Open City Documentary Festival is pleased to announce the winner of the £10,000 in development funding awarded as part of Assembly 2020, a feature documentary development lab now in its second edition. For the Open City Documentary Festival 2020 award winners, please see this page.

WINNER: GABRIELA PENA for HERE, THE SILENCE IS HEARD.

Assembly is a project-based intensive workshop for filmmakers from around the world working on their first or second feature. The workshop programme took place online between 3rd and 8th September, bringing together participants from six feature film projects for talks, workshops, and one-to-one mentoring.

The closed pitch for the £10,000 development funding took place on 10th September, and the judging panel consisted of: Chloe Trayner, Festival Director for Open City Documentary Festival and Founder of Assembly; Kristen Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of Field of Vision; Kristin Feeley, Director of Labs, Artist Support, and Creative Producing at the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program; and Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director of IDFA.

The award was granted to Here, the Silence is Heard. The director is Gabriela Pena, and the producer is Picho García.

About the awarded project, Chloe Trayner said “In Here, The Silence is Heard, the echoes of trauma reverberate resonantly across multiple generations. An intimate and profoundly personal story about family, identity, and memory in Chile, this project signals an exciting emerging voice in new Latin American cinema.”

Assembly is a development lab for creative documentaries, organised by Open City Documentary Festival. 

The participants of Assembly 2020 can be seen here. Their assigned mentors are here.

The programme is a project-based intensive workshop for international filmmakers working on their first or second feature. Participants from six selected projects attend an online programme with talks, workshops and one-to-one mentoring followed by a closed pitch for £10,000 development funding.