IDFA Forum Awards Winners Unveiled in Amsterdam

TheInternational Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam(IDFA) on Wednesday unveiled the IDFA Forum Awards 2025.

All Fixed Up by Hao Zhou won the IDFA Forum Award for the best pitch project. “After struggling to ‘straighten out’ their heir, a family pursues a dramatic masquerade that pushes the boundaries of care, identity, and cross-generational understanding,” reads a logline for the project.

Four Comrades, One Echo by Kiva Liu received the IDFA Forum Award for best Producers Connection project.

Meanwhile, The Cord by Nolwenn Hervé took home the IDFA Forum Award for best rough cut project, while the IDFA DocLab Forum Award for best project was bestowed upon Body Count by Cris Bringas.

Each award includes a cash prize of €1,500 ($1,737). The Cord will also receive closed captioning and subtitles from inVision Subtitling.

Meanwhile, Dreams of the Wild Oaks by Marjan Khosravibaledi was recognized with a special mention in the IDFA Forum Award for best rough cut category.

Check out the jury commentary on the IDFA Forum Award winners below.

IDFA Forum Award for Best Pitch Project: All Fixed Up by Hao Zhou
“The project has strong visual language and also genuine intimacy, which push the boundary of documentary cinema,” said jury members Sona Jo and Thorvald Nilsen.

IDFA Forum Award for Best Producers Connection Project: Four Comrades, One Echo by Kiva
Liu
“This project convinced us with its unique insight, beautiful cinematography and extraordinary bravery,” said jury members Lena Nitsch and Ilyas Yourish. “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. We hope this award will help the filmmaker find the right partners to realize this exciting project.”

IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut Project: The Cord by Nolwenn Hervé
“The winning film for Best Rough Cut Project is one we kept coming back to, almost instinctively, describing it as full of sou,” said jurors Riham Ezzaldeen and Asako Fujiokal. “It’s raw, deeply engaging, and anchored by a main character who is as soft as she is fierce. 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. A film that deserves to be seen widely, so the world can witness
women on the front lines: creating and saving lives, pushing against systems that rarely consider their well-being, and doing so with love, vulnerability, and a hand extended to the next person. Congratulations, and thank you for the passion, heart, and honesty you brought to this presentation.”

About Dreams of the Wild Oaks by Marjan Khosravibaledi, they said: “The jury gives a special mention to a project that has outstanding cinematic style and promises the telling of a poignant local story with universal emotions.”

IDFA DocLab Forum Award for Best Project: Body Count by Cris Bringas
Jurors Toby Coffey and Ellen Kuo said : “A pitch or presentation is an essential tool in the development of any new work. Increasingly, it needs to communicate the story-world, production process, financial plans, audience demographics, and throughput of the project, to name a few. But a great presentation will do more than that. In the hands of the right presenter, it will capture the hearts and minds of an audience. 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.”