Industry: Take on Film & Impact 2023

How can films on social issues do more than just raise awareness? Are you a filmmaker looking for the formula to take your film to the next level? Join this morning session on creating impact campaigns that drive social change and get inspired!

Keynote by Anita Khanna
South African based scriptwriter and producer, Anita Khanna, has writing and producing credits that include award winning documentaries, Miners Shot Down, Everything Must Fall and How to Steal a Country, plus a drama series for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, The Mating Game. In 2011 Anita drove the first live event of Good Pitch on African soil (Johannesburg 2011). Since then she has directed the Tri Continental Social Impact Film Festival, (2011 – 2018), and produced three documentary series. She is currently collaborating with creatives and activists in Southern Africa to make Hotspot Climate Series, a six part documentary that profiles climate justice activists in five Southern African countries. Anita is also a proud award winning Impact Producer (BritDoc Impact Award 2015) for her film campaign work on Miners Shot Down

Short presentation by Jacqueline van Vugt (director) and Janke Smit (Share Doc)
Jacqueline van Vugt and Janke Smit explain what the Share-Doc platform can offer filmmakers and the impact it can make. ShareDoc is a new platform for all filmmakers and producers seeking support for the protagonist of their film. ShareDoc enables documentary lovers to take action after watching a documentary by supporting a protagonist or a charity with a QR code featured in the credits; and to act for impact by donating or igniting a petition or organizing awareness. ShareDoc stands as a crossroad between everyone involved in the lifecycle of a documentary. 

Case Study: The Territory, with director Alex Pritz and impact producer Amy Shepherd (ThinkFilm Impact Production)
The documentary The Territory shows how the small and shrinking indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people in the Amazon are threatened by land grabbers. They choose 18-year-old Bitaté as their leader, and together with activist Neidinha he is determined not to roll over. But when Jair Bolsonaro becomes president, the forces attacking them get free reign.

The Territory’s impact campaign worked together with the Uru-eu-wau-wau, and many partners globally, to empower indigenous voices on the international climate policy stage and stimulate stronger and more ambitious efforts to protect the Amazon from the range of threats that it faces. By putting Indigenous rights in a new EU law against deforestation, #Together4Forests has amplified the voice of and helped ensure protection for the Uru-eu-wau-wau and many other Indigenous communities.

Panel: Challenges and Chances of European Impact Production 
In this panel we explore the obstacles to and opportunities of European cooperation in terms of impact production. With Hasse van Nunen (Een van de jongens), Khadidja Benouataf (Impact Social Club) and Emmy Oost (Filmpact). Moderated by Marion Schmidt (DAE). Together they make a case for a pact for impact. 

Panel: Ukraine Testifies: the Power of Film in the Court of Law 
The Reckoning Project combines the power of story-telling and legal accountability to fight for justice, safeguard rights, and restore truth in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A group of journalists, documentary filmmakers, academics, lawyers, and war crimes researchers have teamed up to collect legally admissible testimonies from voices of victims. After the screening of one of their latest projects, Inside the Basement Where an Entire Ukrainian Village Spent a Harrowing Month in Captivity, we will discuss the power of film in the court of law with Lyuba Knorozok (The Reckoning Project), Myroslava Krasnoborova (Eurojust), and Tomas Changpico (Free Press Unlimited).

Moderator: Margje de Koning (Artistic Director Movies that Matter)
Language: English

Take on Film & Impact: Lab
In addition to this public programme, Movies that Matter also organises an impact lab during the festival. A selection of documentary film projects on human rights and/or social or environmental issues were chosen to take part in Movies that Matter’s Take on Film & Impact 2023. Read more about the selected projects. Over two days, the teams behind the projects attend both group and individual coaching sessions led by experienced impact producers and strategists to (further) develop their impact goals and strategies for their films.

Movies that Matter: Take on Film & Impact is organised in collaboration with Creative Europe Desk NL, DAE, Doc Society, #Docsconnect Taskovski, ESoDoc, FIFDH, StoryBoard Collective and Sunny Side of the Doc.