The winners of the Doc Alliance Award 2025 were announced today during the Doc Day Lunch, held at the Marché du Film in Cannes.
The Doc Alliance Award for Best Feature Film, endowed with 5,000 EUR, was presented to “The Shards” ('Oskolky', Georgia/Germany) by Masha Chernaya. The film draws from the director’s personal experience. In spring 2022, Masha prepares to leave her homeland, Russia. What follows is a series of unexpected goodbyes: her mother dies of cancer, her partner escapes military conscription, and everything — including her former self — begins to fall apart. As a way to process her grief, she turns to her camera, capturing everything.
The jury praised the film “for its unique cinematic qualities” and honoured its “cinematic language that is quiet, resistant to classic narrative structures, and develops a striking ability to merge personal and collective mourning.”
The Doc Alliance Award for Best Short Film, endowed with 3,000 EUR, went to “We Had Fun Yesterday” (Belgium) by Marion Guillard. In her film, the director reflects on her relationship with herself and her body, her distance from conventional ideals of femininity, and unsettling encounters with men — an autobiographical exploration intertwined with reflections on how we perceive others: animals, whether wild or caged; nature, whether untouched or shaped by human intervention.
The jury described the film as “an honest and beautifully crafted work that creates a tender rhythm through its layering of image and voiceover. Marion Guillard pulls us into her imagery and stream of consciousness, through a narrative (full of surprises,) interweaving personal quests of identity and family relations with views of being a filmmaker.“
The winning films were selected by a jury of three distinguished film professionals: Fernando Ganzo (Deputy Editor-in-Chief at Cahiers du Cinéma), Caroline Kirberg (CEO of pong film) and Gerald Weber (Deputy Managing Director at sixpackfilm). The awards were presented by Alessandra Luchetti, Head of Department and Deputy Director at EACEA (Creative Europe – MEDIA).
A curated selection of the nominated films — including the four 2025 nominees “Grey Zone,” “Shuruuk,” “23:23,” and “Bamssi” — is now available to stream online on DAfilms.com.
The Doc Alliance network of documentary film festivals supports emerging talent in European documentary cinema. Each of the seven member festivals — CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, DOK Leipzig, FIDMarseille, Ji.hlava IDFF, Millennium Docs Against Gravity FF, and Visions du Réel — as well as guest festival Punto de Vista, nominated one short and one feature-length documentary from their recent programmes. Each festival will showcase at least three films from the Doc Alliance Award selection in its next edition.
Full Jury Statements:
Best Feature Film
“This is a film that provoked long discussions among us – perhaps because it is made from raw material, yet crafted with a subtle and unexpected precision. “The Shards” depicts a lost generation, robbed of its democratic future by an autocratic regime and dragged into an imperial war.
The film challenged our own relationship to what we were seeing – making us feel both uncomfortable and moved, reminding us of the importance of not looking away, of facing this reality head-on. Perhaps it touched us even more when we recognized that the same feeling might be the starting point of Masha Chernaya’s gesture: picking up her camera, turning it toward her own country, collecting images of a society she finds trapped in agony but understanding that this atmosphere scares her. We should not forget: the day after tomorrow we might already have internalised a different value system because none of us stays unaffected.
We want to honor this film for its unique cinematic qualities, and its director for giving voice to her generation in a deeply personal, yet politically resonant way. This is a cinematic language that is quiet, resistant to classic narrative structures, and develops a striking ability to merge personal and collective mourning.”
Best Short Film
“We are pleased to present the Short Film Award to “We Had Fun Yesterday”, an honest and beautifully crafted work that creates a tender rhythm through its layering of image and voiceover. Marion Guillard pulls us into her imagery and stream of consciousness, through a narrative (full of surprises,) interweaving personal quests of identity and family relations with views of being a filmmaker.
Gradually, we begin to understand that the film explores how our experiences shape our perspectives, how content and form are intertwined. It reflects on how we look, what we see – and how this influences our perception of the world and our paths in life. Revisiting the images and clichés we have of the world and of ourselves, we are continuously attempting to define who we are and find a place where we feel at ease. We Had Fun Yesterday is a film about searching for the "adequate" image amidst all the inadequacies.”
Information about Doc Alliance: docalliance.org
