Business Doc Europe

World-premiering in Utrecht, Joeri Pruys’s Final Cut looks at how the provocative TV show Body Art, made by Pruys’s father in the 1970s and starring the then little-known Serbian artist Marina Abramović, turned into one of the most notorious cases in the history of Dutch censorship. “The rules around who is actually the owner of this material are very vague,” Pruys tells BDE. “That is why in the film I am also saying it is my heritage, so I should be able to do with it whatever I want, because my father created this. It’s Marina’s work as well, so she should be free to use it.”

Oscar-winning US director Alex Gibney talks to Business Doc Europe ahead of the September 30 UK release of Knife, about the shocking onstage attack on Salman Rushdie in New York in 2022. “He comes out of all of this learning all sorts of life lessons and not being mired in bitterness, resentment and hate,” Gibney observes of Rushdie. “He was certainly haunted and debilitated mentally by the attack, and he had to get that strength back. The only way he knew to do it was to push through.”

The industry programme of Nordisk Panorama kicks off in earnest this weekend, heralding 5 days of intense pitching, deal-making, networking and debate in the Swedish city of Malmö. The Forum runs 20-22 September, while the market kicks off September 18. As healthy as the Nordic doc industries are, NP’s Lea Maria Strandbæk Sørensen underlines to BDE how its professionals must look beyond their regional partners to ply their trade. “No-one is served by being self-sustained within the bubble, never looking out, and never collaborating with anyone else," she stresses.

Afsaneh Salari’s new feature documentary Tehran, Under the Skin scrapes away at a side of Iranian life you won’t see in many other documentaries, namely the booming world of cosmetic surgery. Thousands of Iranian women every year are heading to surgeries to get noses sculpted, stomachs tucked, breasts lifted or skin tightened. The film, sold by CAT&Docs, has its world premiere in TIFF Lightbox this weekend. Director Salari talks to BDE.

In Letters from the Silenced Country, exiled Belarusian director Andrei Kutsila, now living in Poland, combines archives, found footage and animation, as well as testimonies derived from letters written behind prison walls, to deliver a searing indictment of the regime that governs the country was forced to leave. “I only hope that this film will offer the international audience this opportunity to understand better our society, what is going on now, in my country.”

In a film that has as many plot twists as any fictional movie, a kidnapping at sea splits a Yemeni family apart, as a mother’s fight for survival reveals the human cost of Europe’s border regime. Director Sine Plambech emphasises to BDE that this is “not an activist film… I see it as an artistic documentation of a human rights violation - but definitely I want people to watch it and say ‘is this a good idea, to continue to outsource the border responsibilities to countries with conflicts and war and militia and weapons? Does that live up to our European values?”

The anniversary edition will present outstanding new films from the Czech Republic and around the world, an extensive section entitled Films That Changed the World, and a retrospective of renowned Vietnamese-American filmmaker and film theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha. The Inspiration Forum will welcome British archaeologist David Wengrow as well as Iranian-Australian architect and Forensic Architecture member Samaneh Moafi. The 30th Ji.hlava IDFF will take place from October 23 to November 1, 2026.

The Institute of Documentary Film (IDF) has announced the nine projects selected for the first edition of its new training initiative, Docs Beyond: Audience, Impact & AI, running 6 October to 11 December 2026. Throughout Autumn 2026, the selected teams will work with experienced international professionals to develop either an impact campaign or an audience design & outreach strategy for their films.

The Documentary Association of Europe (DAE) announced September 23 the appointment of Charlie Philips as its new Programme Director (Advocacy and Curation). He replaces Brigid O’Shea, who has led DAE since its launch in 2020 and who will remain on the Executive Board. Philips is an independent doc producer and a former Head of Documentaries at the Guardian, where his commissions won Oscar and BAFTA short documentary awards, and was Deputy Director at Sheffield DocFest.

The prize for Best Nordic Doc was handed to The Smuggler by Sylvelin Måkestad, while the City of Malmö Audience Award went to Little Sinner by Daro Hansen & Thomas Papapetros. This year’s Nordic Documentary Producer Award was won by Juha Löppönen of Mouka Filmi, Finland, while the inaugural ARTE European Talent Development Award went to the feature project Lost at Sea, directed by Ejner Benedict Seidelin, and produced by Claes Hedlund at Paloma Productions (Denmark). All awards…

CPH:LAB, CPH:DOX's talent development and training programme, has selected nine new international immersive documentary projects for its 2026-2027 line-up. The curated selection spans a wide range of topics, genres, and artistic approaches, with a diverse group of storytellers from around the world behind the projects. Participants will spend the coming months in an intensive development phase, culminating in prototype presentations at CPH:DOX 2027 in Copenhagen, running March 10–21.

This year at DOK Leipzig (26 Oct – Nov 1), Young DOK is once again showing a selection of diverse and age-appropriate documentary and animated films, inviting audiences young and old to dream and reflect. The section is made up of Kids DOK - for youngest film buffs, of nursery and primary school age - and Young Eyes, which features films for teenagers. Alongside German productions and films with no dialogue at all, international titles will be screened with subtitles.