Forum, the prestigious industry section of leading documentary festival IDFA, crowned Hao Zhou’s “All Fixed Up” as Best Pitch Project, with Kiva Liu’s “Four Comrades, One Echo” winning Best Project at the Producers Connection program. Nolwenn Hervé’s “The Cord” won Best Rough Cut Project, while the IDFA DocLab Forum Award for Best Project went to Cris Bringas’ “Body Count.” Each award includes a cash prize of €1,500 ($1,750).
“All Fixed Up” is a Chinese project following a family who, struggling to “straighten out” their heir, pursues a dramatic masquerade that pushes the boundaries of care, identity, and cross-generational understanding. The Forum Pitch jury said the project had “a strong visual language” and “genuine intimacy which pushes the boundary of documentary cinema.” “All Fixed Up” received IDFA Bertha Fund Classic: Production & postproduction support in 2025.
The Netherlands’ very own “Four Comrades, One Echo” sees four sisters “reunite through the daughter they raised together to rewrite each other’s lives.” “As dreams, essays, and a propaganda opera intertwine, they collectively tell stories about sisterhood, motherhood and feminist resistance in China,” continues the project logline. The Producers Connection jury praised the project’s “unique insight, beautiful cinematography and extraordinary bravery.”
“The filmmaker’s auteurship, coupled with a sharp and wonderful sense of humor, also challenges Eurocentric feminist narratives by its very definition, while crafting a story that embodies both resilience and vulnerability,” continued the statement.
French production “The Cord” is set in Venezuela, chronicling the story of a “maternity warrior” living within “a broken health system where life hangs by a thread.” “Drawing strength from a violent past, she relentlessly preserves the vital cord between pregnant women and their babies,” further highlights the project synopsis. The Rough Cut Project jury called “The Cord” “full of soul.”
“It’s raw, deeply engaging, and anchored by a main character who is as soft as she is fierce,” the statement read. “The filmmaker captures her with such multidimensional tenderness that you feel invited into her world rather than shown it from afar. Through confident, intimate camera work, we are taken into the life of a woman who, despite the odds, stands as a pillar for her community. A woman who carries others while navigating her own storms. This is a film we cannot wait to watch in its full form.”
The Rough Cut jury also granted a special mention to hybrid Iranian doc “Dreams of the Wild Oaks” by Marjan Khosravibaledi for its “outstanding cinematic style” and “promises the telling of a poignant local story with universal emotions.” The project previously received IDFA Bertha Fund Classic support in 2024.
IDFA Forum winners, courtesy of Veerle Haan
The jury for DocLab Forum praised the team behind “Body Count,” a project chronicling a Grindr hookup between a Filipino nurse and a former soldier in Berlin. “We felt that the winners of this prize employed the very discipline we are all here to master, compelling storytelling, to bring the audience into the world of their characters within the very first minutes of the presentation. Before we knew any of the logistics, the audience had been convinced that the story needed to be told.”
This year brought changes to the Forum structure, with the pitching projects running alongside Producer Connection Presentations at the festival hub of the International Theatre Amsterdam. Not only did this change allow industry guest to attend both events, the relocation also made the industry activities feel closer to the festival itself, with attendees gathering in droves in all corners of the imposing ITA building. Speaking with Variety ahead of the festival, IDFA’s head of industry Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen hoped the format would get projects “far more visibility.”
