ITFFA announces 2022 award winners

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ITFFA aims to honour the best tourism films and documentaries from all over the world and stimulate the national and African audio-visual industry development. Its thematic categories cover different tourism segments, such as destinations, products, and services. The festival’s fourth edition drew 315 entries from 55 countries. A diverse jury panel, which brought together professionals with expertise in marketing, tourism, and audio-visual, was dedicated to evaluating the audio-visual productions and selecting the winners.

The festival is organised in cooperation with the International Committee of Tourism Film Festival (CIFFT) in conjunction with the City of Cape Town. For the first time, the ITFFA international winners received points that grant access to the CIFFT Ranking List, which will define the World’s Best Tourism Films of the year.

Award winners

In the DOC&TV section, 'Saving Seals' (South Africa), produced by the conservation filmmaker and photographer Steve Benjamin, received the Grand Prix.

The short film explores the history of the seal disentanglement program at the V&A Waterfront and the new technology enabling seals that cannot be helped through other means to be reached and disentangled.

'Why choose Porto & North of Portugal for your event? The Majestic Adventures of Ofelia de Souza' (Portugal) was acclaimed with the Tourism International Grand Prix. The promotional video produced by New Light Pictures for Porto And North Of Portugal Tourism Board presents this MICE destination of excellence, capturing the viewers’ attention with the magnetic character Ofelia de Souza. This is the second Grand Prix achieved by Ofelia in the CIFFT Circuit 2022.

'Explore Uganda - The Pearl of Africa' (Uganda) was honoured as the Tourism Africa Grand Prix. The promotional video produced for Explore Uganda invites the viewers to awaken their senses to the beauty, the natural sites, tasty food, warm people, and all the unique things that only can be experienced in this impressive land.

Festival highlights

The festival programme included masterclasses where themes related to filming techniques, elements of digital tourism campaigns, gearing for filming, and funding procurement was presented by renowned specialists.

One of the highlights was the masterclass "The Ins and Outs of Drones in Filming" by FC Hamman, an award-winning director with relevant expertise in aerial cinematography, who has worked for Universal, Disney, the BBC, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and many major advertising agencies.

Additionally, conferences were held on "Creating an Effective Destination Promotional Video", "Cape Town and the Western Cape – Africa’s Leading Film Destination", and "The Role of Film Commissions".

Another relevant festival initiative was the Young Creative Student Challenge 2022, a competition where local students had the opportunity of creating short tourism videos with the support of audio-visual professionals and being evaluated for their work.