LifeGate productions shine at the Italian Podcast Awards: Borena takes home the Podcast of the Year award and best podcast in the News category. Runner-up is Re:Tour, another LifeGate production.

The jury of ilPod – Italian Podcast Awards, the prize for the best Italian podcasts, has chosen the socially and environmentally driven story of Borena: la terra senza pioggia by Valerio Nicolosi as Podcast of the Year. Produced by LifeGate together with CESVI, Borena tells the story of the author's journey through the eponymous zone – the most arid region of Ethiopia, in the regional state of Oromia – among the areas hardest hit by water scarcity.

Available since last May on all streaming platforms, Borena takes listeners on a journey of discovery through a territory whose inhabitants once lived off livestock farming and agriculture, but who today have become internally displaced people, forced to walk kilometres every day to find a trickle of water in the bed of a once-great river now run dry, or to dig holes in the middle of a lake that, until just a few years ago, seemed inexhaustible.

Nicolosi's audio documentary also claims first place in the News category, followed in second place by another LifeGate production: Re:Tour by Michela Chimenti, which also placed third in the Documentary category. Re:Tour is a reportage by Michela Chimenti from the Gaza Envelope – the Israeli territory bordering the Gaza Strip where a travel agency organises tours of the sites devastated by the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. Released just over a year after the attacks and available on all streaming platforms, Re:Tour is an account of life inside that bubble while, just a few steps away, the massacre of the Palestinian people continues.

Both works stand out for their audio production, handled by Marco Rip, and the artistic supervision of podcast division head Giacomo De Poli.