These are the winners of the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival which took place from September 22 – 29, 2022.

International Competition

Grand Prize

The land where the largest massacre of civilians occurred since World War II. The scars of the Bosnian civil war still remain in Srebrenica. The pain of the past seeps into every landscape layer by layer. It is seen not only in the abandoned buildings or factories along the river, but also in those who remain there. Disturbed Earth captures the landscapes, sounds of Srebrenica and interviews with survivors and reminds us that Srebrenica is reality of today and reality of our own with. (DMZ Docs 2022)

Special Jury Award

Nestor, Aaron, Benjamin and Rafiki study economics at the University of Bangui in the Central African Republic. The four friends contemplate their reality and future as they struggle in an environment rampant with poor facilities, corruption and incompetence. Rafiki holds the camera and captures everyday life of himself and his friends. His portraits of young people in the Central African Republic do not consist solely of frustration. It also contains the dreams and passions of young people for a better future. (DMZ Docs 2022)

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Asian Competition Grand Prize

Two women open a makeshift clinic in Rakhine State in western Myanmar. It is to help deliveries of Rohingya women who are suffering persecution as an ethnic minority in Myanmar. The two midwives, a Buddhist and a Muslim, spend five years together. The film documents the reality of Myanmar’s society, where political chaos and racism intensify during that time, and a portrait of two women who struggle for coexistence despite having different backgrounds and never give upon their hopes and dreams. (DMZ Docs 2022)

Korean Competition Grand Prize

Two farmers, Yoon Gyun-sang and Jang Gwi-deok, have been receiving and planting their own seeds for decades. Farming changed their body and they have continued to work for several decades with the changed body as a matter of course. With the changes in their surroundings, however, their labor became special. There are people who are looking for the seeds that their special labor have been keeping. They may bring back to us the time that we took for granted, the precious time of seeds that constantly changes but lasts.​ (DMZ Docs 2022)

Short Competition

Grand Prize

Vietnamese female workers are divided into three shifts in this dormitory, day, night, and late-night shift. Some of them are preparing a strike: making sign boards, props, and practicing the action play. However the dorm manager persuades them to give up, and threatens them with repatriation. A newbie just moves in tonight, and witnesses the conflict with her cold eyes… Here, they exchange their experiences, culminating in a unique upheaval.​ (DMZ Docs 2022)

Special Jury Award

There are women who suffer from an unknown disease that causes unexplained pain. The film conveys their physical, mental, and social suffering through narration citing various texts. The director says that the narration is “a structure made of sentences collected” that she encountered during her research.​ (DMZ Docs 2022)

Brave New Docs Award

There are five grandmothers, four of whom went to Jeonju Prison due to the Jeju 4.3. All of them were young people around the age of 20 at the time of the incident in 1948. The outline of the incident is formed when hearing the experiences of those who were sent to prison without trial particularly as women. The audience feels indescribable emotions by the fact that they have lived on despite what they had gone through, things that are just too much for a human being to bear.(DMZ Docs 2022)

Beautiful New Docs Award

In the warehouse of the Democratization Movement Commemoration, a bundle of films with the words ‘Soohae Film’ is found. The filmmakers trace the photographic groups shown in the film period to try to restore it. However, as the film gets closer to full restoration, deleted history gradually appears. A world where the laborers are fighting the system made by the main protestors of Democratic movement who became the president or people with vested rights. As the competing phase reappears, the landscape is gradually revealed. ​ (DMZ Docs 2022)

Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award

‘Chanel’ in Myeong-dong in the 1970s was the secret hideout for Butches and Femmes. In 1996, young lesbians opened Korea’s first lesbian bar, Lesbos. In the early 2000s, queer teens looking for a community gathered in a small park in Sinchon. Myung-woo, who ran ‘Lesbos’ nearby, was still guarding the place 20 years later. As the coronavirus crisis hit, the bar has lost its customers. Will she able to protect the place this time?​ (DMZ Docs 2022)

Audience Award

Next Award

Youth Docs Infinite Imagination Award

“Unpaid child services are child abuse.” This is a phrase written on the Bad Fathers website. Child support is a duty all parents must fulfill. But some of them are facing issues with such simple obligation. We call these people non-payers or “bad fathers.” Park’s biological father also falls into the category as a “bad father.” To find a solution to his problem, Park starts talking to people. ​(DMZ Docs 2022)

Youth Docs Beyond Creativity Award

The Mugunghwa-Ho has been running all over Korea for half a century. Now that long journey is about to end. Two men with fond memories of the Mugunghwa-Ho tells stories about it. Because it starts operating at dawn, the Mugunghwa-Ho slowly parts out of the platform at night. It’s time to say a final farewell to the soon be gone Mugunghwa. ​ (DMZ Docs 2022)

Youth Docs Young Perspective Award

I ask people if they know what a Bechdel Test is. Then, I cook up their reactions.​ (DMZ Docs 2022)

Most people will be familiar with the experience of fervently loving someone in their lives. There are people who devote all they have to the things they love. I seek to explore their lives as someone(or something)’s stans(mania or enthusiast) I will ask all about their stanning practices, how they started to be someone’s bias, why they stan for someone, and what that life means to them. If you can call it that, it is indeed, love.​ (DMZ Docs 2022)

Our home does not have an egalitarian family culture. My mother takes care of all the ancestral rites that even her children disregarded and still celebrates the birthday of her in-laws. The unbalanced ratio of housework made me ask the question of why housework is mostly done by women. My grandfather and other members of the family were not aware of the sexism at all. Seeing the gender discrimination that permeates naturally, I felt the need for proper housework division.​​ (DMZ Docs 2022)