Berlinale Documentary Award and Jury

Holding Liat
by Brandon Kramer
produced by: Darren Aronofsky, Lance Kramer, Yoni Brook, Ari Handel, Justin A. Gonçalves

© Miti Films / Community of Puerto Millán-La Chorrera

©

La memoria de las mariposas (The Memory of Butterflies)
by Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski

© Julia Rodrigues

Petra Costa (Brazil)

For more than a decade, Petra Costa has been telling stories at the intersection of the personal and the political, often with a focus on her native Brazil. Her most recent documentary film Apocalypse in the Tropics celebrated its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2024. Previously, The Edge of Democracy (2019) earned her an Oscar nomination as well as the Peabody and the Independent Spirit Award. Costa's first film Elena became the most-watched documentary in Brazil after a world premiere at IDFA 2013 and was honoured at various festivals. She also co-directed the film Olmo & the Seagull (2015) with Lea Glob and was involved as a producer in films such as Ecstasy (2020) and Beba (2021).

© Andreas Bøggild Monies

Lea Glob (Denmark)

Lea Glob, born in Mariager, Denmark, studied documentary film at the National Film School of Denmark, where she graduated in 2011 with Meeting my Father Kasper Tophat. After her first short films, she co-directed the film Olmo & the Seagull with Petra Costa, which won an award in Locarno in 2015 and was shown at the IDFA. Venus, a collaboration with Mette Carla Albrechtsen, also celebrated its world premiere in Amsterdam in 2016. Glob's film Apolonia, Apolonia won the main prize at IDFA in 2022, received awards at festivals in Gothenburg, Hong Kong and Sofia as well as at CPH:DOX and was nominated for the European Film Award and made it onto the documentary shortlist at the Academy Awards.

© Shigeki Kinoshita

Kazuhiro Sōda (Japan)

Born in Ashikaga, Japan, in 1970, Kazuhiro Soda studied directing at the School of Visual Arts in New York. From Campaign (2007) and Mental (2009) to Inland Sea (2018) and Zero (2020) and most recently The Cats of Gokogu Shrine (2024), a large number of his eleven documentaries to date have been shown at the Berlinale. In addition to the Ecumenical Jury Prize in the Forum for Zero, he has already been honoured with the Peabody Award, the Marek Nowicki Award from the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and prizes at the festivals in Busan and Hong Kong. His book 'Why I Make Documentaries' has been published in Japan, as well as in English, Korean and Chinese.