From Reels to Recognition: Roots & Reels Takes the Stage in Hamburg
Young storytellers, powerful histories and new conversations about memory in the digital age marked an important milestone for Roots & Reels at the EUSTORY Past Forward Festival in Hamburg.
In September, Roots & Reels travelled to Hamburg for a special moment in the initiative’s journey: celebrating its young storytellers on an international stage and reflecting on what their work can teach us about the future of history, memory and digital storytelling.
From 7–11 September 2026, the EUSTORY Past Forward Festival, hosted by Körber-Stiftung, brought together more than 200 professionals, practitioners and young activists in Hamburg to celebrate 25 years of the EUSTORY network and explore how engagement with the past can contribute to shaping the future.
For Roots & Reels, the festival began with what the entire initiative had been building towards: celebrating the young people behind the stories.
Celebrating the Roots & Reels Winners
On Wednesday, 9 September, the Roots & Reels Award Ceremony brought the competition’s winning stories to the big screen at KörberHaus.
Roots & Reels invited young people to ask a deceptively simple question: What story from the past still speaks to you today?
The response went far beyond what could fit into a traditional history classroom. More than 200 young people from 19 countries participated, producing over 100 short videos exploring family memories, local histories, overlooked experiences, identity and heritage. A jury selected a Top 30, followed by an Instagram public vote that also recognised the entries generating the strongest audience engagement.
Hamburg offered the opportunity to bring those digital stories into a shared physical space.
The ceremony celebrated the three Jury Award winners:
- First Prize – Why? by Susanna and Knarik
- Second Prize – They Are Not Forgotten Here by Matej, Filip, Roko and Fran
- Third Prize – Renaming Streets by Olha
Alongside the jury prizes, the project also recognised three Audience Awards, reflecting one of the central ideas behind Roots & Reels: history online is not only created, but also viewed, shared, discussed and shaped through interaction.
More than an awards ceremony, the gathering created a space for the young filmmakers themselves to stand behind their work, meet one another and discuss what their stories reveal about the different ways history is remembered across Europe and beyond.
Past Meets Platform: Taking the Conversation Further
The celebration in Hamburg did not end with the prizes.
Roots & Reels also became the starting point for a dedicated interactive festival session, “Past Meets Platform: Insights and Reflections from Roots & Reels.”
The workshop moved the conversation from what young people created to what we can learn from how they create, communicate and encounter history online.
Drawing on the experiences of Roots & Reels participants and reflections from the competition, the session explored questions increasingly relevant to historians, educators, cultural institutions and anyone working with young audiences:
Who gets to tell history online? Whose voices are amplified – and whose remain overlooked? What happens when historical memory meets algorithms, short-form video and platform culture? And what responsibilities come with telling stories about the past in digital spaces?
These questions connected directly with one of the festival’s central themes, “Memory Meets Machine,” which examined how AI, social media and other technologies are changing history and commemoration.
Rather than presenting young people simply as consumers of online historical content, Past Meets Platform highlighted their role as active creators and interpreters of the past.
The session brought together perspectives on digital storytelling, institutional social media and the ethical challenges of communicating history in an environment where visibility is increasingly shaped by platforms and algorithms.
From More Than 100 Videos to a Bigger Conversation
Hamburg marked an important moment for Roots & Reels, but also demonstrated why the initiative matters beyond the competition itself.
Behind every short video was a process of asking questions, finding sources, speaking with family members or communities, interpreting evidence and deciding how to transform history into a story capable of reaching an online audience.
Participants were required to ground their films in historical sources while being encouraged to experiment with formats ranging from documentary and video essay to animation, collage and creative re-enactment.
That combination of historical research, creativity and digital communication sits at the heart of Roots & Reels.
At a festival dedicated to looking back at 25 years of EUSTORY while asking what comes next, the young storytellers offered one possible answer: the future of historical engagement is already being created on the platforms where younger generations communicate every day.
The challenge is not simply to bring history onto those platforms, but to help young people approach them critically — questioning sources, recognising missing perspectives and understanding how digital environments influence which stories become visible.
Hamburg Was a Milestone – Not the End
The EUSTORY Past Forward Festival provided an opportunity to celebrate what Roots & Reels achieved, but it also opened the door to the initiative’s next questions.
What began with young people turning stories from the past into short-form videos has developed into a wider conversation about memory, representation, digital literacy and who gets to tell the story.
From more than 200 young participants across 19 countries, to over 100 submitted films, a Top 30 collection, six awards and finally an international stage in Hamburg, Roots & Reels demonstrated how much can happen when young people are trusted not simply to learn history, but to research it, question it, reinterpret it and share it with others.
And perhaps that is the strongest message we brought home from Hamburg:
The past does not disappear when it moves onto new platforms. It gains new storytellers.
Roots & Reels is organised by the Institute for Democracy, Media & Culture (IDMC), initiated by EUSTORY and supported by Körber-Stiftung.