Wow! We hope you’ve all had some time to cool off and digest all of the amazing films and events we were lucky enough to experience from our homes last week. At GlobalGirl Media U.K., we strive to develop the voice and media literacy of teenage girls and young women, ages 14-22, in under-served communities by teaching them to create and share digital journalism designed to improve scholastic achievement, ignite community activism and spark social change. We are delighted with how our first film festival went and believe that it was a showcase of the spark and talent of such young women.
First of all, we’d like to thank every single one of you who attended, shared, tweeted, supported and took part in the festival. The support has been great, and we’ve loved meeting every single one of you virtually in some way. It’s been insightful, emotional, educational, and inspiring. The list goes on, but we’ll leave the rest to you. Tweet us a word, or sentence that you’d use to describe GGM Film Festival 2021. We’d love to hear from you. Over the course of the four days, we had a range of important topics and discussions from diversifying the film industry, mental health, the representation of disability on screen, how women are often under and misrepresented in society, as well as lots of advice to just DO IT!
To the wonderful speakers, our GlobalGirl hosts, to all of our Trustees, members of the Jury, and every single volunteer that helped us make this happen, thank you! Last but not least to our sponsor Nutopia and partners at Birds Eye View. We love that you believed in us as much as we do.
The film festival received over 150 submissions at an open call for entries, submitted from over 30 different countries, including Yemen, Bangladesh, Australia, Italy, Venezuela, Iran, Mexico, the USA, Canada and the UK. We would also like to thank all of the filmmakers who submitted their films to the festival, it was a great competition with an outstanding amount of talent, so to everybody, well done.
Last but not least, congratulations to all of the award winners and runners up for sharing their important films about women. Every woman deserves opportunities, and when given them, the possibilities are endless. That’s what this festival has continued to show us, and that’s why we do what we do.
Award winners are as follows:
Best Fiction
Run Amok by Gala Díaz Fernandez
Best Documentary
Aguan (Sun Behind The Horizon) by Novera Hasan Nikkon
Best Student Film
The Museum by Céline Floyd
Best Director
Give it Back by Ruchama Ehrenhalt
It’s not all over yet. Keep an eye out for our newsletter which will be coming soon. You don’t have to do anything if you’re already signed up. Just wait for us to email you! The newsletter is another way to celebrate the success of the GGM film festival as well as giving you our festival highlights one more time. We’ll be reviewing our prize-winning films and talking a little bit more about what we learnt and loved along the way.
Just because this year’s festival has come to an end doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy the 36 shortlisted films over on our Short Films page until 28.3.2021. Any workshop attendees will also be able to re-watch sessions.
Written by Kayla Marie Troy