The Panda Awards took place on the penultimate night of Wildscreen Festival in Bristol, England on 17 October celebrating the best of international wildlife film and television.
Sponsored by Warner Chappell Production Music, the awards remain the highest honor in the industry, comprising 15 categories, plus three special awards including the Golden Panda for the best overall production.
Wildscreen Festival takes place every other year, holding talks, gimbal and macro masterclasses, screenings and more, connecting people with nature through storytelling, and democratising the creation of and access to nature’s stories.
The coveted Golden Panda Award for 2024 went to ‘Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story’, a Silverback Films Production for National Geographic UK.
The documentary follows Billy Mail and his wife Susan, who nurse a wild otter back from the brink in the remote Shetland Islands, changing their lives forever.
In a unanimous decision by the jury, ‘Billy & Molly’ was considered the best production for its level of emotion, ability to touch hearts, and how it illustrated the capabilities of the future of the wildlife genre.
The film also won the Producer / Director award, and the Scripted Narrative Award. Silverback Films also took home the Cinematography award for ‘Wild Isles: Ocean’ as well as being nominated in several categories.
The hugely popular ‘Queens’ from Wildstar Films and National Geographic left with two wins, the Series award and the Production Management Team Award.
Actor Angela Bassett narrates the film which focuses on the matriarchs of the animal world, and the jury noted that "the production team set up an innovative working practice and production model with an ethos of mentoring and being parents and job sharing.
The Lifetime Achievement award was given to cinematographer and director Alistair MacEwan, whose career spans more than 25 years, MacEwan’s CV boasts ‘Our Planet’, ‘Planet Earth II’, ‘Earth’s Tropical Islands’, ‘Perfect Planet’ and ‘Wild Isles’.
A film called ‘PATROL’ won the Impact award for its powerful deep dive into the role of cattle in deforestation in Nicaragua produced by Juli Films and Perpetuo Films. The Sustainability award was given to ‘The Watches 2023’ from BBC Studios Natural History Unit.
All the other winners can be found on the Wildscreen site.
Chair of the jury Julian Hector said:
"My fellow judges and I saw sensitivity in emotional story-telling, technical master in observation and recording, and extreme ambition to give nature, and our relationship with it, a voice.
"'Billy and Molly’ is a unanimous winner of the prestigious Golden Panda for giving us deep insight into the mind of an otter; we were blown away by the editors’ skill in shaping ‘Chimp Empire’ so we can understand the motivations and intentions of deeply political animals’ and we applauded the courage and tenacity of in country programme makers to give us the reality presented in ‘PATROL’ and ‘Living With Lions’.
"Never has it been more important to encourage new talent to tell stories relevant for today’s world. All the programme makers who shone at the Panda Awards showed us their extreme ambition to not only reach the boundary of story-telling, but to define it."
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