Bursary Scheme Winners

In September 2016, Susanna Cappellaro, an actress living in London, was told by her husband, Scott Cohen, that he was going to become a cyborg. Soon after this, she started filming his journey and the impact it was having on their relationship, all the while questioning technology, love and what it is to be human.

Directors: Claire Oakley and Susanna Cappellaro.
Claire Oakley is a self-taught writer and director with an MA in English Literature. Her award-winning short films have played at more than 50 festivals worldwide and her debut feature Make Up is currently in post-production.
Susanna Cappellaro is an Italian writer and actor based in London with a background in styling and music journalism. She appeared in films such as Berberian Sound Studio and In Fabric by Peter Strickland, Dark Shadows by Tim Burton and starring in Papagajka by Emma Rozanski, which premiered at SXSW in 2016. 

Judge Jane Mote said: “This is an extraordinary story where the director has bravely put herself at the heart of the action using an iPhone to keep the intimacy of contact with the main subject – her husband. I genuinely don’t know which way this is going to go but it is on the edge of the sorts of choices that will face relationships of the future as technology starts to become quite literally hardwired into bodies.”  

People’s Hospital tells the story of a female doctor from a small-town Chinese hospital, who is secretly contemplating quitting after devoting 27 years to saving lives. That doctor is the director’s mother. And the hospital is – in the director’s words – her childhood ‘daycare centre’. Armed with a camera, the director returns from the US to her home country of China to make sense of her mother’s career crisis, not expecting to encounter a fractured healthcare system and her own family’s battle with cancer. 

Director: Siyi Chen is an emerging Chinese documentary filmmaker and journalist. She received a B.A. in World History and Foreign Languages from Peking University (Beijing) and a M.A. in News and Documentary from New York University.

Judge Lucila Moctezuma said: “People’s Hospital captivated us for the director’s ability to go from the very personal, as she explores her own relationship with her mother and to hospitals in China, to the broader issue of the evolution of the healthcare system in her country – with the added touch of a sense of humour.“

Amanda, a photojournalist, returns home to turn her investigative lens on the serial sexual abuse committed by her grandfather. Through the accounts of both perpetrator and his victims, she pursues a high-stakes journey to examine the systemic injustices and culture of silence in pursuit of truth and healing for her family.

Director: Amanda Mustard is an award-winning American photographer and journalist based in Bangkok, Thailand.

Judge Patrick Hurley said: “Amanda’s film deals with one of the most harrowing and perplexing of subjects from such a proximate position to a perpetrator, her grandfather. We found her director’s statement to be highly genuine and sincere.”

Two women in their seventies once shared the same husband. Now they must forget the past and work together to guard an empty, snowed-in Himalayan village for the whole winter.

Directors: 
Rajan Kathet, graduate of DocNomads (2014-16), also a Berlinale Talents Alumnus 2017, is a Nepali filmmaker working in both fiction and documentary, whose recent fiction short Bare Trees In The Mist was screened at Toronto International Film Festival and Tampere Film Festival and has also been lined up for the screenings at other numerous film festivals.

Sunir Pandey is a student of Nepalese media, culture, and history.

Judge Patrick Hurley said: “I was utterly absorbed by the subjects of ‘No Winter Holidays’: two septuagenarian ‘sister-wives’ confronting the challenges of a harsh winter in a rural Nepalese valley. Rajan’s articulation of the vision and intention for the film is among the best I’ve encountered. Watch this space for what is set to be a sensitive, nuanced documentary about ageing and human relationships.”

As South Sudan hangs in the balance of a tenuous peace agreement, Akuol’s mother, Nyandeng prepares to become one of the country’s five vice-presidents. Her mission is to safeguard her late husband, John Garang’s vision for South Sudan’s people, their country, and their family.

Director: Akuol de Mabior is a South Sudanese filmmaker who aims to create stories for the screen that facilitate African imaginations and encourage us to think differently about ourselves and our futures.

Judge Gary Kam said: “A daughter portrays her mother’s fight, as one of the vice presidents of South Sudan, to build the foundation of peace and prosperity in the post-civil war nation. With unprecedented access to the protagonist, Nyandeng provides an intimate insight into a politician’s love, hope and fear as a mother and politician who tries to complete the political legacy of her late husband.”

Farming opium poppies gave a lower-caste mother social status and the financial means to educate her son. Their loving relationship is tested when the son leads an activism campaign, which puts the mother’s opium farming license in trouble.

Director: Vivek Chaudhary is a filmmaker from Ahmedabad, India and has been working on documentary films for the last 7 years. His debut documentary, a mid-length documentary titled Goonga Pehelwan (The Mute Wrestler) won the National Film Award (India) for Best Debut Film in the year 2015.

The Whickers’ Editorial Consultant, Jane Mote said: “This is both an intimately told story of the strained relationship between an elderly mother and her son and one of global significance around the little known world of the legal opium trade. Set in the stunning backdrop of rural Rajasthan, India,  I,Poppy has the potential to challenge us all to think differently about farming, global economics and the effect of education on traditional lifestyles.”

Peruvian farmer Saúl Lliuya sues German giant RWE in a David and Goliath case. It’s an international story of climate justice that could change of the course of legal and financial history and with it, the world.

Director: Dan Faber is a Spanish-speaking documentary filmmaker based in London, with an MA in Ethnographic and Documentary Film from UCL. His short film following child footballers in Panama was broadcast on Channel 4 and distributed worldwide.

Judge Mandy Chang said: “There’s a lot at stake in this environmental David and Goliath story – where an indigenous Peruvian inhabitant takes on a big multinational energy corporation. Set in a stunning Peruvian landscape, the outcome of the impending court case could set a monumental precedent on environmental cases around the world. The director, Dan Faber has really thought about the drama of this unfolding story and that’s always a very good sign.”

What causes a person to consider stepping away from society, to lead a life of isolation, far from the modern world? This is a tender and intimate film about an elderly hermit in the Highlands of Scotland who opens his life to director Lizzie MacKenzie, whilst he comes to terms with his increasingly frail body and questions whether he will be able to live out his last years in the wilderness he calls home.

Director: Lizzie MacKenzie is a self-shooting director who focuses on characters at the edge of society, who remind us of our place within the natural world.

Judge Oli Harbottle said: “At a time when we are all experiencing living in self-isolation, this is an irresistible look at someone who has chosen that very lifestyle for the past thirty years out of choice rather than necessity. Set against the stunning backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, the fact the director has spent seven years to win the trust of the film’s subject allows for what promises to be a truly tender and intimate portrait of someone living far away from the hectic nature of modern life.”

“After his retirement, my father joined a water aerobics team with a group of elderly men. They meet three days a week in a 50 metres long pool. The film explores my relationship with my father by interacting with his world. This comes in an attempt to redefine my relationship with him whom I do not know much about his past life. Once I started the film’s journey I realised that we share the same dream of becoming filmmakers, but he chose to conform, leaving remnants of this dream captured on VHS. The same material that I will use here to highlight our visible similarities and differences. The film explores the space that I am trying to find as a young woman among a group of men, reflecting on their past lives with pride and regret as I wonder about my own future. Their slow movements, the hilarious tales of the past, and the heated childish conversations of current events come at the heart of the film. A film that they are attached to in an attempt to avoid the ghost of a looming end. Fifty Meters is my way of confronting this generation’s concepts of authority, patriarchy and masculinity.” – Yomna Khattab

Yomna Khattab is an Egyptian filmmaker with a background in banking and a 2015 published story book, Videotape From the Nineties. As a scriptwriter, her feature Rokaya won Sawiris Cultural Prize for Best Script for Young Scriptwriters 2018. In addition, she won the Film Prize Robert Bosch 2021 Development Fund for her script writing on her short film The First Sin. She is currently developing her first feature documentary. Coming from an economical background, her main interest is to explore the politics affecting women’s lives and modern family dynamics in contemporary times.

Jane Mote, Consultant Editor for The Whickers said of the selection: “There was so much talent among the first time Directors at Durban FilmMart that it was hard to choose one winner, but I was completely captivated by the fresh style of emerging Director Yomna Khattab who turns the camera on the patriarchal world she has grown up in to help answer questions about her place in it and her relationship with her father. This father/daughter journey will take us deep into a hitherto unseen Upper Middle class Egyptian society giving audiences a very different perspective on Africa.”

Set in past, present, and future South Africa — an invitation into a poetic, memory-driven exploration of love, intimacy, race, and belonging by the filmmaker, who grew up during apartheid but didn’t know it was happening until it was over.

Milisuthando Bongela is an award-winning writer, editor, cultural worker, and artist. Her career began in the fashion industry, but the last 15 years have seen her traverse the worlds of music, art, media, and film — continually turning toward Indigenous knowledge. Her first feature doc, Milisuthando premiered at Sundance Film Festival in January 2023.

Find out more HERE.

When a filmmaker investigates rumors of surveillance in her Arab-American neighborhood in Chicago, she uncovers one of the largest FBI terrorism probes conducted before 9/11 and reveals its enduring impact on the community.

Assia Boundaoui is an Algerian-American journalist and filmmaker based in Chicago. She has reported for the BBC, NPR, PRI, Al Jazeera, VICE, and CNN. Her debut short film about hijabi hair salons for the HBO Lenny documentary series premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The Feeling of Being Watched had its world premiere at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. She is currently a fellow with the Co-Creation Studio at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where she is iterating her most recent work, the Inverse Surveillance Project. Assia has a Masters degree in journalism from New York University and is fluent in Arabic. 

Find out more HERE.

In the 1980s, Corey Pegues found himself embroiled in a life of crime as a member of New York’s City’s infamous Supreme Team gang. After an incident forces Pegues away from the streets, he unexpectedly emerges as a rising star in the NYPD, his past unknown to his fellow officers. A decorated 21-year police career is threatened when his political stances and revelations about his former life cause strife within the police community. 

Ilinca Calugareanu  is a US and UK-based Romanian director. Her debut documentary feature Chuck Norris Vs Communism, premiered in competition at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and played film festivals around the world. With a background in anthropology, Ilinca has a skill and passion for melding fiction and documentary into beautiful films. Other credits include The Writing on the Wall (2006, Romania), Endgames (2008, UK) and Erica: Man Made (2017, commissioned by the Guardian). She is also a Berlinale Talents Alumi, a 2018 Chicken & Egg Accelerator Lab Grantee, and a Sundance Institute | National Geographic Fellow. A Cops and Robbers Story is Ilinca’s second feature documentary.

Find out more HERE.

Homeboys is set in a rehab centre on the edge of society where former gangster Roberto attempts to support criminals deported from the US  to Mexico, as they try to adjust to a country they don’t know and which doesn’t want to know them. As a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who had to leave a baby son in America 20 years ago, Roberto is facing his own huge challenges. But helping others overcome their struggles gives him strength to carry on with his work.

Alonso Garibay, Director of Homeboys said when he heard the news: “I’m really grateful to The Whickers for this award.  I’m from Mexico and sometimes it is rough to have support in this issue (in cinema and society in general). We can feel like underdogs. Winning this award is a huge step to realise our dream to tell this story.”

Jane Mote, Editorial Consultant at The Whickers said: “Homeboys is an extraordinary story that gives us unique access to acts of humanity on the edge of society in Mexico. Alonso Garibay and his co-Director Alejandro Bernal, are  very talented with a strong creative flair and passion for their subject. Alonso’s pitch won the hearts and minds of everyone in the room. I hope this bursary and the support that comes with it will help to ensure this film’s success.”

One of Those Creatures is a body-thriller documentary that explores the relationship between identity and the body through the journey of feeling vulnerable as a bodybuilder. Emre is 29 years old, living alone in the apartment where he was born and raised as the only child of a conservative family in Istanbul. As a national bodybuilder and personal trainer, he is unhappy with his lifestyle. In search of a motivation he was looking for in this process during which he lost 18 kilos, his hopes are turned upside down by the global pandemic.

Jane Ray, Artistic Director at The Whickers said: “This is a story that has been several decades in gestation. Two boys united by the loss of a parent and their love of the movies, growing up together and finding different ways to present themselves to an often cruel and judgemental world. This is a creative documentary steeped in tenderness and insight”.

Ali Özkul, Director of One of Those Creatures said when he heard the news: “Even just being here [at Close Up] was such a privilege for me, so I couldn’t imagine this. I would like to thank all the beautiful souls here. Believe me: there are still good people in this world”.