AIDC Wraps for 2025

Held from Sunday 2 March to Wednesday 5 March at ACMI in Melbourne / Naarm, and officially concluding Friday 7 March with the completion of a two-day online international marketplace, AIDC 2025 saw 782 Australian and international documentary and factual practitioners participate in a vibrant program of sessions, business and networking.

With 686 delegates attending in-person during the four days of the main conference, AIDC’s home of ACMI – as well as auxiliary Fed Square venues Zinc, The Edge and Koorie Heritage Trust – welcomed an array of enthusiastic Australian and international nonfiction screen and audio creatives, commissioners, distributors, funding bodies, grants and foundation representatives from around the world.

Participants representing 26 countries accessed a program featuring 120 speakers in over 60 sessions, pitches, screenings and events. In addition, 200 projects were pitched across all AIDC initiatives and 676 structured meetings were held during the in-person conference and online international marketplace.

In the lead-up to and during the event, AIDC’s industry development partnerships also unlocked over $250,000 in project and professional development funding, awards and prizes.

“AIDC’s 2025 Future Telling theme focused on the future of the documentary and factual sector from where we find ourselves in the present to create a forum that not only explored what is on the horizon but also created a dialogue for us to actively shape the future we want to see for ourselves and our communities,” said AIDC CEO & Creative Director, Natasha Gadd.

“Through our industry marketplace program, we connected 200 projects in development with local and international buyers through pitches and meetings resulting in a record 676 meetings. And thanks to our industry partners, this year we unlocked over $250,000 to bolster the sector and drive new projects which we can’t wait to track over the coming years.“

The AIDC team would like to express our boundless gratitude to all collaborating partners and every person who attended and participated in AIDC 2025.

AIDC 2025 began on Sunday 3 March with a number of Innovation strand highlights, including sessions on AI, co-creation, and tech-based impact strategies. The day included Herzog in the Machine: Piotr Winiewicz and Finding Humanity in an AI-generated Documentary (presented by VicScreen), featuring the Polish director in conversation about his AI-scripted hybrid documentary, About a Hero; Hybrid Documentary & Co-Creation: The Making of The Wolves Always Come at Night, with Australian director Gabrielle Brady and Mongolian producer Ariunaa Tserenpil; and The ‘Censored’ Collection: The Story Behind the $55 Million NFT Impact Project That Helped Free Assange (presented by ACMI), in which documentary producer (Ithaka) and brother of Julian Assange, Gabriel Shipton, discussed working with artist Pak on their successful crypto art impact project. 

Inspired by the 2025 theme, Future Telling: New Horizons in Documentary & Factual Storytelling, further session highlights throughout the program included The Cinema of Documentary: Creative Producing with Oscar®-winner Shane Boris (presented by VicScreen), in which the producer of Navalny, Fire of Love and Hollywoodgate discussed his approach to collaboration; Lens on the Self: Black Box Diaries and Shiori Ito (presented by VicScreen), featuring the Japanese journalist and filmmaker in a frank conversation with Santilla Chingaipe, and A Cultural Reckoning: Truth-Telling, Documentary Cinema and First Nations Resilience in Sugarcane (presented by Screenwest), in which Julian Brave Noisecat – the first North American First Nations filmmaker with a project nominated for an Academy Award® – and co-director Emily Kassie, explored the intricacies of their lauded investigative documentary. 

Delegates also congregated in high numbers for sessions like Short Circuit: Crafting Powerful Documentaries that Resonate Globally (presented by City of Melbourne), Broadcast Horizons: Redefining TV in a Digital Age, featuring speakers from ABC, SBS, Nine Network and Network Ten / Paramount; Harnessing the Creator Economy with YouTube (presented by Screen Queensland); adventure doc filmmaking session High Risk, High Reward: Filming in Extreme Conditions; Global Perspectives: Meet the Internationals (presented by Screen NSW), in which AIDC delegates got to hear from attending international decision makers; and A Vision for the Future of Documentary, an interactive panel session inviting perspectives on ways to shape the sector for the better.  

Sessions probing the Australian public broadcasting environment continued to draw large audiences, including panels Do Look Back: How History Docs are the Way Forward with SBS and Factual Forecast: Invention, Innovation and Challenging Form with SBS (both presented by SBS), and Fast Track to Commission: Secrets of Getting Your Show Away with the ABC and Not Your Usual Suspects: True Crime on the ABC (both presented by ABC). 

There was also significant attendance at wide-ranging sector body and screen agency panels like Dokpolitik: The State of Play for Policy and Advocacy (presented by Screenrights), featuring speakers from Documentary Australia, Screen Producers Australia, Screen Australia and Screenrights; Accessing Philanthropic Funds Locally and Globally (presented by Documentary Australia); Resilience Beyond the Market: Community Distribution with Impact (presented by Screen Territory); Demystifying the Complex World of International Co-Productions (presented by Screen Tasmania); Distribution and Audience Futures for Feature Docs (presented by VicScreen), and Embarking on the Journey to a Successful Development Process (presented by Screen Australia). 

Sessions focused on current and future industry concerns also brought critical discussions into the spotlight, like Will You Regret Creating an AI Clone?: Shell Game and Our Relationship with the Machine, featuring podcaster Evan Ratliff; Getting Important Stories Out of Impossible Places, which featured a live connection with speakers Ahmed Hassouna and Alaa Damo in Gaza; Levelling the Playing Field: Celebrating Trailblazers in Sports Docs (presented by Screen Queensland), plus A Deep Dive Into Visual Research and Archive Storytelling with Elizabeth Klinck and Archives and the Implications of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (presented by Getty Images), both featuring esteemed Canadian visual researcher and archive producer Elizabeth Klinck, whose attendance was supported by the Consulate General of Canada in Sydney. 

Running in parallel with the main conference program, the ACMI and AIDC-presented Documented screening program also saw six well-attended showings of AIDC 2025-inspired feature documentaries and shorts, including Hollywoodgate (produced by Shane Boris), Black Box Diaries (by Shiori Ito), About a Hero (directed by Piotr Winiewicz), The Wolves Always Come at Night (co-created by the protagonists and director Gabrielle Brady), Sugarcane (directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie), and a ‘Future Telling’-themed selection of short docs curated by The Guardian.

The 10th Anniversary FACTory International Pitching Showcase, presented by VicScreen, saw 15 projects with teams representing 10 countries pitch to 30 decision makers across the Central Showcase, New Talent Showcase, and Rough Cut Showcase categories. 

Marking a new attendance record for AIDC’s centrepiece pitch, an audience of almost 300 delegates packed The Edge at Fed Square on the morning of Tuesday 4 March for the Central Showcase. 

Projects to secure FACTory pitch prizes in the form of international marketplace access included Atomic Paradise (Australia), Sunny Side of the Doc Prize, France, and Doc Edge Prize, New Zealand, In Focus (Australia), Dok Leipzig Prize, Germany, Testimony (Australia), Sheffield Doc Fest Prize, UK, The Shape of Blue (Canada, Japan), Visions du Réel Prize, Switzerland, The Myth of Monsters (Singapore, Malaysia) DMZ Docs Industry Prize, South Korea, and Doc Edge Prize, New Zealand, and Restless Farewell (China), Docs by the Sea Prize, Indonesia. 

AIDC’s curated meetings marketplace, Cut to the Chase, saw 579 meetings arranged for 151 documentary and factual projects with 100 industry decision makers, continuing to leverage access to international executives through the AIDC market’s in-person and online format. 

Cut to the Chase also included two of AIDC 2025’s high-profile partnered pitches, with 11 projects selected to take part in The Post Lounge Doc Pitch, and six projects in the Shark Island Foundation Feature Docs Pitch. 

Four projects each received a share in $80,000 worth of development funding from Shark Island Foundation: Greatness Unknown – $15,000, The Last Nomads of Pintupi – $20,000, Marliya – $20,000, The Act of Dying – $25,000, with project The Class of Ashley also invited to apply for a production grant. 

Meanwhile, three projects shared in $35,000 worth of post-production investment from The Post Lounge and $5,000 of additional research development support through their production arm Orange Entertainment Co: The Sanctuary – $15,000 towards character reel, Gaslit – $10,000 towards GFX, and Paid to Please – $5,000 towards perfecting audio interviews with reenactments, plus $5,000 towards research and development support.

The 2025 marketplace featured the second year of AIDC’s slate-pitching initiative – The Showroom – which saw 10 production companies pitching multiple projects in development to 14 high-level buyers representing international organisations in a run of 53 meetings.

Capping marketplace activity for the year, a special Australian x Canadian Co-Production Market took place, matching the seven members of this year’s Canadian Delegation, presented by the Consulate General of Canada in Sydney with the support of Telefilm and the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO), in 44 meetings with Australian producers seeking co-production opportunities.

The AIDC 2025 program and attendees continue to reflect the diversity of the Australian documentary and factual community, with women representing 56% of total registered delegates, and over 80 participants in AIDC’s Indigenous Creators Program for First Nations practitioners, curated in 2025 by AIDC First Nations Producers Devina McPherson and Laurrie Mansfield. 

AIDC’s Indigenous Creators Program, supported for the first time in 2025 by Indigenous Business Australia, is now in its seventh year and remains the only program of its type in Australia, programmed specifically by and for First Nations practitioners in documentary and factual. This year’s sessions included. a Yarning Circle (presented by ABC Indigenous),  The Future of First Nations Funding (presented by Screen NSW) featuring First Nations storytellers from both Australia and Canada, and Our Craft Our Way (presented by VicScreen), with the participation of Julian Brave NoiseCat, co-director of the Oscar®-nominated documentary Sugarcane.

The 2025 Indigenous Creators Program also saw the debut of the Indigenous Creators Pitch, (presented by Indigenous Business Australia), which saw four projects pitched live to decision makers seeking Indigenous-led stories with a $5,000 cash prize on offer presented by AIDC. On the day of the AIDC Awards, the cash prize was doubled by an anonymous donor, seeing three projects share in $10,000: Crystal Love – $5,000, Hunting Tidda Style – $2,500, and Abolished – $2,500. (The fourth project in the pitch, Marliya, was awarded $20,000 in the Shark Island Feature Docs Pitch). 

Thanks to philanthropic contributions from 21 production companies, broadcasters, support organisations and individuals to AIDC’s Leading Lights fund, 48 emerging and early-career, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, global First Nations, LGBTQIA+, d/Deaf, disabled and neurodiverse, regional and remote, and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) nonfiction practitioners from across Australia were able to attend AIDC for the first time, be introduced to the sector and take part in a curated program of professional development sessions. Including a special Leading Lights Pitch, with mentoring from AFTRS and Edith Cowan University (ECU), for practitioners to hone their pitching skills on industry representatives, the program is a firmly established emblem of AIDC’s ongoing commitment to bringing new and diverse nonfiction storytellers into the community.

Announced last week during the Wednesday 5 March presentation ceremony hosted by TV Week Gold Logie-nominated television presenter and personality, Melissa Leong, in ACMI’s Cinema 1, the fifth annual AIDC Awards saw the following projects take top honours: Best Feature Documentary (with a $5,000 cash prize presented by Film Finances) – Left Write Hook, Best Documentary / Factual Series – Stuff the British Stole Series 2, Best Documentary / Factual Single – Tough Not Toxic, Best Short-Form Documentary (with a $3,000 cash prize presented by AFTRS) – MAHIKA KAI, Best Audio Documentary – This is Not a Game, and Best Interactive / Immersive Documentary – Las Awichas.

As part of the AIDC Awards presentation, the prior-announced Southern Light Award for outstanding contribution to nonfiction screen, digital and/or audio media was presented to producer Celia Tait, co-founder and managing director of Artemis Media, based in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Although the 2025 conference has ended, registered AIDC delegates can watch sessions on catch-up for another month via the AIDC Conference App. 

AIDC will continue to work to support the documentary and factual sector year-round, with another REGIONALITY one-day documentary and factual screen industry event specifically for practitioners in regional areas, an Indigenous Documentary Placement initiative with ABC launching at the end of March, new public screenings in partnership with ACMI, and a new drive for donors for the 2026 Leading Lights Fund.

Keep an eye on the AIDC eNews for news and announcements about upcoming programs, developments, and the post-conference survey.

AIDC also thanks its many industry partners – particularly VicScreen, ACMI, Screen Australia, ABC and SBS – without which this year’s event would not have been possible. 

AIDC 2025 ran 2-5 March 2025 at ACMI in Melbourne / Naarm, with an online-only international marketplace 6-7 March 2025. www.aidc.com.au

Main Image: [L-R] Ahmad Khayyali (translator), Avani Dias (ABC) and Patrick Abboud, Getting Important Stories Out of Impossible Places | Photo by Melissa Butters