Business Doc Europe

It’s a long and embroiled tale: Jessi Frou, the protagonist in Laurentiu Garofeanu’s feature documentary Lost And Found: Thirty Years, Not Together (a world premiere in Tallinn Black Nights Festival and also available in IDFA Docs For Sale), was sold as a baby in Romania in 1990. She grew up in Canada, believing she had been abandoned at birth. Thirty years later, she discovered a very different story. Garofeanu explains more to BDE.

Vincent Sparreboom’s new feature documentary, world-premiering at IDFA, takes viewers to a sanatorium in Ukraine which offers brief respite to soldiers fighting on the front line. In his visual approach, the director was inspired by French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas who believed that if you look into the eyes of the other, you immediately feel a responsibility for their suffering. “That was the goal basically, to look behind the eyes and into the faces of the people who are fighting this war and to really take it in what is the cost of their sacrifice.”

Selected for IDFA Signed and a centrepiece of the festival’s Spotlight on William Greaves programme (and the recent winner of three Critics Choice Documentary Awards), Once Upon A Time In Harlem chronicles a glorious evening of talk, back in 1972, among some of the most important still-surviving figures of the ‘Harlem Renaissance,’ the flowering of African-American authors, artists, musicians and intellectuals during the 1920s and 1930s. Earlier this year, David and Liani Greaves, son and grand-daughter of William, sat down with BDE for a little more talk, about the film and the 50-year journey to complete it.

An obscure parliamentary sitting in the South Caucasus some 33 years ago might not seem the most obvious material for a feature documentary. Yet, in An Incomplete Day in the History of Georgia 10.06.93, Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi transforms deteriorating VHS recordings of a debate over the country’s new currency into a portrait of a state struggling to define itself. The 100-minute film, set to world premiere in IDFA’s International Competition, also carries uncomfortable echoes of Georgia’s political present. Director Jashi talks to Business Doc Europe.

Dutch-based Romanian director Raluca Lupaşcu discusses her feature debut about life within a vibrant Roma family in eastern Romania. “They are still holding to their traditions because they were so much persecuted in the past,” Lupaşcu underlines. “Throughout the history, they went from nomads to slaves, and from slaves to victims of the Holocaust. You have to understand their culture to understand where their fight for survival and behaviour comes from. Sometimes, tradition was the only thing they could hold on to.”

Ava DuVernay’s new feature documentary explores how the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects birthright citizenship, has been under savage attack by President Trump and his acolytes. One point that the film underlines is how Confederate iconography remains embedded in US popular culture. “It’s our swastika,” she tells BDE. “In the American South, Black people really know what that means. It really is a silent warning of the hierarchy of this country.”

Chile is set for a busy IDFA with the international premiere of Carmen Castillo’s We Are Still Alive in Signed section, two films in Best of Fests, a further two projects in Forum and a targeted programme of industry events. “The fact that IDFA, one of the world’s most significant documentary film events, is once again recognising and celebrating Chilean filmmaking by including a wide range of films, projects and perspectives from our country in its programme, reaffirms the richness of Chilean documentary cinema,” says Diego Pino Anguita, Executive Director of the Chilean Documentary Corporation.

Marking its 40th anniversary, the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) has revealed its theme and first guest announcements for the milestone edition. One of the Southern Hemisphere’s premier industry events for documentary and factual storytelling, AIDC will return to Sydney for the first time in more than 30 years in 2027, made possible by a new Principal Partnership with the NSW Government through Screen NSW.

Artist Dragana Jurišić’s debut feature doc premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival, and is produced by Ireland's Invisible Thread Films in co-production with Croatia's Restart, whose documentary Fiume o morte! by Igor Bezinović won the European Film Award for Best European Documentary in 2026. The Taskovski Films slate also includes IDFA 2025 winner Past Future Continuous and The Netherlands' official Oscar submission Paikar, among others.

Organisers of Cinéma du réel's ParisDOC Works-in-Progress programme have invited submissions for the next edition, running 24-25 March 2027. ParisDOC Works-in-Progress actively supports the distribution, promotion and placement of feature documentaries by linking, at a key stage of the production process, project holders (filmmakers and producers) to industry professionals, organisers underline.

Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker Tatiana Huezo will be the Guest of Honour at IDFA 2026, which takes place from November 12 to 22. IDFA will present a Retrospective of Huezo’s work, alongside a personal Top 10 film selection. "Huezo's cinema is rooted in close observation and shaped by a highly attentive visual and sonic language—allowing memories and experience to surface through atmosphere and deeply personal stories,” the festival writes.

Bringing together leading voices from science, film and television, alongside a special live performance from Eurovision entry Puuluup, World Congress of Science & Factual Producers (WCSFP), taking place in Tallinn from 9-12 November 2026, will put Estonia's creative and scientific talent in the spotlight as Estonian neuroscientist Jaan Aru, Estonian Film Institute CEO Edith Sepp, physicist and TV presenter Aigar Vaigu join the programme.