Durban FilmMart Hands Out 39 Awards Worth Over $120,000

By Tom Whitfield

Thirty-nine awards worth more than $120,000 were handed out at the Durban FilmMart on Monday night, with Tanzanian filmmaker Neema Ngelime's directorial debut, "The Ones With the Tempered Flowers," taking five of them — the night's biggest haul.

The film also collected the prize for best non-fiction film from South Africa's National Film and Video Foundation, plus awards from DOK Leipzig, Sheffield Doc Fest and Visions du Réel. It examines a woman's study of her body's relationship to self and society, the political weight placed on women's bodies in Tanzania, and what Ngelime describes as duty masked as love.

Two other projects took four awards each. "Where Do I Belong?," from Sudanese director Ibrahim "Snoopy" Ahmad, and "On the Sea Road," the debut feature from Palestinian director Fitnat Waked.

Who are the multiple winners?

Ahmad co-directed "Khartoum," the documentary that premiered at Sundance last year. "Where Do I Belong?" follows him as he decides to leave Nairobi and return to his family in the Sudanese capital. It combines documentary footage with hand-drawn pencil animation — an intimate, unconventional road movie that won the Docubox Award, the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund New Voices Award, the DOK.fest München Award and the Sørfond Award.

Waked's "On the Sea Road" documents a friendship forged between two Palestinian women separated by borders. Its four prizes include the Al Jazeera Co-production Award, the TRT Award, the Women Make Movies Award and the Sunshine Cinema UCT Impact Development Award.

Nigeria's Agbajowo Collective — the group behind the 2024 Toronto premiere "The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos" — took three awards with "The Boy Who Spoke Static," including the NFVF prize for best fiction. The film's credits list Temitope Ogungbamila, Samuel Okechukwu, Mat Cerf (lead producer) and Bisola Akinmuyiwa.

What does this change for the winners?

For projects still in development, the answer is financing and access. The awards function less as trophies than as doors: a co-production deal with Al Jazeera, a Red Sea Film Fund commitment, festival berths at Sheffield or Leipzig, a TorinoFilmLab slot. Durban's track record on that front is the pitch of the whole event — though, as always with forum prizes, the money attached to each award was not itemized in the announcement. The headline figure of $120,000-plus covers 39 awards; per-project amounts remain for the filmmakers and funds to disclose.

The 17th edition opened on a note that the organizers were quick to claim as their own. DFM alumnus "Ben'Imana," by first-time Rwandan filmmaker Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes and became Rwanda's first-ever submission in the Oscar category for best international feature film. The forum celebrated that film at its opening.

Durban FilmMart Institute director Magdalene Reddy praised the "dynamic array of filmmakers and industry leaders" at this year's event and said "the talent showcased in this year's program and film projects exemplifies the strength of African cinema."

"The Durban FilmMart Institute…remains committed to building the industry," Reddy said. "Thank you for participating with such passion and professionalism in all the programs presented over the last four days. Thank you for connecting, for telling your stories. And thank you for shifting the world with us."

Other winners at a glance

• JustFilms Documentary Award (Ford Foundation): "The Thread and the Wall" (Algeria), Mouni Bouallam
• Climate Story Labs Award: "The Birth of Derna" (Libya), Hussein Eddeb — which took five awards in total across the ceremony's smaller categories
• NFVF Best Animation: "Sunday Morning" (Ethiopia), directed by Minasie Terefe, produced by Nahom Abiy
• Inkaba Award (Stained Glass TV): "Daddies" (South Africa), directed by Sean Mongie
• NEWF Natural World Storytelling Grant: "A Touch of Paradise" (Tunisia), directed by Houcem Slouli
• Red Sea Film Fund Award, Non-Fiction: "Heirs of No Regret" (Kenya), directed by Saitabao Kaiyare
• The Whickers Bursary Award: "Green Island Girls" (Egypt), directed by Rogena Tarek
• Rotterdam Lab Award: "Four Months and Ten Days" (Sudan), directed by Alyaa Musa — a second Sudanese project alongside Ahmad's
• The Wrapped App Award: "Second Bloom" (Zimbabwe), directed by Tendaiishe Chitima
• DFMI Talents Durban Award: "The Basement" (DRC), directed by Mélanie K. Zawadi

The spread of winners — Algeria, Libya, Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Zimbabwe, DRC — maps the forum's reach well beyond its South African base. Whether the prize money converts into finished films will be known only when these titles surface at festivals over the coming two years.