Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir’s Don’t Let The Sun Go Up On Me was a big winner at the industry awards ceremony of the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, CPH:DOX.
Presented in the CPH: ROUGHCUT strand, the project won the €30,000 Eurimages New Lab Outreach award, presented to Haut et Court Doc for El Moudir and producer Emma Lepers.
The hybrid documentary feature follows a community of young adults living with xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare genetic disease that makes sunlight life-threatening.
Scroll down for the full list of winners
El Moudir’s debut film, The Mother Of All Lies won the best director prize of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and the Golden Eye best documentary prize at Cannes in 2023.
Belfast-born filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson and producers Rosie Crerar of Scotland’s barry crerar and Eleanor Emptage, co-founder with Ferguson of Tara Films, were presented with the €25,000 Sandbox Films Science Pitch Prize for their project Matrescence.
Inspired by Lucy Jones’s non-fiction book of the same name about how becoming pregnant and a woman can profoundly and literally transform a woman, Ferguson’s documentary promises to interweave Jones’ rigorous scientific research and poetry with personal stories from a diverse range of contributors to offer a radical and profound examination of maternal metamorphosis.
Ferguson, whose previous credits include Sineád O’Connor documentary Nothing Compares and the Bafta-nominated short film Nostalgie, thanked the jury for rewarding her “highfalutin ambitions”.
Palestine-Canada co-production Everything Is Red And Grey, directed by young female Palestinian filmmakers Shourideh C. Molavi and Shrouq Alaila, picked up a brace of awards. The film follows a group of young Palestinian filmmakers in Gaza who overcome the killing of their friend by using their cameras as a tool to document the genocide from within their communities, beyond the colonial lens of the rubble.
The film won the €15,000 Al Jazeera Documentary Channel Co-Production award.
“We were especially impressed by the strength of the filmmaking team, the focused POV in creative elements which form a critical account for the historical record, and the undeniable urgency of this project,” the jury said
The film’s US producer and editor, Henry Plavidal, collected the prize on behalf of Molavi and Alaila. Molavi is based between New York, Stockholm and Palestine, while Alaila continues to live and work from Gaza. The film also secured one of two ARTE Awards (in collaboration with Rough Cut Services), which comes in the form of a consultation with Rough Cut Services, to a total value of €2,500.
Plavidal, who recently moved to Paris, is emblematic of the financial and personal pressures required to get such a documentary made, using his savings to bankroll his work on the film.
“Nobody will ever make money on this film,” Plavidal suggested. “But it is so important for these filmmakers’ story to be told.”
The other Rough Cut awardee was Hong Kong documentary We Are Volcanoes, directed by Sharon Yeung and Natalie Chao, co-produced by Yeung and Norway’s Jillian Schlesinger.
The team’s Forum’s pitch presentation was held confidentiallly as it deals with themes and/or characters set in parts of the world where there are security concerns for the filmmakers and/ or the subjects.
CPH: Industry winners 2026
Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award
Don’t Let The Sun Go Up On Me (Mor-Fr-Den-Nor-Chile), Dir. Asmae El Moudir. Prod. Emma Lepers, Monica Hellström, Asmae El Moudir
Eurimages New Lab Innovation Award
Cosmofonia (Fr), Dir. Verena Paravel. Prod. Florence Cohen
Al Jazeera Documentary Channel Co-Production Award
Everything Is Red And Grey (Pal-Can), Dir. Shourideh C. Molavi, Shrouq Alaila. Prod. Shourideh C. Molavi, Henry Plavidal, Laura Poitras
ARTE Award (in collaboration with Rough Cut Services)
Everything Is Red And Grey (Pal-Can), Dir. Shourideh C. Molavi, Shrouq Alaila. Prod. Shourideh C. Molavi, Henry Plavidal, Laura Poitras
We Are Volcanoes (HK-Nor), Dir. Sharon Yeung, Natalie Chao. Prod. Sharon Yeung, Jillian Schlesinger
Jacob Burns Film Center Award
The Calling (Den), Dir. Beniamino Barrese. Prod. Harry Vaughn, Beniamino Barrese
Rise and Shine Award
My Father The Iceman (Pol-Den), Dir. Łukasz Kowalski. Prod. Anna Mazerant, Łukasz Kowalski, Signe Byrge Sørensen
Unifrance & Titrafilm Doc Award
Children Of The Moon Land (Slov-Cz-Fr), Dir. Roman Ďuriš. Prod. Richard Šimeček, Michal Sikora, Albin Bourgeois
Onassis ONX Award
Still Point, Turning World (Australia-Switzerland), Lead artist Emma Roberts, Ben Joseph Andrews. Prod. Emma Roberts
NewImages Festival Award
Mourning Glory (Poland), Dir. Mathius Scibor. Prod. Pepe Le Puke.
DOK Leipzig Award
Mourning Glory (Poland), Dir. Mathius Scibor. Prod. Pepe Le Puke.
Millennium Docs Against Gravity (MDAG) Award
My School Is Seized (Ukr), Dir. Halyna Lavrinets. Prod. Oleksandr Ivanov
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