For the first time, the European Agency for Safety and Healthy at Work (EU-OSHA) has supported the Healthy Workplaces Film Award for the best documentary on work-related topics at the 52nd International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. The winner was announced on the award ceremony, on October 31. This action is under "Healthy Workplaces" campaign.

Healthy Workplaces is the largest information campaign on occupational safety and health, running in all EU Member States and beyond to promote efficient risk management. Under the slogan “Healthy Workplaces Campaign. Good for you. Good for business”, more than 40 European multinationals, employers’ federations, NGOs and employees’ organisations help EU-OSHA to spread the message among workplaces and improve European workers’ conditions.

The film award, which was launched by the OSHA last summer, honours a documentary film that focuses on the human being in a changing world of work: economic transition, globalization, migrations... The films nominated for the Healthy Workplaces Film Award are picked from the approximately 1800 documentaries submitted to DOK Leipzig every year. DOK Leipzig is the largest German and second largest European documentary film festival.

The submitted films explored the physical and psychosocial outcomes of economic transition and what happens to those people who are not able to keep pace with our working world. They looked at job loss, migrant workers, poverty, outsourcing, modern slavery, and how workers’ rights can be affected. The 2009 winner is a film entitled A Blooming Business directed by Dutch director Ton Van Zantvoort, which shows the painful working conditions in a globalised flower industry. The award is endowed with € 8,00.

"A Blooming Business" is a film that approaches the topic of ‘work’ in a highly creative way and highlights the strength of international documentary film-making in 2009. Festival director Claas Danielsen was satisfied with the outcome: “We are pleased that this film has won our first Healthy Workplaces Film Award, as it has illustrated the importance of human working conditions in a striking manner”.

10 films from international filmmakers were nominated for the Healthy Workplaces Film Award and selected from 2,578 documentaries submitted to DOK Leipzig this year.