‘All Fixed Up’, ‘Four Comrades, One Echo’ and ‘The Cord’ lead IDFA Forum winners

Hao Zhou’s All Fixed Up, Kiva Liu’s Four Comrades, One Echo and Nolwenn Hervé’s The Cord were among the prize winners at this year’s IDFA Forum, IDFA’s international co-production and co-financing market for documentaries.

Chinese documentary All Fixed Up by Hao Zhou won the best pitch project prize at the IDFA Forum Awards. The project is about a family struggling to “straighten out” their heir, pushing the boundaries of care, identity, and cross-generational understanding.

“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 about All Fixed Up. The project received IDFA Bertha Fund Classic: production & postproduction support in 2025.

Meanwhile, Four Comrades, One Echo by Kiva Liu won the IDFA Forum Award for Best Producers Connection Project. It is about four sisters who reunite through the daughter they raised together to rewrite each other’s lives, telling stories about sisterhood, motherhood and feminist resistance in China.

“This project convinced us with its unique insight, beautiful cinematography and extraordinary bravery. 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,” said jury members Lena Nitsch and Ilyas Yourish about Four Comrades, One Echo.

The Cord by Nolwenn Hervé took home the IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut Project. The Venezuela-set documentary is about a “maternity warrior” who preserves the vital cord between pregnant women and their babies. The jury—consisting of Riham Ezzaldeen and Asako Fujioka —said: “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.”

The IDFA DocLab Forum Award for best project went to Body Count by Cris Bringas. The documentary centres on Paul, a Filipino nurse in Berlin, on his Grindr hookup with a former soldier.

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

Dreams of the Wild Oaks by Marjan Khosravibaledi was also recognised with a Special Mention for the IDFA Forum Award for Best Rough Cut Project.

The winners were announced today (November 19) at the Internationaal Theatre in Amsterdam.

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