One World Media, the British Council in Ukraine and Docudays UA invite emerging documentary filmmakers to submit projects to Global Short Docs Forum! It’s a unique opportunity for makers of short films to meet representatives of VOD platforms and combine their efforts in collaboration with them.

For the first time, this Forum took place in 2018 in London. It was visited by such important media and digital platforms as The Guardian, BBC Stories, AJ+, Zoomin.TV.

“The most exciting thing for me is facilitating the dialogue between talented new filmmakers from around the world and the digital platforms and seeing the filmmakers being commissioned or their films being acquired — where they previously wouldn't have known who to approach or how to approach them. That's the main aim of the project, to help filmmakers, to make the playing field more level, and at the same time introduce different narratives made by new voices, into the mainstream,” says Flora Gregory, the project director of Global Short Docs Forum.

This year, the Forum will take place in Kyiv during Docudays UA 2019. Its participants will include equally powerful VOD platforms which are going to become partners in the work on future films.

Docudays UA doesn’t just show films, it supports their making — again. In the past years, with the support from the British Council in Ukraine, the Festival organized two projects: The Guardian Goes Ukraine competition in collaboration with The Guardian, and DocWorks: UA/UK with the Sheffield Doc/Fest.

“We are happy that, as a result of continuous development of the British Council in Ukraine Arts programme, and with the help from our partners – we have enabled plans to organise such an important forum as GSDF in March 2019 in Kyiv,” – comments Arts manager of the British Council in Ukraine Ilya Zabolotnyi.

Global Short Docs Forum is a new and unique opportunity for filmmakers from Ukraine and other countries to tell their stories to the whole world.

“In the past two years, we have organized an industry platform at Docudays UA, where Ukrainian documentary filmmakers can meet international professionals and find support for their projects,” says Darya Bassel, the curator of the Festival’s industry platform DOCU/PRO. “Every year, in collaboration with our partners, we emphasize different formats, forms and topics. We try to bring to Ukraine the things that are the most relevant today in the world. This year, we are happy to host the Global Short Docs Forum. Few Ukrainian documentary filmmakers have any experience of working with VOD platforms. So GSDF is a great opportunity to find out more about this. In addition, I think it’s important that the Forum works with short films in particular. Because Ukraine lacks developed industry, proper dialogue between documentary producers and TV or online channels, we still consider short films to be some kind of student format which is supposedly experimental and can be interesting only for a very narrow circle of viewers. But it’s not true. And GSDF, which gathers together many representatives of major VOD platforms, from Facebook to Lush, proves it.”

GSDF will select 16 documentary filmmakers to attend a residential workshop. Filmmakers will benefit from invaluable pitching training, mentoring and masterclasses from industry experts, and one-to-one meetings with decision makers.

Thanks to the support from the British Council Ukraine, participants from a number of countries, including Ukraine can claim a submission fee waiver and apply free of charge (see the Submission Information for more detail on the procedure). The submission deadline is 23 November.

See more details about all the conditions of selection and participation here.

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Global Short Docs Forum is organized by One World Media. The 2019 edition is sponsored by Facebook Journalism Project, supported by the British Council in Ukraine and The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and hosted by International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays UA.