CCDF-17/ IFG-6 Finalists Of The Preliminary Selection

The CCDF and IFG (Investing for Good) open call received a total of 141 submissions this year, reflecting the continued vitality of documentary filmmakers responding to contemporary social issues and personal experiences through their work. Following a selection process conducted by five preliminary jurors, and with additional projects nominated by the New Taipei City Documentary Award, the IM Cross-Strait Youth Film Festival, Fresh Pitch, and New Zealand’s Doc Edge Festival and Pitch Forum, a total of 20 filmmaking teams have been selected for this year’s Chinese Documentary Forum (CCDF).

The selected projects demonstrate an impressive breadth of subjects and creative perspectives. Ranging from family trauma, historical memory, and questions of identity to climate change, urban development, and social movements, these filmmakers turn their cameras toward both the most intimate corners of personal experience and the broader realities shaped by rapid social transformation. The projects explore family secrets, political persecution and intergenerational memory, while also offering nuanced observations on youth culture, migration, labor, and housing issues.

Many of the selected works focus on individuals and communities rarely represented in mainstream narratives: traditional craftspeople, arborists, foreign missionaries, desert-dwelling ethnic groups, teenage lion dance performers in rural funeral troupes, a young monk stepping into secular life, and children discovering new ways of seeing the world through photography. Together, these diverse and distinctive stories reflect contemporary documentary filmmaking’s enduring curiosity about people, place, and society.

From July to September, the selected teams will participate in a series of online and in-person workshops in preparation for CCDF-17, which will take place in Taipei from September 18–20. During the forum, filmmakers will present their projects to international buyers, festival programmers, fund representatives, and industry decision-makers, seeking opportunities for co-production, financing, and distribution partnerships.

Now entering its 17th edition, CCDF continues to serve as an important platform for exchange and professional development within the Chinese-language documentary community. Beyond supporting projects with international potential, CCDF is equally committed to fostering works that engage thoughtfully with the social realities and historical moments from which they emerge. These stories, still in the process of becoming, will enter into dialogue with the international documentary community and continue their journey toward wider audiences and broader markets.

CCDF-17 / IFG-6 Invited Projects from Partner Organizations

New Taipei City Documentary Award

• Firstborn Daughter, Firstborn Son

• Seeing is Believing (Original title: Seeing is Missing)

IM Moments Film Festival Selection:

• AI·DAD

Fresh Pitch Selection:

• Where We Belong

Doc Edge Selection:

• The Eternal City

*This order is based on the stroke count of the first character of the original proposal’s title.