By Virginia Pittaro | Director of Global Partnerships
The 2025 Edition of Cinema Across Borders (CAB) continues its journey, delivering the transformative power of global impact storytelling to communities worldwide!
In collaboration with local leaders, human rights forums, film festivals, and grassroots organizations, SIMA’s year-round traveling series brings award-winning films to diverse communities to spark meaningful conversations, build coalitions, and inspire change around the issues that matter most.
Across Africa and beyond, this season of Cinema Across Borders unfolded as a tapestry of community gatherings, youth engagement, and powerful documentary storytelling. In Nigeria, Change a Child Community, Story Mi, Park Radio, LEAP Africa, and Yobe State University hosted screenings of The Happiness Shop, Made in Ethiopia, Only If the Baby Cries, Into The Blue, Between Earth and Sky, Zurawski vs. Texas, Waking Up in Silence, A Hand to Hold, Burnt Country, and Radio Dadaab—igniting conversations on global citizenship, filmmaking, and climate advocacy, and transforming schools, festivals, and community hubs and local radios into spaces of dialogue and reflection. In South Africa, DocLOVE brought films such as Ifine (Beauty), Igualada, One Million Experiments, Only If the Baby Cries, and Between the Rains to audiences in Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, and Makhanda, where students, residents, and journalists explored themes of democracy, identity, and the climate crisis through thoughtful post-screening exchanges with filmmakers.
This momentum reached across continents. In Bangladesh, Historias en Kilómetros carried Testimony of Ana to the International Community Film Festival, demonstrating how local stories transcend borders. In November, screenings facilitated by DocLOVE in South Africa and by Park Radio and Yobe State University in Nigeria continued to channel community energy toward healing, hope, and critical reflection—particularly following moments of social tension and environmental upheaval.
December brought a powerful close to the year. Africa’s Voices of Change Film Festival presented Between the Rains, Only If the Baby Cries, and Ifine (Beauty), centering youth activism and community storytelling. In Kenya, Spice Without Borders hosted a rich lineup—from Grey Power to Samuel and the Ligh—sparking intergenerational dialogue on reforestation and climate resilience. In Cambodia, META HOUSE organized an expansive five-day program reaching nearly 450 attendees, bringing visibility to the rights of women and people with disabilities through a diverse slate of 12 award-winning documentaries.
Together, these screenings affirmed the profound and unifying power of film—cultivating empathy, amplifying local voices, and turning shared stories into catalysts for collective action.
Thank you so much for enabling us to continue transforming witnesses into agents of change through Cinema Across Borders!
With warmth and gratitude from all of us at SIMA.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
