August 9, 2025
Another successful edition comes to a close as DokuFest announces the winning films in their respective categories. On Saturday evening at the Kino Lumi in Prizren, we unveiled the winners of its 24th edition. In front of guests, jury members, sponsors, and partners, the best films in the competition categories and the audience’s favorite film were revealed.
For nine days, the festival presented 213 films, hosted 9 performances, 8 discussions, 4 masterclasses, and 6 workshops across 9 cinemas and improvised venues throughout the city, including at the ITP premises.
In addressing the challenge of international film distribution for Kosovo-produced films, DokuFest continued its collaboration with Radiator IP Sales. This partnership allows films in the National Competition to be considered for international distribution. Mr. Ben Bekke Vandendaele from Radiator IP Sales announced the winner of this year's Distribution Award which was Ndera by Endrit Qarolli.
This year, the Audience Award, sponsored by ProCredit Bank, celebrated its 21st anniversary of partnership with DokuFest. The award is given to the film most favored by the audience from a selection of 10 films. “Palace of Youth” by Maddie Gwin was the winner of this year’s Audience Award.
As part of the DocYouth Alliance – Youth Connecting Through Cinema program, and in collaboration with Beldocs, a group of young people from Kosovo and Serbia took part in the Youth Jury for this edition of DokuFest. This cultural exchange initiative gave them the opportunity to watch and evaluate five youth-themed films, from which they selected the winner of the Best Youth Film Award. The award went to Coexistence My Ass, directed by Amber Fares.
The Balkan Dox competition, a longstanding highlight of DokuFest that brings powerful stories from across the region, has once again drawn strong interest from audiences. This year, the festival marked a significant milestone with the introduction of a brand-new award category Best Balkan Short Dox aimed at recognizing and celebrating the potential of the short documentary format. Best Balkan Short Dox was awarded to Albanian filmmaker Adrian Paci for his film Merging Bodies, while Balkan Short Dox Special Mention was given to Antigona, a film by Ibër Deari and Mirsad Abazi
The Balkan Dox Special Mention was awarded by the representative of DokuFest’s Gold Sponsor, IPKO to Soil and Wings by Stefan Malešević, and the Best Balkan Dox, which went to A Strange Colour of Dream by Yasemin Akinci.
In the Green Dox competition, the Special Mention was awarded to May the Soil Be Everywhere by Yehui Zhao, while the top honor, Green Dox Winner, went to Shifting Baselines by Julien Elie, recognizing two powerful works that shed light on urgent environmental issues.
DokuFest extended its heartfelt thanks to the Swiss Embassy in Kosovo, whose decade-long support has been vital to the festival’s Human Rights program and its initiatives on Dealing with the Past and Transitional Justice. This year, Deputy Ambassador Christoph Fuchs took the stage to present the Human Rights Dox Award to My Dear Theo by Alisa Kovalenko.
Short films have always held a special place at DokuFest! As one of the Academy’s partner festivals, DokuFest annually nominates Candidate European Short FIlm - Prix Vimeo for the 38th European Film Awards. This year, that honor goes to Masterpiece Mommy by Dorothy Sing Zhang. Meanwhile, the Best International Short Film award was presented to Blue Heart by Samuel Suffren.
This year’s short documentary themes were striking and sparked lively debates during the selection of the winner in the International Short Dox category. DokuFest’s Artistic Director, Veton Nurkollari, announced the jury’s choice for the winner: We Were the Scenery by Christopher Radcliff.
The International Feature Dox competition was one of the most compelling sections of this year’s DokuFest edition, presenting a wide range of themes including deeply personal stories, historical events, political realities, struggles for justice, and environmental challenges. The Swedish Embassy, in partnership with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), as a long-term supporter of DokuFest declared the winner of this category which was Action Item, by Paula Ďurinová.
DokuFest, with support from the Swedish Embassy, Ministry of Culture, and Kosovo Cinematography Center, launched the First Balkan Short Film Forum to support emerging talent. The National competition jury awarded SOS by Anita Morina as Best National Film, a perfect cherry on top announced by Hajrulla Çeku, minister of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport of Kosovo.
To conclude, what was new this year among others was the launching of the First Balkan Short Film Forum, thanks to support from the Swedish Embassy, Sida, the Ministries of Culture, Youth and Sports, and the Cinematography Centers of Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia. Eight promising film projects were showcased, with winners receiving €5,500 in cash prizes along with several awards from the festival’s international partners.
At the same time, DokuFest deepened its collaboration with GIZ Germany and ITP to create new programs that inspire young creativity. The DokuKids initiative also grew stronger this year, welcoming new workshops from Cacttus Education and IPKO.
Below is the full list of award-winning films for this edition and the jury statements:
Award Recipients:
Balkan Dox
Feature Winning Film: A Strange Colour of Dream by Yasemin Akinci
Jury’s Statement: For unveiling the human face of architecture, through a richly layered character, both a visionary immersed in his self-constructed world and a fully responsible citizen. It is a story of silent resistance and memories surviving demolition.
Feature Special Mention: Soil and Wings by Stefan Malešević
Jury’s Statement: For portraying a tender family, whose gentle rhythm of life is imbued with quiet spirituality. The documentary captures the sacred in the ordinary through a contemplative gaze.
Short Winning Film: Merging Bodies by Adrian Paci
Jury’s Statement: The well-composed images, slow pace of editing, and perfectly framed close-ups of workers’
bodies and materia create a choreography of melting and fragmented composite bodies.
Short Special Mention: Antigona by Ibër Deari and Mirsad Abazi
Jury’s Statement: For bringing to the audience a strong and authentic woman, portrayed through genuine and heartwarming observation, this documentary embodies the principle of “less is more”, leaving a lasting impression.
International Feature Dox
Winning Film: Action Item by Paula Ďurinová
Jury’s Statement: We’ve chosen to award a film that is at once ambitious and innovative in its form and cinematic language. Through an approach that mirrors the experience of its subjects, this film left us variably spellbound, anxious, frustrated and ultimately amazed; it produced a visceral impact that we could only understand because we had felt it first in our bodies. Action Item not only succeeds in diagnosing an unspoken issue affecting a generation of young people, it uses the tools of cinema to offer a clear proposition for resistance in the face of the psychological and emotional effects of systemic oppression: collective action as a response to power.
International Short Dox
Winning Film: We Were The Scenery by Christopher Radcliff
Jury’s Statement: "We chose a film that is not complicated, but complex; one that revisits history through a deeply personal lens, with a gentle sense of humour, irony, and an uncompromising decolonial gaze. Through amateur and archival footage, and deft editing, it captures something essential and insightful about the contemporary historical and cinematic landscape, offering a behind‑the‑scenes look at a media‑dominated reality, thus revealing how the mediatization of history, to quote Karl Marx, tends to repeat the tragedy of that history as farce."
Green Dox
Winning Film: Shifting Baselines by Julien Elie
Jury’s Statement: The Green Dox Competition Jury decided to give the award to Shifting Baseline by Julien Elie for portraying a new twist to climate crisis focusing on all new levels of colonization on a planetary scale. It illustrates, with dark humor, the messianic and technofixing belief that has formed around the idea that conquering new frontiers will solve Earth’s problems. The post WW II sci-fi aesthetics perfectly integrate the visual language of the film to its subject.
Special Mention: May The Soil Be Everywhere by Yehui Zhao
Jury’s Statement: The Green Dox Competition Jury decided to give a Special mention to May the Soil be Everywhere by Yehui Zhao for the very honest and personal story that expands into larger scale problems, pertaining to climate crisis, the tension between urban and rural, politics and the history of a vast imperial land such as China.
Human Rights Dox
Winning Film: My Dear Theo by Alisa Kovalenko
Jury’s Statement: “MY DEAR THEO” is Alisa Kovalenko’s fearless love letter from the frontlines. As a mother, soldier, and filmmaker, she captures moments of tenderness and humanity in the midst of war, creating a powerful testimony to love and all that is at stake.
International Shorts
Winning Film: Blue Heart by Samuel Suffren
Jury’s Statement: We, the jury, have decided to award the Best International Short to a film that treats exile for those who remain. Its exquisite cinematography is skillfully orchestrated, depicting the solitude of an old couple, almost frozen in time in a society that moves at a different pace. When the camera moves, it moves with the character in an almost documentary fashion, highlighting the two-dimensional aspects of the story, the intimate and the public, the silence of the home versus the bustle of the city. We appreciated the striking compositions, which depicted the solitude and alienation of waiting, and enhanced the dramatic punch of this story. For a moving film that reflects on the harshness of today's society and politics, breaking families apart and converting parents into offspring, the award goes to Blue Heart by Samuel Suffren.
Nominated for Best European Short Film: Masterpiece Mommy by Dorothy Sing Zhang
Audience Award (SLANTED & ENCHANTED: MUSIC ON FILM): Palace of Youth by Maddie Gwin
Best Youth Film Award: Coexistence My Ass by Amber Fares
Distribution Award (National Category): Ndera by Endrit Qarolli
