Doc Edge Rei Foundation Film Fund

April 2019 - December 2021

Aotearoa New Zealand

The Doc Edge Rei Foundation Film Fund is aimed at supporting documentary filmmakers to produce youth-targeted films. Photograph by Jovaughn Stephens.

Doc Edge Rei Foundation Film Fund

April 2019 - December 2021

Aotearoa New Zealand

For three years between 2019-2021, Rei Foundation worked with Doc Edge Film Festival to make quality documentaries more accessible to young people in New Zealand – our rangatahi. We feel that documentaries can be powerful tools to open young minds and encourage seeing the world with new eyes.

The Doc Edge Schools programme makes screenings available for free to school groups in Wellington and Auckland, and features “relaxed screenings” aimed at students with different abilities. Doc Edge Schools on Demand is a streaming service available to schools all over New Zealand and in parts of the Pacific. The programme for these offerings is made up of school-age-appropriate films from the general Doc Edge programme. However, over the years, Doc Edge has noticed that there is a dearth of films made specifically with younger audiences in mind.

With this challenge in mind, Rei Foundation in partnership with Doc Edge launched the Doc Edge Rei Foundation Rangatahi Film Fund, an innovative new fund for short documentaries tailored to younger audiences.

This fund was the first of its kind in the world, and aimed to fund four short documentaries over the next year. Filmmakers awarded with funding were further rewarded with a premiere screening at the following year's Doc Edge Festival.

Rei Foundation sees this fund as a positive step in our joint efforts with Doc Edge to develop a deeper and broader pool of youth-focused documentaries for local and international audiences.

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