Made of Truth: BFI Doc Society Short Film Fund (United Kingdom)

Since 2018, the Made of Truth: BFI Doc Society Short Film Fund (“Made of Truth”) has proudly supported 61 original, short documentaries. They’re delighted to open for a new round of funding and to discover new voices from across the UK over the next 3 years.

Core Priorities

• They will apply the following six priorities when reviewing applications. These take in the three National Lottery strategic principles as well as the outcomes identified in our National Lottery strategy. You will be asked to address some of these directly in your application to them.
  • Equity, diversity and inclusion: addressing under-representation in perspective and representation, talent and recruitment, agency and opportunities, widening the range of voices and audiences served.
  • Impact and audience: supporting projects with a strong cultural or progressive impact for audiences.
  • Talent development and progression: supporting early career filmmakers (producers, writers and directors) and projects with a reasonable proportion of early career cast and crew.
  • Risk: supporting projects that take creative risks.
  • UK-wide: increasing the number of projects and filmmakers outside London and the South East, looking at location and representation.
  • Environmental sustainability: addressing sustainability both creatively and practically.
• In addition to these BFI priorities, Doc Society has identified its own priorities as follows:
  • Open collaboration: to develop new voices, to move beyond centres of power toward a truly distributed knowledge base and field building.
  • Representing all of UK society: to ensure the Fund is representative of society. Creating opportunities for new and emerging talent to access and build relationships as they intersect with the Fund. Attracting, keeping and then building careers in documentary storytelling from across the UK.
  • Freedom of creative expression: taking smart creative risks on documentary storytelling, in ways that develop and expand the documentary form.
  • Audience right to culture: working with a range of partners to help audiences and films and non-fiction immersive projects to find each other.

What support do filmmakers receive?

• Made of Truth provides grants of up to £25,000 towards the production and post production costs of non-fiction short films or immersive projects. Each award of funding is accompanied by creative oversight by Doc Society’s film and production executive, supported by the production coordinator and business affairs executive. As well as working with filmmakers prior to and during production, they may also advise awarded filmmakers on:
  • finding screening opportunities, regionally and further afield
  • potential collaborators for the project
  • estival strategies for the finished project
  • other means to gain industry exposure.

Eligibility Criteria

• They’re looking for emerging creatives who are yet to make a non-fiction feature film (that has had professional distribution.). You may have a track record in another form or genre and are keen to make a short that helps develop your talent on the path to long-form documentary feature filmmaking, or you may have made a doc short or two already.
• Made of Truth supports projects with directors based in the UK. This nation-wide programme endeavours to help more voices in more places contribute to distinctive, original storytelling. They can only fund applicants who are over the age of 18, and who are not in full-time education.
• Made of Truth: BFI Doc Society Fund is committed to supporting a diverse community of filmmakers and working with creatives from underserved backgrounds including Ethnically diverse, Disabled, LGBTQIA+, Working class and non-filmmaking talent. They would like to hear from new storytellers from around the country and all communities and are especially keen to increase the number of projects originating outside London and from Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
• They strongly encourage Filmmakers to team up with a producer before applying, however you do not need a producer to apply as they can facilitate partnerships with producers for successful applicants.
• Successful projects will receive creative and mentorship support from the BFI Doc Society team, and relevant industry partners.

For more information, visit Ffilm Cymru Wales.