Kiwi director takes NFB deal

New Zealand writer/director Virginia Heath has walked away from the Sheffield International Documentary Festival with $10,500 and a copro deal with the National Film Board for My Dangerous Loverboy. The interactive project — which combines web and mobile sites to raise awareness about the global sex trade — won the NFB’s Cross-Media Challenge at the close of the annual doc fest earlier this week.

Also attached to the project are Vita Nova Productions and Quba New Media, both in the U.K., and Screen Siren Pictures in Vancouver. Heath is tied to Vita Nova. Loverboy beat out two other finalists: the web documentary Belonging: Voices in the Muslim World by Andy Glynne and the pilot project Pocket Citizen Journalism from Fee Plumley.