AIDC Presents Pitch Awards At Pan-Asian Documentary Forums Docs By The Sea, DMZ Docs Industry, and CCDF

During September, AIDC staff participated in three pitching forums and marketplaces held by AIDC cultural partners Docs by the Sea (Bali, Indonesia), DMZ Docs Industry (Goyang, South Korea), and the CNEX Chinese Doc Forum (CCDF) (Taipei, Taiwan). 

AIDC presented pitch prizes to five projects at the forums, offering complimentary AIDC 2026 registration and a fee waiver for FACTory project submission. 

AIDC’s outreach and engagement with documentary forums and events across the Asia Pacific region aligns with our goals to unlock opportunities for collaboration and co-production with Australian producers, and grow the representation of projects by diverse APAC neighbours in the AIDC marketplace.

‘ORANGE, BEETLE, MOTHER AND I’ SELECTED FOR AIDC AWARD AT DOCS BY THE SEA

Held in Bali, Indonesia from 7-10 September, Docs By The Sea 2025 held five labs and a pitching forum featuring 36 documentary projects from 17 countries.

Outgoing AIDC Industry Manager, Lauren Valmadre, participated as a decision maker in the forum and awarded the AIDC-Docs By The Sea Award to Indian project Orange, Beetle, Mother and I, pitched by Director and Editor Manisha Halai, an Indigenous filmmaker from the Eastern Himalayas.  

Honed in Docs By The Sea’s Storytelling Lab, the film follows Manisha as she returns to her tribe’s fragile orange orchards, caught between her mother’s fight to stay, her sister’s yearning to leave, and the unravelling bonds of land, memory and love. AIDC 2022 guests Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas (co-directors of Writing With Fire, the first Indian documentary nominated for an Academy Award) are on board as Producers for the project. 

The AIDC-Docs By The Sea Award supports a complimentary AIDC All Access Pass (online or in person) for two project representatives, a fee waiver for submitting projects to AIDC’s FACTory International Pitching Forum.

‘OUR BODIES’ AND ‘GAME OF REPLACING GODS’ SELECTED FOR AIDC AWARD AT DMZ DOCS INDUSTRY

Held in Goyang, South Korea from 13-16 September, the seventh year of DMZ Docs’ Industry program saw 15 projects pitched across two major Production Pitch categories – Korea and Asia. 

AIDC Marketing & Communications Manager / APAC Engagement, Chris Harms, attended as a guest of DMZ Docs Industry and presented the AIDC-DMZ Docs Award to two projects: Our Bodies (South Korea), pitched by director Bora Lee Kil and producers Sona Jo and Emi Ueyama; and Game of Replacing Gods (Taiwan), pitched by director An Chu and producer Kathy Wong.

Our Bodies sees CODA (Child of Deaf Adults) filmmaker Bora Lee Kil explore societal attitudes around deafness and disability as she undergoes tests for her own pregnancy, reaching out to the signing community across the world to draw attention to untold stories of embodied experience and raise new questions about reproductive rights.  

Game of Replacing Gods is the first feature documentary by 2024 Sundance Short Film Jury Award-winning filmmaker An Chu, who embarks on an idiosyncratic exploration of the traditional Chinese craft of Zhizha, the making of exceptionally detailed paper replicas of real-world objects to be burnt in memory of the dead. 

The AIDC-DMZ Docs Award supports a complimentary AIDC All Access Pass (online or in person) for two project representatives and a fee waiver for submitting projects to AIDC’s FACTory International Pitching Forum.

‘TSUZY: FIRST PERSON PLURAL’ AND ‘ALL FIXED UP’ SELECTED FOR AIDC AWARD AT CCDF

Held in Taipei, Taiwan from 26-28 September, the 16th CNEX Chinese Documentary Forum (CCDF) saw 19 projects take part in the forum pitch.

AIDC Marketing & Communications Manager / APAC Engagement, Chris Harms, attended the forum as a guest of CNEX and presented the AIDC-CCDF Award to two projects: TSUZY: First Person Plural (Taiwan / UK / Australia), pitched by director Wei-hsin Yang and producer Grace Lin; and All Fixed Up (China / USA), pitched in-person by producers Tyler Hill and Jenny Man Wu, with remote input from director Hao Zhou. 

TSUZY: First Person Plural charts the 20-year journey of dancer Tzu-chao Chou from Taiwan to his early training in the Australian Ballet School and time in the Australian Ballet (2005-2011), to the UK’s Birmingham Royal Ballet, where he remains one of few queer Asian principals in a major European company. Returning to Taiwan to mentor the next generation, Tsuzy confronts cultural expectations and personal memories to reignite the drive that first led him to dance.

Pitched as part of CCDF’s Ford Foundation-supported Investing For Good (IFG) strand, All Fixed Up sees director Hao Zhou use both humour and sensitivity to confront traditional family expectations. After struggling to “straighten out” their queer heir, Hao’s family pursues a dramatic masquerade that pushes the boundaries of care, identity, and cross-generational understanding.

The AIDC-CCDF Award supports a complimentary AIDC All Access Pass (online or in person) for two project representatives, a fee waiver for submitting projects to AIDC’s FACTory International Pitching Forum.

AIDC first participated in CCDF in 2016, awarding the inaugural AIDC-CCDF Award to Lady of the Harbour (dir. Sean (Ali) Wang, prod. Jia Zhao), which after pitching at The FACTory in 2017 went on to its World Premiere at IDFA.

AIDC also established a partnership with Japan’s TokyoDocs in 2017, and attended Docs by the Sea in Bali for the first time in 2018 after partnering with Indonesia’s In-Docs.

AIDC then participated in the second DMZ Docs Industry in Paju, South Korea in 2019, extending the first AIDC-DMZ Docs Award to Mo-eo (More) by Lee Ilha. 

Both DMZ Docs and Docs by the Sea provide reciprocal pitch prizes for AIDC FACTory projects, opening up additional pathways for exposure and support.  

• Learn more about Docs by the Sea
• Learn more about DMZ Docs Industry
• Learn more about the CNEX Chinese Documentary Forum (CCDF)

Main Image: TSUZY: First Person Plural (courtesy of the filmmakers)