Impact Update

The Impact Days team is super busy going through the brilliant submissions for Impact Lab 2027 – selection to be announced next month – and visiting other doc festivals around the world.
What better time to squeeze in a little Impact Update? Read on for uplifting news from our dynamic impact community!

Braintrust & photo exhibition
Pülö: Bloodstream of the Kirike

Together with The StoryBoard Collective we recently ran a braintrust screening dedicated to Pülö: Bloodstream of the Kirike (Impact Lab 2024). Nigerian director and producer Christina Ifubaraboye and impact partner Nadja Houben from Human Rights in the Picture presented their impact goals to selected funders and NGOs, exploring how the film can serve as an advocacy tool for environmental action and cultural preservation, and to strengthen access to community health. The online photo exhibition How About Our Oil Rivers?  also opened up questions around Switzerland’s relationship to Nigerian oil and what impact work in Geneva could look like.

Trans Advocacy Week – NIÑX

We connected the NIÑX team (Impact Lab 2024, FIFDH 2026) with ILGA World to co-host a screening in Geneva during Trans Advocacy Week. Run by various organisations including ILGA and GATE, the initiative offers trans activists an essential platform during the first week of the Human Rights Council. The screening was followed by a roundtable discussion with international activists on themes arising from the film. In his introductory video message, trans director and researcher Kani Lapuerta said:

Too often trans people appear in media through narratives of tragedy, conflict or debate. With NIÑX we wanted to create a portrait of joy, complexity, playfulness and the everyday life of a teenager. We wanted to show a trans childhood that is not solely defined by struggle but also by curiosity, creativity, friendship and love.

Children of Honey wins the Whickers

Children Of Honey (Impact Lab 2025) has won one of the most prestigious prizes in documentary: The Whickers 2026 Film & TV award. Co-directors Jigar Ganatra and Emanuel Musa Marco, along with Impact Producer Simona Nickmanova, are most proud of African and Indigenous Cinema! The Hadza Media Centre puts storytelling tools directly into the hands of the Hadza communitiy.

To the Moon and Back campaign ready for lift-off

To the Moon and Back (Swiss Focus Impact Award 26) by Elisa Gómez Alvarez follows two Gen Z scientists – Pauline from the Philippines and Ilyasse from Morocco – chasing the same dream of becoming an astronaut. The film’s campaign challenges the unequal access to (STEM) education as a human rights issue, revealing how borders, global inequality, and power structures gatekeep scientific and technological futures. It also aims to empower youth from the Global South – especially girls – to claim space in STEM from local to international levels, using role models to counter imposter syndrome.

The team is currently planning a crowdfunding and social media launch in October alongside screenings in France and Switzerland. With a 52-minute version also in production, it’s exploring a discussion guide for upper-secondary students, upcoming university screenings with Let’s Doc! in November, a larger film tour with Swiss universities in 2027, and an educational tour in remote Moroccan schools!

Yurlu | Country powers on

The Yurlu | Country (Impact Lab 2025, FIFDH 2026) campaign is ON FIRE! The Banjima People are launching litigation against the state of Western Australia, and the film has had a huge community response to their host-a-screening programme for educational institutions, community groups, charities, individuals, governments, councils, unions and businesses. Find further impact inspiration with the #CleanUpWittenoom campaign.

In December the film will be screened at the Geneva Graduate Institute with a panel discussion on corporate environmental responsibility featuring Pavan Sukhdev, a representative from Public Eye and a #YAS26 Young Activists Award 2026 winner.

Imagine Peace reaching new audiences

In October, Imagine Peace (Impact Lab 2026) will screen at the Geneva Peace Forum in collaboration with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). The post-screening discussion will include the film’s protagonists Shirine Jurdi and Nina Potarska and connect Edith Ballantyne’s legacy with feminist peace activism today: dialogue in times of conflict, women’s role in peacebuilding, and the exchange of experience across generations.

Runa Simi strikes a chord

To promote integration and dialogue across diverse audiences, the FIFDH runs a year-round cultural mediation programme at accommodation centres housing asylum seekers, and in hospitals and detention centres, as well as a schools programme which includes teaching materials for selected films.

Augusto Zegarra’s Runa Simi (Impact Lab 2024, FIFDH 2026) was warmly received last week at the Seymaz  Collective Accommodation Centre, paving the way for further collaborations between the film team, Peruvian communities in Geneva and other Swiss organisations.

Rebuilding Narrative Infrastructure at Skoll World Forum

Longtime supporter of Impact Days, the impactful Cara Mertes from the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling (IRIS) convened an inspiring conversation at the Skoll World Forum. The panel included Sandy Herz, philanthropy executive, strategist, and storytelling evangelist, who presented her research on the current state of the narrative ecosystem, and opportunities for philanthropy to better engage with it. The full research deck is available here. You can also learn more on Sandy’s Substack The Elephant & Butterfly.

International Doc Festivals

It’s always exciting to see new projects in the pipeline, meet with filmakers, and consolidate friendships with commissioning editors, funding bodies, impact strategists, sales agents and distributors! The Impact Days team recently attended the UK’s leading documentary festival Sheffield DocFest, caught up with creative documentary projects from Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and across Asia at Docs by the Sea, and took part in the warmly-welcoming Baltic Sea Docs forum featuring film projects from the Baltic Sea region, Eastern and Central Europe, and the Caucasus.