These new British documentary awards have three categories: The Green Award, The Youth Jury Award and The Innovation Award.

it’s the first time the Grierson Trust has given awards in Sheffield. After wading through an impressive number of submissions, the jury finally made their decision.

The winner of The Green Award, a single documentary that has contributed to the climate change debate, is Davis Guggenheim’s "An Inconvenient Truth" the acclaimed environmental doc linked to Al Gore.

The Innovation Award a documentary that exhibits innovation in style or content was awarded to Mark Craig’s "Talk to Me" a quirky documentary about voicemail messages.

The Youth Jury Award, the award recognizes films that are engaging for young audiences and was chosen by a jury of young people aged 16-18 years, chaired by a member of the Grierson Trust. After much deliberation, the jury chose "We Are Together" a moving story about orphans living in South Africa and their passionate for music.

Spokesperson for the youth jury said: 'The films moved and inspired us and taught us something about other young people in parallel cultures to our own. We never imagined that we would be able to empathize and relate so strongly to the young people who appeared in Baghdad High. For these reasons, we would like to recommend the film. However, no film touched us as much or made as great an impact as the winning film "We Are Together."'

Heather Croall, festival director said: ‘The awards have been a tremendous success. The quality of the entries was high, making it a hard job for the jury. The winning films represent innovative methods of production and storytelling and capture the imagination of a youth audience.’

Roger Graef, patron of the Grierson Trust is delighted with the response: 'The festival is an ideal place to celebrate the achievements in documentaries amongst a talented collection of peers. Who have all devoted themselves to using documentaries to inform the world about what’s going on in our immediate horizons. The winners are a strong field of candidates that reflect that concern vividly.'

The 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest was the most success yet with over 1200 delegates traveling from all over the world to attend the 5-day event.

1236 delegates descended on Sheffield this year - exceeding all our expectations! The atmosphere was electric with many sessions and screenings full to bursting - in particular, the Who's Who session was packed with people standing at the back and Kim Longinotto's interview one of the hottest tickets.
The Friday night party was enormous with several well known industry figures taking to the stage in excitement at the Carwash classic 'We Are Family'. Saturday night saw a fabulous interview of one of two popular doc presenters attending Doc/Fest 2007 - Louis Theroux gave a very entertaining evening to delegates and Sheffield public alike. That was followed by the inaugral Grierson:Sheffield awards and a lovely party hosted by some of our international sponsors - thanks must go to them, The Plug and Lost Vagueness who gave us a party to remember!

The organizers of Sheffield Doc/Fest are celebrating after welcoming over 1200 industry delegates from as far away as Japan and Australia to Sheffield. The Festival, which screened over 100-documentary over five days, was the most successful event in its fourteen-year history.

Heather Croall, festival director said: ‘The international reputation of the Festival has grown immensely over the last 12 months and the increase in delegates confirms this. The opening night film Joy Division went down a storm, we had two simultaneous screenings just to cope with the crowd. Sheffield and the Yorkshire region have grown to recognize what a great event they have on their doorstep. Our hard work over the last 18 months to grow the Cross Platform business opportunities for Yorkshire is paying off.’

As always, Doc/Fest offers established and first time filmmakers the opportunity to win funding and gain expert advice from industry experts.

The winners of the 2007 competitions are:

During the Channel 4 Pitch, six new directors competed in front of a panel of television executives, to win the chance to make a 24-minute film for Channel 4's documentary new talent strand. The winner, Anoop Pandhal will receive a 10-week freelance placement at a production company to make the film, on a budget of £45,000, which includes a £5,000 director's bursary.

For the third year running, Doc/Fest hosted the Sky One Development Prize. Sky One invited production companies to pitch their ideas for a new documentary series or factual entertainment series aimed primarily at adults for the 10pm Sci-Fi slot. Winner Patrick McGradey from Wave Length Films was awarded £5,000 for his idea World Wide Weird, an innovative witty take on the wilder conspiracy theories about the internet.

Filmmaker Daniel Dewsbury won the BBC New Talent competition with his impressive pitch about two aspirant skaters and their rivalry as they compete to be the first British Olympic competitors. He wins a nine-month placement with the BBC.

Current TV the first TV network created by, for and with young adults, ran a competition in which eight lucky individuals got a chance to pitch live to a panel of Current TV executives. The winner was Mateo Willis with a film about multi-religious commune in Northern Italy. He wins £1000 to make his film, along with the promise of additional commissions.

For the first time Doc/Fest, added two Cross Platform competitions to the line up, aimed at finding factual ideas that would work across a range of media platforms.

The Crossover Lab Pitch Competition saw documentary makers and content producers pitch ideas they’d created while on a five-day Doc/Fest creative laboratory earlier in the year. The winners were Diarmid Scrimshaw Warp Films, Anna Higgs, Quark Films and Tim Morgan, Mint Digital, with their idea Museum of Our Futures a television show, website and gallery installation about contemporary human society and how it might be discussed and perceived in the future.

Doc/Fest also teamed up with the National Film Board of Canada to launch the Cross-Media Challenge a co-production competition for innovative, interactive, socially engaged content with applications for mobile and broadband that offered a £5,000 co-production development deal with the NFB. The winner is Virginia Heath, Vita Nova Films & Quba New Media and her idea My Dangerous Loverboy, a groundbreaking web and mobile site that will raise awareness about global sex trafficking and create a community for at-risk young girls and their wider peer group to tell their stories and offer advice.

Both winners of the Cross Platform competitions are from Sheffield.