EWA's News

EWA Network’s Annual Awards at WEMW 2022

Alexia Muiños Ruiz
Alexia Muiños Ruiz

EWA Network's strong presence at When East Meets West 2022 - two projects awarded

EWA Network has been collaborating with WEMW since 2017 delivering content to the industry program and presenting an annual award for a female director.

In this year's program EWA Network presented two awards for female filmmakers and also supported a panel on inclusive filmmaking initiatives and active collaborations on diversity. The panel "Embracing a New and Inclusive Future" included filmmakers and activists representing a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. The panelists were filmmaker Iyabo Boyd from Brown Girls Doc Mafia (USA),  Europe Council Chair Melanie Hoyes from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (the UK), Program Director and EWA member Biljana Tutorov from Circle Women Doc Accelerator (Serbia), and Producer Tamara Dawit from The Racial Equity Media Collective (Canada). The panel was moderated by EWA member Brigid O'Shea.

EWA Network presented two awards to strong projects by female directors

Traditionally European Women's Audiovisual Network has presented the annual award at WEMW Co-Production Forum to a project which is helmed by a woman director. However, this year the selection was broadened to be more inclusive. The selection criteria included aspects such as the narrative of the story, the representation of the characters, the production team and other facets that widen the idea of what makes us equal and inclusive in this film business.

Read more about all WEMW awards 2022 in an article written by Cineuropa.

EWA WEMW Award

The 2022 EWA WEMW Award was presented to a debut feature project by a woman director. We were enchanted by the main character we rarely see on the silver screen, dealing with obstacles that no girl in that age should face. With this award EWA Network celebrates the expansion of the canon on and about young women and the multifaceted view on womanity presented in a fiction film.

The EWA WEMW Award was presented to director Mo Scarpelli and the film A Song that Slays.

EWA Circle Award

EWA Network has also supported work-in-progress projects in the Circle Women Doc Accelerator training program in the past years. This year the selection jury was unanimous in their decision to support the documentary by a woman director, including a narrative that expands the scope of womankind on screen.

This year the EWA Circle Award jury focused on the selection criteria to select a film project that observes feminism and the history of womankind in an excellent and unusual way. The awarded project is a documentary time machine, connecting feminist discourse of the 1970s and 80s with a new generation of women looking to understand their current-day discomfort and answer some of the ongoing questions about why we still live in a patriarchal world.

The EWA Circle Award was presented to the project Searching for the Goddess and its director Lina Lytė Plioplytė and producer Andrėja Čebatavičiūtė.