Sadler’s Wells reveals the award winners at the inaugural Dance Digital Film Festival

Sadler’s Wells today reveals the winners of the six awards at this year’s Dance Digital, a new annual film festival which celebrates the best of dance in digital formats. 

Following an open call, 415 films were submitted for inclusion in the festival from 55 different countries from Senegal to Syria, Peru to Indonesia. 45 films from feature length releases to shorts, documentaries to social-first films were then screened over the weekend (Friday 5–Sunday 7 June 2026) and seven films were selected for six awards by an independent jury comprising Kate Church, Sanjoy Roy, Ben Williams and Sade Alleyne.

The winners at the inaugural Dance Digital festival are:

Best Choreography: DuEls – Directed by Jonas Åkerlund, Choreography and Concept by Damien Jalet and Erna Omarsdottir (Belgium/Iceland)
Best Documentary: GRAPPLING GRACE – Directed by Misha Novak and Alex Kiehl (UK)
Best Youth Film (21 and Under): ROUTE [not every day, but almost], by Juá Leindecker and Flora Leles (Brazil) AND Return by Saraï Martens & Maira Renee (Belgium)
Best Dance on Screen: Kielo by Janina Rajakangas and Sinem Kayacan (Finland)
Best Cinematography: Vestiges, a film by Director Marcus Eriksson in collaboration with Medhi Walerski and Ballet BC (Canada)
Best Social First film: Still: A Dance Film by Jun Chew (UK/Malaysia)

From today, six short commissions, three of which received their premiere screening at Dance Digital will be made available on Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage platform. Three short films responding to the first open-call theme ‘ReFrame the Classics’, while the others, which respond to the theme ‘The Floor is Yours’, inspired by the free public community space The Dance Floor at Sadler’s Wells East in Stratford, will be released weekly from Monday 15 June. Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures’ film Quiet Revolutions, also screened at the festival, will be available on 6 July. A curated selection of films from the festival will be released monthly on Sadler’s Wells Digital Stage.

Bia Oliveira, Director of Digital Stage and Studio, said: 
“Dance has always lived on screen, from film musicals to music videos, and now the endless scroll of social media where a single clip can travel the world in hours. There is something uniquely powerful about the way a camera can inhabit a dancer's body, getting closer than any audience seat ever could, showing dance in entirely new angles and transforming it in the process. 

Dance Digital has, this weekend, demonstrated the extraordinary breadth of voices, styles and stories that came to us from across the globe. The winners and all the films presented at the festival have shown the ingenuity, imagination and craft of dance makers and filmmakers alike. It's been a privilege to share these films live with audiences in a theatrical setting. We're delighted to be able to release highlights from the festival online on our Digital Stage platform throughout 2026.”