2020 Freshpitch Gold Prize
CONTENT
Keliang is a Chinese student pursuing an MFA degree in documentary filmmaking in New York, and was researching her thesis on death education in May 2019. She has interviewed Ms.Shatzi Weisberger, a death educator who had hosted her own funeral by calling it “FUN-eral”, encouraging people to truly appreciate death with positivity and openness. A week later, Keliang went back home and, ironically, had found out her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer since the day she left China. Her family contended the good lie so she didn't have to bear the emotional burden from the diagnosis. Watching the woman who taught her to appreciate life, gradually deteriorated in front of her she suddenly realized her mom presented a cruel fact for her thesis research -to acknowledge the meaning of death.
2020 Freshpitch Silver Prize
CONTENT
Inspirare takes us into the life and underwater world of Jessea Lu, the first Chinese female freediving champion. In intimate, cinéma vérite-style, we travel with Jessea on her unwavering journey to become a world champion. An accomplished pharmaceutical advisor by day, and top freediver during her free time, Jessea unflinchingly commits herself to everything she does. Two years ago, Jessea's life was nearly cut short when she blacked out 20 meters underwater during her last world-record attempt: a dive of 93 meters. She was lifeless for seven minutes. After coming face-to-face with death, instead of quitting, Jessea decides to continue her training--preparing and sharpening her skills with the rigor of the world's most preeminent competitors. In 2020, we follow Jessea's return to the world freediving stage as she emerges with a bigger more dangerous goal: breaking the current world record in the same contest she nearly died just two short years ago. Will Jessea reemerge from the abyssal depths with the gold medal this time around?
2020 Freshpitch Silver Prize
CONTENT
This was a documentary film. Kiarostam, an Iranian film master, visited China four times during the last two years of his life to make preparations for Hangzhouzhilian, a feature film. In Hangzhou, he became a good friend of Wendy, a cleaner, and started to shoot a film based on her story. However, Wendy suddenly refused to share her story with Kiarostami and said:“ You have your story and I have mine ”.
After Kiarostami passed away, I went to Teheran and Hangzhou time and again to visit the people related to this film and collect the clues about Hang. Gradually,Wendy and I became good friends. She was willing to open her mind and tell me the story she didn't share with Kiarostami . Accordingly her life was changed . Despite the regret in Hang, Wendy ' s story still continued long after the death of Kiarostami… Therein, I seemed to see the true ending of HANGZHOUZHILIAN .
2020 Freshpitch Bronze Prize
CONTENT
In Mr. Zu's past 86 years, he has done nothing else but grazing cattle by the river every day. Last spring, he started to feel the age and couldn't work as hard anymore. He asked his daughter, Chunqin, who works as migrant worker in a big city, to come back and graze with him. Chunqin was not keen on this tough yet low-paid job. She wants Zu to sell all his cattle. Zu compromised at the end and agreed to sell most of them,except for one very old cow.
It snowed heavily that winter. Chunqin broke her leg and got hospitalised. Zu's cattle were soon starved because no one was there to help delivering crops to feed them.One day, they broke free and ran away...
2020 Freshpitch Bronze Prize
CONTENT
Guoguo is a founder of a film and television company dedicated to serve hearing impaired persons. The company has been engaged in the low-end animation processing. During the COVID epidemic, the company's future has been uncertain due to the sharp reduction of upstream orders. However, Guoguo decides to tackle the trouble head-on and create the 3D sign language translation software, an original product for persons with hearing impairment that aims to remove obstacles between hearing impaired persons and others. Therefore, a normal hearing person, a hard of hearing person, and Guoguo's husband who has been jobless since the epidemic have formed a special team. Then a world of hearing impaired persons, and the story about equality and dreams and have unfolded.
2020 Freshpitch Bronze Prize
CONTENT
A wildlifesaving documentary series chronicling the changing fortunes of rare Species that are endangered in the wild including Snow-leopard, Chinese Pangolin, Sky-walker gibbon and Crested Ibis. Their cases serve as a frame of reference for human self-correction. "Remember Me" follows the process of the extinction of animal species that have been reduced in number by human across Eurasia, as well as the stories of zoologists, veterinarians and scientific and technical engineers who have fought alone to save and study them.
CN