Festivals & Events

FilmAid creates and participates in film festivals and other events that celebrate and empower vulnerable communities around the world.

Trust in Docs Initiative

FilmAid is spearheading the Trust in Docs Initiative, a collaborative research and standards-setting strategy to establish global practices in nonfiction filmmaking. The initiative intends to increase the quality of ethical practices in documentary film; build guidelines to safeguard accurate, evidence-based storytelling; and provide audiences the film literacy and power to hold documentary filmmakers to a set of ethical standards akin to journalists. Support for Trust in Docs has grown as FilmAid has presented at global film events including the following in 2024:

CPH DOX with Docs Society, Copenhagen
Movies that Matter, The Hague
International Documentary Association’s Getting Real, Los Angeles
Alternativa Film Impact Days 2024, Yogyakarta

Alternativa Film Festival 2023

FilmAid participated in the Alternativa Film Project’s inaugural film festival in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The festival focuses on under-represented Central Asian films that will have positive impact on society.

Plural+ Youth Film & Video Festival

In collaboration with UNAOC and the United Nations Youth Festival, FilmAid has presented multiple awards to filmmakers globally for their short documentary films. List of honorees include:

(2024) Mohammad Ali Rahimi - Shamaeil

(2024) Sapna Zamir – Shadows Beneath the Peaks

(2023) Omed Salah- A Way of Trauma

(2022) Students of CEIP Serrería Public School in Valencia - When We Finally Understood

(2022) Odele Bello - Ghost

Media TopToo Kyrgyzstan 2022

FilmAid presented at the 2022 media TopToo conference in Kyrgyzstan. The 90 minute session gathered editors and executive producers from a variety of global - minded platforms to talk about what content they are looking for, how decisions are made on financing and distribution and how applications are submitted. This was a great opportunity to bring global voices and resources to the conference and community, as well as get to know the needs of the film community. Since 2020, Internews Kyrgyzstan has successfully been supporting filmmaking through funding, training and mentoring projects.

Opportunities for Impact: A Panel on the Power of Film 2022

FilmAid presented on a virtual panel in Sarajevo to discuss impact work around produced films as well as crowdfunding and other funding campaigns for film making that also help build reach and impact. Panelists such as Naomi Walker from Global Impact Producers Alliance and Emily Best from Seed & Spark joined our FilmAid Director, Gita Saedi Kiely for the conversation.

FilmAid Kenya’s Film Festival 2021

Watch FilmAid Kenya’s Annual Film Festival online on September 18, 2021.

Game of Thrones Raises money for FilmAid

FilmAid was selected as one of 10 charitable causes that HBO helped raise money for during a Game of Thrones “MaraThrone” in April 2021 to mark 10 years since the epic’s launch. Read more

FilmAid Celebrates its 20th Anniversary

FilmAid celebrated its 20th Anniversary with a starry celebration at NYC’s The Standard, High Line. Participant Media CEO David Linde was honored with the FilmAid Richard C. Holbrooke Memorial Award for Dedication to Humanitarian Service, presented by Katie Holmes.

Filmaid at Lincoln Center Global Exchange

FilmAid was proud to be selected to participate in the Lincoln Center Global Exchange, an invitation-only gathering of world leaders and change agents devoted to exploring the role of art and culture in addressing critical challenges facing our collective future. FilmAid founder, Caroline Baron, joined Michael Bloomberg, Samantha Power, David Miliband, Stephen Daldry, David Rubenstein among other prominent art and humanitarian industry leaders on the main stage of the conference to explore how art can heal the wounds and divisions of conflict.

FilmAid Honored at Cannes Film Festival

FilmAid was honored at a cocktail party at Nikki Beach at the InterContinental Carlton, receiving donations from industry attendees including Participant Media, Twentieth Century Fox, HFPA, Fox Searchlight and FilmNation Entertainment. Also in attendance were Dionne Warwick, Joel Edgerton, 20th Century Fox chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos and Sony Pictures Classics co-presidents and co-founders Tom Bernard and Michael Barker.

23rd Annual NY Oscar Night Viewing Party Benefits FilmAid

For the first time, the NY Oscar celebration benefited a charity. Held at NYC’s famed 21 Club, the evening brought together East Coast Academy members, prior Oscar winners and nominees to celebrate Hollywood’s biggest night. Attendees included Alfre Wood, Beau Bridges, Celia Weston, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, Lois Smith, Mary Stuart Masterson and many others.

Kenya Film Festival

For 13 years FilmAid has celebrated the creative self-expression and ambitious determination of young filmmakers demanding to tell their own stories and represent their own communities. The annual film festival traditionally held in Daddab, Kakuma, and Nairobi provides a platform for young and emerging filmmakers.

South Sudan Film Festival

A refugee with a passion for film as a form of personal expression, Simon Bingo, a former FilmAid student founded the Juba Film Festival in South Sudan. This film festival encourages others to inspire and creatively express themselves through the art of storytelling. As the first film festival in the country, it was hosted in a soccer stadium as there are no cinemas.

For more information: The Journey of The Stories: Juba Film Festival.

Myanmar Film Festival

Hundreds of people arrived at the 90-year-old Art Deco Shwe Hinthar cinema in Bago town for the first ever three-day Human Rights Film Festival. The Myanmar Film Festival presented a life changing opportunity for young filmmakers to tell their own story, advocate for their own community, and to do meaningful work for society. Pictured below is Mon Mon Myat, an early graduate of Internews’ ten month J School program and festival organizer, film producer, writer, and journalist