2024 WINNERS OF THE 12TH ANNUAL SOCIAL IMPACT MEDIA AWARDS (SIMA 2024) ANNOUNCED

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SIMA Impact Cinema

5 min readFeb 8, 2024

LOS ANGELES (February 8, 2024) — Exit the world, enter the wild, wash your soul, dissolve your ego, reveal the illusion, meet yourself. The winners of 12th Annual International Social Impact Media Awards (SIMA 2024) teach us this: Great documentaries aren’t just art, they’re alchemy.

MEET THE WINNERS

SIMA, the non-profit impact media agency that celebrates, curates and distributes documentaries and creative media projects that advance positive social change, announced their 2024 festival winners this morning. Chosen from 54 finalists spanning 27 countries, the SIMA 2024 winners capture a delicate and raw world held together by individual experiences that will sow the seeds for social and political transformation for years to come.

SIMA 2024 Best Feature Documentary Winner and Oscar Nominee, TO KILL A TIGER, charts the emotional journey of an ordinary man thrown into extraordinary circumstances — a father whose fight for justice for his daughter who was brutally gang raped forces a social reckoning that will reverberate in his village for years. Best Editing and Best Sound Winner, BETWEEN THE RAINS, portraits a childhood caught within a traditional culture that is yet another casualty of climate change. With unprecedented and intimate access to the Turkana people, this moving coming-of-age story reveals the grave threats facing one of the world’s oldest communities.

The story of three families that reveal the reality of life with chronic illness in PAY OR DIE, is the winner of SIMA’s 2024 Systemic Change Award, a $2,500 cash prize Sponsored by The Foundation For Systemic Change. Through their stories, PAY OR DIE explores the crushing financial reality for millions of insulin-dependent Americans living with diabetes, as pharmaceutical companies push the price of this life-saving medication.

From the intimate story of Hossein (M, 30) who grew up in the city of Qom — the most restricted city in Iran — who experienced multiple sexual assaults by men, but due to stereotypes around masculinity, he never talked about it. With the support of his wife, Elahe, he now confronts the trauma in Best Short Documentary, CAN I HUG YOU?; to the fates of three families that are inextricably intertwined in a vicious cycle of violence where Israelis and Palestinians live side by side. The outpouring of love, anger and forgiveness that follows offers a glimpse of morning light in Ethos Jury Prize Winner, MOURNING IN LOD. The SIMA 2024 Winners lead us here: the tapestry of human evolution is not only sewn together through societal revolution, but individual power and transformation.

“Thank you to all the filmmakers for your unwavering dedication and courage to inspire and transform our world. We are proud and honored to champion your work.”
— Daniela Kon Lieberberg, SIMA Founder & CEO

SIMA 2024 winners take viewers on an alchemical journey; bringing audiences face-to-face with some of the world’s most eye-opening, unique and urgent perspectives — with a burgeoning hope that they too, might come to know their own power and its role in the pursuit for a more just and equitable future.

All SIMA 2024 Winners are now eligible for entry into SIMA’s global community screening series and online education platform, SIMA Academy, which reaches over 117,000 students in 100+ countries around the world.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE WINNERS

BEST DOCUMENTARY | To Kill a Tiger by Nisha Pahuja | India

BEST DIRECTOR | The Eternal Memory (La Memoria Infinita) by Maite Alberdi | Chile

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY | Eat Bitter by Ningyi Sun and Pascale Appora-Gnekindy | Central African Republic and China

BEST EDITING & BEST SOUND | Between the Rains by Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira | Kenya

SYSTEMIC CHANGE AWARD (SPONSORED BY THE FOUNDATION FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE (FSC)) | Pay or Die by Scott Alexander Ruderman and Rachael Dyer | USA

DOCUMENTARY SHORT WINNERS

BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY | میشه بغلت کنم؟ CAN I HUG YOU? by Elahe Esmaili | Iran

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY (SHORT DOCUMENTARY) | Into the Blue by Ömer Sami | Denmark

BEST EDITING (SHORT DOCUMENTARY) | Jack and Sam by Jordan Matthew Horowitz | USA

BEST DIRECTOR AND BEST SOUND (SHORT DOCUMENTARY) | Last Song from Kabul by Kevin Macdonald | Afghanistan and Portugal

DOCUMENTARY JURY PRIZES

TRANSPARENCY JURY PRIZE | Twice Colonized by Lin Alluna | Canada, Denmark, Greenland, and Sweden

STYLISTIC ACHIEVEMENT JURY PRIZE | ANHELL69 by Theo Montoya | Colombia

ETHOS JURY PRIZE | Mourning In Lod by Hilla Medalia | Israel and Palestine

LENS TO ACTION JURY PRIZE | The Barber of Little Rock by Christine Turner and John Hoffman | USA

IMPACT VIDEO WINNERS

IMPACT JURY PRIZE (SPONSORED BY MILATIDO) | ifine (beauty) by Adisa Septuri and Ebony Gilbert | Sierra Leone

INNOVATION JURY PRIZE (SPONSORED BY MILATIDO) | One Million Experiments by Caullen Hudson | USA and Puerto Rico

CREATIVE ACTIVISM AWARD | The Script by Brit Fryer and Noah Schamus | USA

HUMANITAS AWARD | This Is Where I Learned Not To Sleep by Kirsten Kelly and Anne De Mare | USA

XR + AI WINNERS

CREATIVE ADVOCACY JURY PRIZE (SPONSORED BY MILATIDO) | NOIRE (COLORED) by Pierre-Alain Giraud | France

IMMERSIVE IMPACT AWARD | Lou : Enfant (Lou : Kid) by Martine Asselin and Annick Daigneault | Canada

PRODUCTION COMPANY WINNERS

VITAL VOICES AWARD | SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION AND EMPOWERMENT PROJECTS (STEPS)

CREATIVE IMPACT AWARD | FIELD OF VISION

SPECIAL MENTIONS

DONGA by Muhannad Lamin | Libya

Samuel e a Luz (Samuel and the Light) by Vinícius Girnys | Brazil and France

Who I Am Not by Tunde Skovran | South Africa

How to Carry Water by Sasha Wortzel | USA

قناة فجأة (Suddenly TV) by Roopa Gogineni | Sudan

The Takeover by Anders Hammer | Afghanistan

MULTITUDE FILMS (Production Company)

HERO CHASER (Production Company)