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?”

Odd Slice Films has sold French rights to Tom Adjibi’s debut feature This is Not a French Film to DFF (Decolonial Film Festival), following the film’s Grand Prix in the National Competition at the Brussels International Film Festival (BRIFF). For DFF, the acquisition marks the organisation’s first wide theatrical release. “This is Not a French Film embodies what we strive for with the DFF: making political discussions accessible through creative cinema,” says Martina Droandi, founder of Odd Slice Films.

DOK Leipzig has announced the full DOK Industry programme for the 69th edition of the festival edition running 26 October – 1 November. This year, the DOK Industry Programme offers “a vibrant mix of formats and activities that engage with key industry topics, foster creative exchange, and provide filmmakers with a space to showcase their work and build lasting connections within the international community,” the festival writes.

The Brazilian It’s All True documentary festival has put out the call for submissions for its next edition running April 8-18 2027. Submissions close on November 30 2026. Winners of the Brazilian and International Feature/Medium-length and Short Film categories automatically qualify for Academy Award nomination consideration in the Best Feature and Best Short Doc categories.

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.