October Impact Update
We love sharing news of the projects and the people we’ve connected. Welcome to our latest impact update!
Our year-round mission is this: to select quality documentary projects, help filmmakers define and refine their impact goals, and curate meaningful exchanges around common issues with organisations, policymakers and funders. Here’s a selection of our recent mission successes.
Queer As Punk & UN Trans Advocacy Week
In March we connected the Queer As Punk team with ILGA World, to co-host a June screening in Geneva during UN Trans Advocacy Week ; a collective project by six NGOs, including ILGA World and GATE which offers trans activists a platform during the first week of the Human Rights Council. The screening was followed by a roundtable discussion with international trans activists on themes arising from the film, with insights from their local contexts.
Our favourite quote from the evening:
‘ Before seeing the film I thought it wouldn’t really concern me – it takes place in a completely different part of the world, with a different culture and religion. But watching it has really inspired me to do something similar back home! ‘
Yurlu | Country wins The Edge of Impact award
at NZ Doc Edge Festival
With successful screenings in Australia and the USA, Yurlu | Country has recently won The Edge of Impact award at New Zealand’s Oscar®-qualifying international documentary festival, Doc Edge. We look forward to the next stages of the campaign to bring healing to the communities of Wittenoom and beyond.
Here’s another favourite quote, posted back in May by the Yurlu team:
‘ Our selection for Impact Days elevated our impact goals: to support truth-telling and healing through the powerful story of Banjima Elder Maitland Parker and the urgent need to #CleanUpWittenoom. Across three intense and inspiring days, we engaged in high-level strategy workshops, shared our campaign with international peers and funders, and strengthened relationships with our existing impact partners at the UN Human Rights Council. We also forged new alliances — laying the foundation for the next phase of our impact campaign.’
Children of Honey
Hadzabe Media Centre inauguration!
Winners of the Impact Days 2025 StoryBoard Impact Award , the Children of Honey team and their collaborators have opened the Hadzabe Media Centre to great fanfare.
Central to the film’s impact campaign, this is the place where the community can both create and safely store digital artefacts – and preserve their unique language, lifestyle and traditional ecological wisdom. A home to their ‘memories’, as the Hadzabe call them. The Hadza-led opening celebration featured goats and a subwoofer – we were touched to have been invited and wish we could have made it!
Further congratulations go to director Jigar Ganatra and Impact Producer Simona Nickman, who have also just won the Jackson Wild X Earth Alliance Impact Pitch for their short documentary film ‘Chameleon Corridors’.
The Other Side of Silence
Workshops for legislative recommendations
Following their Geneva impact pitching in March, the film team has been collaborating with its partners – University of Birmingham, GRACE International, Global Survivors Fund, Mukwege Foundation, SEMA, Stand Speak Rise Up! and the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office – on a Research England-funded three-stage impact project.
Hosted by the FCDO and the Bosnian Embassy, the team brought together international stakeholders, including Ukrainian partners, to initiate a legal and policy review pertaining to the legal protection of children born of conflict-related sexual violence (CBoCRSV) in Ukraine. Following the bilateral (UK-Ukrainian) review, through a second workshop in Uzhhorod (Ukraine), the team developed recommendations for the legislative process in Ukraine, including the inclusion of CBoCRSV in the interim reparation legislation.
As a person with lived experience, the protagonist of the film, Gerd Fleischer, participated and contributed to this initiative. Moreover, since impact is also an integral part of the film’s narrative, the team followed Gerd to the UK and Ukraine and shot the workshop processes to include in the final film.
The team is currently preparing for the third stage as they work towards presenting the outcome of this initiative to the Ukrainian Parliament and policy makers in order to make a meaningful contribution to the legislative and policy change.
The Pickers
Fully funded impact campaign
After participating in the 2024 Impact Days, the film’s impact campaign was backed by Swiss-based Seedling Foundation and The Storyboard Collective. The campaign aims to drive change in the European food system to eliminate the exploitation of migrant workers who pick the fruit and vegetables that we enjoy each day, with a particular focus on the lack of human rights protections in existing certification processes, and on well-known Fair Trade initiatives not covering European agriculture.
Scotland-based Film & Campaign kicked off the campaign in March 2025 and have by now facilitated nearly 200 meetings and events, including a ‘Back to the Future’march from Maastricht to Brussels with Friends of the Earth Europe, European Coalition for Corporate Justice and the European Trade Union Confederation. Find out about ongoing events, how to get involved and host a screening of your own here.