We’ve all been there. You watch a film and are so moved by the story you want to make a financial contribution to the cause it espouses. But then the credits roll, you leave the cinema and the moment has passed. 

Dutch filmmaker and producer Anne Marie Borsboom was so frustrated by what she calls the “gap between the audience and the film” that she set out to close it.

Her solution, ShareDoc, which she launched it 2022, was both obvious and elegant, to work with film teams to place a QR code onto the screen as soon as the film ends that audiences could scan, either to make a financial donation or to find out more about the subject of the film and/or its protagonists. In sort, to engage in Impact.

Borsboom will be in La Rochelle this week to bang the drum for her initiative which has so far benefited the subjects of 54 docs, generating more than 281,000 views and garnering more than 1500 financial donations for the films’ causes.

“My expectations were quite high when I founded ShareDoc, but what we have achieved now exceeds them,” Borsboom tells BDE. “With ShareDoc we wanted to reduce the gap between the audience and the film. But I think we have been able to completely close the gap with the films that are on the platform.”

She points to the comments of acclaimed filmmaker Reber Dosky who used ShareDoc on his Daughters of the Sun (2023). “While we as documentary makers are not allowed to reimburse our characters, ShareDoc has ensured that our Daughters of the Sun have received a wonderful contribution for their efforts,” he says. “I also noticed that the film audience that attended the Q&As really enjoyed to be able to do something concrete for the Yazidi women after watching the film.”