Actualités
PRO
12.03.2026

Impact Days 2026 Awards

The FIFDH professional programme has concluded another record-breaking edition! We’re thrilled to announce our 2026 achievements and prizewinners.

Impact Days connects impact‑driven filmmakers with aligned organisations, policymakers, and funders in International Geneva - and beyond! This year we:

And the winners are…

Following our August 2025 call for impact-driven documentary projects, we received almost 200 submissions from 70 countries, with all 5 continents represented. Twelve were selected to participate in our annual Impact Lab by a committee based in Kenya, Denmark, Jordan and Argentina, and a further four Swiss co-productions were selected for our Swiss Focus section. One unfortunately had to drop out halfway through the Lab due to recent world events.

The teams worked online for several weeks with tutors from Mexico, Indonesia, USA, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Belgium, Colombia, Kenya and France 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.

The StoryBoard Impact Award of 10,000 CHF was presented to:

Olimbi – Mother Courage by Karlo Mlinar (Croatia)

After her husband’s death in 2003, Olimbi Hoxhaj learned that she and three of her four children were HIV positive in Albania, where treatment did not exist. Confronting stigma, institutional neglect, and patriarchal silence, she transformed personal loss into public action. The film reveals how one mother’s courage reshaped public awareness and helped secure treatment for thousands. It reframes HIV beyond the persistent myth of it being a disease of one community and calls for direct action to test; treat; prevent.

The Another Story Foundation x Impact Social Club Award includes a € 2,500 grant and a consultancy. It was awarded to:

This Is Not a Civil War by Hnin Thet Hmu Khin (Myanmar) and Oliver Petrie (France)

Hnin, 26, a Burmese activist exiled in Thailand after the 2021 coup and her participation in anti-junta protests, returns clandestinely to Myanmar to observe the evolution of the revolution in her country. In the jungles and cities, she discovers a young generation fighting to rebuild the country without weapons, through education, healthcare, and independent or clandestine media. Her journey shows how a generation, plunged into war, chooses to create and protect rather than destroy, laying the foundations for a democratic future under the fire of oppression.

The Working Films Impact Award provides a two-part consultancy workshop. It was awarded to:

The Quiet Part by Rachel Lauren Mueller (United States)

When a pagan white supremacist group arrives in a Minnesotan farming town, it sparks an intense struggle over who has the right to belong, offering a disturbing warning about the normalization of extremism. Through the eyes of residents who oppose the group and others who defend them, the film follows one community’s increasing tolerance toward ideologies they once condemned, revealing how extremism exploits the erosion of community and our primal yearning to belong.

The Swiss Focus Impact Award is a 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:

To the Moon and Back by Elisa Gómez Alvarez (Germany)

At Asclepios, a Swiss-based, student-led analog space mission under the mentorship of astronaut Claude Nicollier, Pauline from the Philippines and Ilyasse from Morocco train side by side. The film exposes how the new space race reproduces old hierarchies of gender, geography, and access to STEM education. Working closely with protagonist and youth activist Florence Pauline Basubas, it seeks to inspire youth from the Global South to pursue scientific paths and to underline the urgent need for stronger institutional support.

The Sublimages Impact Award provides free translation and subtitling for greater reach to strategic audiences, for an average value of € 2’500. It was awarded to:

Gaza Sunbirds by Flavia Cappellini (Italy)

Ala’a, a young Gazan cycling champion, sees his life change forever when he’s shot by an Israeli sniper. Determined to rebuild, he sets his sights on the Paralympics, inspiring others to join him. By centering on amputee athletes who deliver aid, organise communities, and build pathways through sport, the film reframes disability from vulnerability to leadership, offering a concrete model for solidarity, recovery, and long-term accessibility in Gaza.

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 will be in a few months – watch this space!