Pülö; Bloodstream of the Kirike wins the Sunny Side of the Doc award at Movies that Matter 2023


Scouting new talents is part of the Sunny Side of the Doc DNA. Throughout the year, our team travels and takes part in the most prestigious markets and film festivals to bring its expertise and spot new talents from the four corners of the globe.
This week, Sunny Side of the Doc was invited to present the Sunny Side of the Doc award to one of the projects listed in the Take on Film & Impact programme at Movies That Matter 2023. The team wins two free passes for Sunny Side of the Doc 2023.

 

About Movies that Matter 2023

Movies that Matter was taking place from 24 March to 1 April in La Hague, The Netherlands. Along with the festival, Movies that Matter Industry Days gathered the industry professionals around workshops, panel discussions, pitches and masterclasses on film and human rights.

On this occasion, a selection of documentary film projects on human rights and/or social or environmental issues were chosen to take part in Movies that Matter’s Take on Film & Impact 2023. 

The teams behind the projects could attend both group and individual coaching sessions led by experienced impact producers and filmmakers in order to (further) develop their impact goals and strategies for their films. The focus was on improving the projects’ impact pitches which were meant to be presented in front of a panel of impact producers, distributors, sales agents, NGOs and other organisations outside the film field related to the outreach goals of the projects.

About the winner

Pülö; Bloodstream of the Kirike

Produced by: Christina Ifubaraboye, Elisa Mereghetti
Directed by: Christina Ifubaraboye
Country: Nigeria, Italy

Logline: “Pülö means blood and oil. Oil is the blood of Kirike, it keeps the people going. Blood is the stream of life, what happens when this stream is poisoned? The lives of the Kirike people, who rely on the island’s water, are under threat.”

Project's team

Christina Ifubaraboye, producer, is the founder and creative director of IMBUU, with a professional background in media and public affairs. Ifubaraboye holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from the University of Hertfordshire, and is well versed in numerous fields within the arts, finance and communication. She is also working on her first film that focuses on her hometown. Her interests are film, popular culture, media and the power it possesses in the digital age, while her focus is on challenging commonly misconstrued narratives in society.

Elisa Mereghetti, producer, started working as producer in 1984 at the RAI Corporation in New York, where she participated in numerous documentaries filmed across the US, Australia and Central America. Her first documentary is Mother of the Waters (1988), on the cult of the sea goddess Yemanjà in Afro-Brazilian culture. In 1990 she directed Becoming a Woman in Okrika, about the initiation of adolescent girls in the Niger Delta with American anthropologist Judith Gleason. Co-founder of production company ETHNOS, she has directed dozens of documentaries. Her films have received important awards and have been broadcast by numerous Italian and foreign broadcasters.