During the Awards Ceremony of DIG Festival 2025: «Targets».», held in Modena on September 27 2025 and hosted by Valerio Bassan and Philip Di Salvo, the audio and video juries assigned the DIG Awards 2025, which celebrate the best projects in investigative journalism and reportage published over the last year.
Below, you'll find the winners of each category and the Special Jury Prize; at this linkinstead, you will find all the finalists, selected among more than 300 submissions that came from all over the world.
During the Ceremony, were also assigned the DIG Pitch «Matteo Scanni» 2025, a €15.000 funding to a documentary in a writing or production stage, and the DIG Watchdog Award, that the DIG Board gives every year to reporters or media institutions with a special merit, honoring their bravery.
🏆 INVESTIGATIVE LONG
SURVIVING SYRIA'S PRISONS
PRODUCTION: BBC
DISTRIBUTION: BBC Two, PBS Frontline
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
DATE: June 2025
LENGTH: 74′
DIRECTED BY: Sasha Joelle Achilli, Sara Obeidat
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«Surviving Syria's Prisons is an important and timely film that uses testimony as a central investigative method to collect vital evidence. The filmmakers gained remarkable access and conducted the interviews with sensitivity and professionalism, approaching the subject with sincere interest. They did not shy away from speaking directly to the torturers, the first line of offenders—in their tenacious search for accountability.»
🏆 LONG REPORTAGE
HAITI: THE IRON GRIP OF THE GANGS
PRODUCTION: France24
DISTRIBUTION: France24
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: France
PRODUCTION COUNTRY: Haiti
DATE: July 2024
LENGTH: 52′
DIRECTED BY: Catherine Norris Trent, Roméo Langlois
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«Journalism is, first and foremost, about being present on the ground. But this can never be taken for granted: it requires courage, preparation, and the ability to move around, knowing that not all places offer the same conditions of safety. Today, Haiti is one of the most complex and dangerous places in which to practice this profession. Haiti: The Iron Grip of the Gangs powerfully recounts this reality, revealing a country where violence is now endemic, impunity reigns, and gangs limit freedom of movement and hope for the future. It is a film that reflects not only the brutality of the Haitian situation, but also the resilience of journalism when confronted with the most extreme environments.»
🏆 INVESTIGATIVE MEDIUM
THE MINISTER'S MILLIONS
PRODUCTION: Al Jazeera
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
DATE: September 2024
LENGTH: 25′
DIRECTED BY: AJ I-Unit
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«An impressive investigation that reveals how a government minister from Bangladesh, earning a $12,000 salary, was able to illegally purchase more than 600 luxury properties in five cities around the world. The use of undercover reporting provides unique insight into the minister’s holdings, including an extraordinary guided tour of his $14 million London home, exposing the entire network that enables this corruption. The Minister's Millions is an example of ambitious accountability reporting and had an immediate impact.»
🏆 REPORTAGE MEDIUM
TIGRAY: RAPE AS A WEAPON
PRODUCTION: Independent
DISTRIBUTION: Art Reportage
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: France
PRODUCTION COUNTRY: Ethiopia
DATE: May 2025
LENGTH: 37′
DIRECTED BY: Marianne Getti, Agnès Nabat
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«A powerful and sensitive portrayal of a war crime that is almost impossible to document: rape as a weapon of war. The stories of survivors are told with intimacy and remarkable access. The film gives voice to survivors and lays bare the trauma they endure, while perpetrators remain free. A harrowing, vital, and outstanding indictment.»
🏆 SHORT
INDIA'S OPIOID KINGS
PRODUCTION: BBC Africa Eye, BBC News
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: India
PRODUCTION COUNTRY: Ghana
DATE: February 2025
LENGTH: 14′
DIRECTED BY: Richard Wyllie, Stephanie Stafford
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«A piece of astute investigative journalism that gets to the heart of a public health problem in Africa, where poor neighborhoods in Nigeria and Ghana have been invaded by the highly addictive synthetic opioid Tramadol, produced like medicine by a legally established pharmaceutical company in India. While the owners earned millions, they increased the misery of hundreds of people. In the United States, a pandemic of fentanyl, another synthetic opioid that has caused the deaths of more than 300,000 people in the last four years, also originated from a major pharmaceutical company. This video of investigative journalism is a powerful contribution to public health, raising a red flag about a crisis that could spiral out of control.»»
🏆 AUDIO AND PODCASTS
BURIED: THE LAST WITNESS
PRODUCTION: Smoke Trail production
DISTRIBUTION: BBC Radio 4
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
DATE: June 2024
LENGTH: 150′
MADE BY: Dan Ashby, Lucy Taylor
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«A highly impactful project, capable of transforming a complex environmental issue into an accessible and profoundly human story. The creators brought warmth and intimacy, guiding listeners with empathy and professionalism through the investigation. Among its greatest strengths are a beautifully composed soundtrack and immersive sound design, which give the reportage an ambitious, almost operatic creativity, rarely seen in investigative audio journalism. The writing is equally powerful—engaging and precise—enriched with narrative twists that captivate the audience, maintaining focus on the topic with clarity and depth. Buried stands out for its rigor, solidity, and emotional resonance. With a remarkable balance of investigative depth, narrative mastery, and artistic ambition, it represents investigative podcasting at its finest.»
🏆 DIG «SPECIAL JURY PRIZE» 2025
THE NIGHT WON'T END
PRODUCTION: Al Jazeera English
DISTRIBUTION: Al Jazeera English
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
DATE: June 2024
LENGTH: 79′
DIRECTED BY: Kavitha Chekuru
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«The ten members of the jury unanimously decided to award a “Special Jury Prize” to this in-depth investigation of three Palestinian families, which is both sensitive and rigorous. This unique film could not be seen as just another testimony among many; it had to be singled out at this unprecedented moment in history, with journalists being killed in Gaza and the international media unable to access the area for two years. The jury made this choice to express their hope that this night will end as soon as possible.»
🏆 DIG PITCH «MATTEO SCANNI» 2025
A NEWBORN
AUTHORS: Giovanni Culmone, Matteo Garavoglia
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«A Newborn meets all the DIG Festival requirements: investigative journalism, international relevance, spirit of independence, originality of the subject, audacity of reporting, and the youth of the team. Through the journey of an imprisoned and tortured Sahrawi activist, it investigates the dark side of Morocco and its violations of fundamental rights. This is a subject rarely explored, especially in a context of broad international support, particularly European, for the kingdom.»
🏆 DIG WATCHDOG AWARD
TO PALESTINIAN WATCHDOGS IN GAZA
The DIG Awards 2025 Jury Motivation
«With the Watchdog Award, the DIG board wants to celebrate excellence in journalism and those who embody its ideals, mission, and resilience: sudum. This edition of the DIG Festival is titled “Targets” intentionally: it is a way for us to remember those under attack, those who document, and those who denounce. This applies especially to journalists and to anyone targeted for refusing to be silenced. According to UN figures, 252 journalists and media workers have been killed since bombs began falling on Gaza. More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both World Wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the war in Afghanistan combined. I repeat: more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both World Wars, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the war in Afghanistan combined. This is the deadliest moment for journalists in the history of journalism. Like never before, journalists are deliberate targets, and Israeli tactics have been widely exposed. Last year, we decided to give the Watchdog Award to Palestinian journalists in Gaza and to Press House Palestine, an organization that has served as a support network for media workers in Palestine, especially during these latest, horrific, and criminal war and genocide. This year, we insist: this is an unprecedented time, and the message must be repeated. No one embodies the highest ideals of journalism like Palestinian journalists, the bravest watchdogs of all. Today, we celebrate them once more, as loudly as possible.The DIG board dedicates the 2025 Watchdog Award to Palestinian watchdogs in Gaza: to those who lost their lives in the service of truth and justice, and to those who continue that mission. The Award is given symbolically to Mohammed Abed, a Palestinian journalist who has been working for AFP, Agence France-Presse, since 2003. He was in Gaza until 2024, and now continues his work in exile, and Jonathan Dagher, Head of the Middle East Desk for Reporters Without Borders, the leading international organization defending press freedom and journalistic liberties worldwide. DIG entrusts the award to their hands, hoping it will reach Gaza and a free Palestine as soon as possible.»
