Tanzanian Film ‘Children of Honey’ Secures TZS 400M Grant to Complete Production

Left to Right - Director Emanuel Musa Marco, Film and Impact Producer Simona Nickmanova and Director Jigar Ganatra

By Rahel Pallangyo

The Tanzanian documentary film Children of Honey has secured a prestigious grant of £120,000, which is equivalent to over 400 million Tanzanian shillings, after winning the coveted 2026 Whickers Film & TV Funding Award in the United Kingdom.

This massive financial boost will go directly toward completing the project's production phase, positioning the film for its upcoming global release.

The historic achievement is a direct result of the project managing to break into the final top five selection, out of more than 600 documentary entries submitted from all corners of the globe this year.

Co-directors Jigar Ganatra and Emanuel Musa Marco fiercely defended their artistic vision on the grand stage of the Sheffield DocFest—one of the world's most influential markets for non-fiction cinema.

Following a rigorous international screening process that sidelined hundreds of global contenders, only five exceptional projects were invited to the UK to pitch live before an esteemed panel of international judges, which included acclaimed Kenyan filmmaker Sam Soko and Sheffield DocFest Creative Director Raul Niño Zambrano.

In a high-stakes finale, Tanzania competed shoulder-to-shoulder with filmmakers from major nations, including Welcome to Our Bathhouse from Japan, Ashes from Syria, Mexico is Ours from Scotland, and All Fixed Up from China. Each finalist was strictly allocated just seven minutes to stand on stage, present their core idea along with visual showreels, and immediately face an intense question-and-answer session from the jury to defend their art.

Created in close, collaborative partnership with the Hadzabe hunter-gatherer community of northern Tanzania, Children of Honey makes history as the first feature-length documentary to be co-directed by a filmmaker emerging from within the Hadza community itself.

The narrative intimately follows the lives of three young Hadza individuals navigating the delicate transition into adulthood during a time of profound social and cultural shifts that threaten their ancestral lands.

Through an innovative participatory filmmaking model, the Hadzabe people are not merely subjects under a lens, but the primary storytellers of their own lives.

For co-director Emanuel Musa Marco, a young filmmaker from the Hadza community, this trip to Sheffield marked the very first time he had traveled outside Tanzania or crossed international borders. Standing on such an influential global platform represented a monumental victory for his entire community, which now has the rare opportunity to speak to the world in its own voice rather than having its story told by outsiders.

Securing this production grant now accelerates the final stages of filming for Children of Honey while strengthening an accompanying impact campaign focused on indigenous language preservation and cultural resilience.

Meanwhile, the Japanese documentary Welcome to Our Bathhouse by director Tommaso Barbetta took the runner-up position, walking away with a development award of £25,000.