CHANGE Co-Production Training Programme: Selection Announcement for 2025/2026

CHANGE is a collaboration between CPH:DOX, the world’s leading documentary film festival supporting independent and innovative filmmaking, EAVE, one of Europe’s leading training, development, and networking organisation for producers, and IMS (International Media Support), a non-profit organisation working to promote journalism and documentary film to reduce conflict, strengthen democracy and facilitate dialogue.

The CHANGE programme seeks to increase equality and access in the international film market by fostering inter-regional co-productions. It connects filmmakers, producers, and projects from the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries with global film professionals at CPH:DOX, creating opportunities for collaboration and elevating diverse voices on the international stage.

To IMS programme manager Henrik Underbjerg each new round of CHANGE is a motivation boost: “To make co-production a practice of equality and shared authorship and to see filmmakers from across the region shape stories together, exchange methods, and enter the international arena with confidence is deeply rewarding. These collaborations are acts of creativity and democracy — and the projects emerging from them seek real impact, both within their societies and in the wider film community,” he says.

The programme aims to improve the participants’ skills in refining their projects’ content, core themes and goals. It also focuses on strengthening their abilities in regional and international collaboration and co-production, and navigating the financing structures and the production environment. By the end of the programme, participants are ready to encounter the international market and present their projects on a global platform during CPH:DOX 2026.

The selected projects in the fifth round explore compelling new stories from the region, ranging from large-scale political narratives to intimate and personal stories. The projects offer nuanced perspectives and diverse artistic approaches, showcasing the talent of this new cohort of filmmakers who are confronting some of the most pressing challenges of our time with creativity and courage. 

CHANGE – Co-production training course will open in Chisinau, Moldova in November 2025 and will combine masterclasses and group work sessions, as well as individual meetings for the 8 selected producer-director teams. The same participants will continue to work together in the second workshop in January 2026, again in Chisinau, Moldova. The programme will culminate in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 2026 with a third workshop hosted by the National Film School of Denmark and the presentation of the projects to the international industry during CPH:DOX.

The selected projects are:

3 Daughters, prod. & dir. Ana Gherciu, Moldova

10 Things I Hate about My Cousin, prod. Ana Kvichidze, dir. Nino Lekishvili, Georgia

Is There Sex after the USSR?, prod. Sona Margaryan, dir. Lilit Movsisyan, Armenia

Life on Mars, prod. Karina Simonyan, dir. Mery Aghakhanyan, Armenia

My Home, prod. Nijat Dadashov, dir. Ulviyya Ahmadova, Azerbaijan

My School is Seized, prod. Oleksandr Ivanov, dir. Halyna Lavrinets, Ukraine

Total Mess, prod. Kateryna Yahodka, dir. Oleksandra Horiienko, Ukraine

Sounds of Revolution, prod. & dir. Nikoloz Bezhanishvili, Georgia

THE PARTNERSHIP BEHIND CHANGE

CHANGE is initiated and funded by IMS (International Media Support) through the New Democracy Fund. 

IMS is a non-profit organisation working to promote journalism and documentary film to strengthen the capacity of media to reduce conflict, strengthen democracy and facilitate dialogue. Our work is geared towards helping locally-based public interest media operating in armed conflicts, humanitarian crises and rapid political change, both positive and negative, to provide the public and civic organisations with public interest content they can trust and use. We work in more than 40 countries across four continents with a staff of about 170 people.

EAVE is a professional training, project development and networking organisation for audiovisual producers. Founded in 1988, our objectives are to provide professional training opportunities and to bring producers from different regions of the world together with the aim of facilitating co-production relationships. We believe that the support of independent voices, creative imagination and culturally driven companies within the global media industries is an urgent necessity in the 21st century. Through our work we aim to contribute towards the creation of strong networks of producers and to encourage the exchange of knowledge and skills which will strengthen independent production across the world.

CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, is a world leading documentary film festival supporting independent and innovative filmmaking and presenting the best and brightest in contemporary non-fiction film. The festival is known and widely respected for radically changing the documentary landscape with a focus on challenging the genre with cross over to other art forms, and for advancing art as an active voice in civil society. Annually presenting approx. 200 films, the annual festival’s audience has grown to more than 125,000, and our industry platform, championing high-end cinematic and hybrid filmmaking welcomes annually nearly 2,000 industry professionals from a wide variety of sectors across creative documentary, hybrid non-fiction, visual arts, journalism and science. CPH:INDUSTRY includes a pitch platform CPH:FORUM, CPH:MARKET services for finished films, a talent development programme for immersive media CPH:LAB, and a programme for emerging filmmakers INTRO:DOX.

All organisations wish to thank the National Film School of Denmark and Millennium Docs Against Gravity for their collaboration.