Selection & Winners

Anan Fries won the IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling with Artificial Sex (Ep. 1 & 2) (Germany/Switzerland). 

“The winning artwork offers a personal reflection on representation, authorship, and sexuality, taking a multi-layered approach to these themes. From a critical perspective on biases within AI, the artist demonstrates the potential to challenge, change, and queer the online representation of bodies and sexuality. The jury especially appreciated the artist’s nuanced perspective and the way the work brings depth and complexity to themes often framed in binaries," reported the jury.

The Special Mention for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling went to Maisha Wester for Coded Black (United Kingdom). The jury members for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling were Raul Niño Zambrano, Sanneke Huisman, and Tamara Shogaolu. Read the jury statement here.

Claudix Vanesix for Collective AMiXR won the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction for Feedback VR, un musical antifuturista (Peru).

“The jury was moved by the layered and focused essence of this work. The simplicity of its aesthetic, the confronting gaze of its characters, and the relevance of imagining a decolonized future make the work urgent in content, powerful in form, and contemplative in experience. The work does not only claim its own space in the virtual world; instead, it creates its own cosmos without asking permission. We quote these lines from the work: ‘You must be a dot before becoming a line. You must be a line before becoming a plane. If there is no plane, there is no volume’,” reported the jury.

The Special Mention for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction went to Under the Same Sky (Palestine/Turkey) by Khalil Ashawi. The jury members for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction were Alaa Minawi, Babette Wijntjes, and Jimmy-Pierre de Graaf. Read the jury statement here.