TRANSFORMING CHILDREN’S LIVES

As the Grand Prize Winner, Speak. will receive a $25,000 prize package, which includes a cash award and impact campaign services from Picture Motion, the leading marketing and advocacy agency for social impact films. The award will be officially presented during Shine Global’s 20th Anniversary Celebration on September 30, 2025 in New York City, honoring two decades of impactful storytelling and a dedication to improving children’s lives through the power of film.

Speak., a feature documentary directed by Jennifer Tiexiera and Guy Mossman, follows five bold young voices on a high-stakes journey to win “the Super Bowl of public speaking,” the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) Championships in the Original Oratory category. Future stars such as Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and the film’s own executive producer Josh Gad, all participated as teens.

Shine Global is proud to announce that venture capitalist and entrepreneur Jesse Draper will receive its 2025 Shining Example Award at Shine Global’s 20th Anniversary Celebration. Jesse Draper has directed a meaningful and growing amount of capital toward startups that support families, particularly through her firm Halogen Ventures. Since founding it in 2015, she has overseen three venture funds that invest in women-led consumer and family- focused businesses. Fund III ($30M), closed in June 2025, explicitly targets the “Future of Family” sector—including childcare, educational technology, family-tech, youth services, and household well-being.

Shine Global announced the Zimbabwean short film “Rise,” written and directed by Jessica J. Rowlands and produced by Joe Njagu, has been honored with the Shine Global Children’s Resilience Short Film Award at the 2025 Indy Shorts International Film Festival. This $2,500 prize is given to a short film at the festival that sheds light on the challenges faced by children and their remarkable strength. 

Nantucket Film Festival and Shine Global announced that the feature film DJ Ahmet has been honored with the Shine Global Children’s Resilience in Screenwriting Award.

Written and directed by ​​Georgi M. Unkovski, the film follows Ahmet, a 15-year-old boy from a remote Yuruk village in North Macedonia, who finds refuge in music while navigating his father’s expectations, a conservative community, and his first experience with love — a girl already promised to someone else.

Shine Global is proud to announce Comparsa as the 2025 winner of the Children’s Resilience Award for Documentary, in partnership with Sheffield DocFest, the UK’s leading documentary festival and one of the world’s most influential markets for documentary projects.

Making its world premiere at Sheffield DocFest and directed by Vickie Curtis and Doug Anderson, Comparsa is a stirring portrait of two teen sisters in Ciudad Peronia, Guatemala who, in the wake of their friends murder and a backdrop of unchecked violence against women and girls, stage a carnival street parade and public performance as a protest. Through their courageous, art-driven resistance, they fight for the safety and freedom of women and girls and a new way for their community to come together.

Shine Global is thrilled to share that Anuja has been nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 97th Academy Awards.

Anuja, crafted by husband-and-wife team Adam J. Graves (writer/director) and Suchitra Mattai (producer), tells a stirring tale of two sisters struggling to find joy and opportunity in a world intent on their exploitation and exclusion. This powerful short follows Anuja, a precocious nine-year-old orphan who works in a back-alley garment factory alongside her older sister Palak, when she is suddenly faced with a rare opportunity that will determine the fate of her future and family. The film can soon be seen worldwide on Netflix.