguilabe, and Embilibi— are at a critical crossroads of their once-peaceful hunter-gatherer community. With 90% of their ancestral land lost and modern pressures mounting, they must decide whether to hold onto their ancient traditions or be pulled into modernity. An unprecedented, intimate look at an ancient culture on the brink of transformation.
The Sublimages Impact Award provides free translation and subtitling for greater reach to strategic audiences, for an average value in kind of € 2’500. It was awarded to:
Traces by Alisa Kovalenko and Marysia Nikitiuk (Ukraine)
Six women share their stories of the traumatic experience of sexual violence and torture during Russian aggression in Ukraine in 2014-23. They are members of SEMA Ukraine, a community of women who speak out and fight against sexual violence as a weapon of war, turning their testimonies into a reverse powerful weapon.
The Swiss Focus Impact Award is a new 2,500 CHF prize awarded by Impact Days, to support an impact initiative in Switzerland that advances a Swiss Focus project’s national and/or international goals. It was awarded to:
Nathalie by Tamara Milosevic (Switzerland)
Protagonist Nathalie reflects the fate of the many people who, despite their best efforts, live on minimum subsistence in Switzerland. The film highlights her ongoing struggle as a single mother and domestic worker, tackling the often-overlooked issue of poverty and debt even in wealthy countries.
The Impact Days team would like to warmly thank those who came from all corners of the world to share their powerful stories. We wish you all the best on your future impact journeys!
Our next call for projects is in September 2025.