Director Diana Cardazo, from Uruguay - though based in Mexico for many years – has won the Docupolis'09 Best Documentary Award for her film Siete instantes. This documentary tells the story of women guerrillas in Uruguay at the beginning of the sixties. The jury particularly valued her contribution to history; not just that of Uruguay but of the world, as an example of film directors’ concern about the preservation of historic memories.

Secondly, the Argentine documentary Nuestros desaparecidos (Our Disappeared ), by Juan Maldebaum won the Honorific Human Rights Award; Los que se quedan (Those Who Remain ), by Mexican filmmakers Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman, was awarded the Best Latin American Documentary prize; and Mundo Alas , by Argentinians Leon Gieco, Fernando Molnar and Sebastian Schindel won the People’s Choice Award.

In the First Film category the winner was Norwegian documentary Harvesting the Wasteland , by Karoline Grandiker and Hilde K. Kjos, about the daily routine of three generations of the Lykken family, who live on a farm near a remote Norwegian town. The jury awarded a Special Mention to the Estonian documentary Valli's Bar , by Manfred Vainokivi, in which the director portrays the personal life of people who meet every day in a well-known bar in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.