Sebastiaan Opschoor, an independent filmmaker, residing in Portugal, has won a prestigious Award of Merit from The Impact DOCS Awards Competition in the United States. The award was given for a short documentary, The Orange Life of the Algarve, highlighting organic orange farming.
Originally from the Netherlands and after living in the Caribbean for 10 years, Sebastiaan and his wife decided to move to mainland Europe. They chose Portugal as their new home and have been living in Luz for three years. They divide their time between the Algarve and Lisbon, which gives “the best of both worlds for us”.
A marketeer in his free time, he started developing skills for video. In the past three years, he made several videos about the Algarve, which he calls “passion projects”, and he published on his Travel & Lifestyle platform 1st Day of Summer.
In the past year, this started to become much more than a hobby and he began working on more documentary-style videos. “I have a passion for authenticity, nature, and (hand) craft. The latest project about organic oranges in the Algarve turned out better than I thought, so that’s why we took a more professional approach and started entering film festivals.”
I set out to showcase the unique Algarvian orange but ultimately found a group of passionate organic farmers who forced me to tell a deeper story. A story of an industry that is excessively using chemicals because they think they need them to meet mass demand. It’s organic farmers like João Rocha and Rui Vierra that will hopefully inspire a change towards sustainable farming.”
The Orange Life of the Algarve has also won the Cotswold International Film Festival for Best Documentary Short Film. The short film was made without any budget and produced by Matteo Rovetti of Algarve Food Experience and Pash Marketing Agency. Post-production was done by Pim Gelevert from the Netherlands.
The film is yet to be released to the public as it is still awaiting results from other international film festivals and options are being considered for broader distribution. The video will also be published on the 1st Day of Summer platform.
Organisations that want to support the video in any way can contact Sebastiaan Opschoor directly.
www.youtube.com/1stdayofsummer
www.1stdayofsummer.com/category/portugal/
