Business Doc Europe

Young German filmmaker Konrad Schlaich, whose debut feature The Child’s Mother screens in German Competition Documentary Film (Fokus Ost), has a friend who lives in the town of Halle and had been struggling with meth addiction. It was when he visited this friend that he first met Anne, who was to become the subject of his film.

In Éric Baudelaire’s Car la lune, a European premiere in main competition at Ji.hlava IDFF, blind students in Paris use both their cameras and creativity to illustrate their very particular perception of the world. “Any film, particularly a documentary film, has to be built on trust,” the director reflects to Business Doc Europe on his decision to hand over cameras to his subjects.

“The anniversary encouraged us to reflect not only on what Ji.hlava has achieved, but also on our responsibilities towards the future of documentary filmmaking,” the Ji.hlava Head of Industry tells BDE before doors open on the festival’s 30th edition. “At a time when artistic freedom, cultural institutions and public funding are increasingly under pressure, I believe festivals have a responsibility to support independent filmmaking and the communities around it.”

New director Ola Staszel talks to Business Doc Europe before the 69th roll-out of world’s oldest docfest. “As a very young person, I was really touched and moved by Kieślowski and by Łoziński,” the Polish Staszel underlines her credentials. “In my early age, I realised what it means to create films about people telling universal stories. That's why I think it's crucial to show, to create, to discuss documentaries, because they’re really life-changing. You see small slides or pieces of reality and you realise, okay, life’s so big.”

Marek Hovorka reflects on 30 years of Ji.hlava IDFF, one of the key staging posts for the international doc community, and arguably the loudest advocate for the export of great docs out of the CEE region. “Things have changed dramatically over those three decades,” he tells Business Doc Europe. “In the beginning, filmmakers submitted their films by sending us VHS tapes [and] one of the first big upgrades to our office was buying a fax machine. On the other hand, we already had our first website in 1999! So yes, thirty years is a long time.”

Noli me Tangere (a world premiere in Lisbon) is one of the many essay films that renowned Lebanese auteur, Ghassan Salhab, has made over the years. He began working on it in the spring of this year, just before the new conflict with Israel flared up, at which point Salhab was stopped in his tracks for three or four weeks. But he eventually resumed work, shooting material until July of this year. “I decided that if the war entered into my life, not for the first time unfortunately, let it enter into the film,” he tells BDE.

104 projects from 43 countries were selected to take part in the Co-Production & Gap Financing Market and Work-In-Progress sessions. The MIA Development Award for Outstanding Doc Project went to Loving Ika (Sweden) by Emilio Di Stefano and Fabian Sigurd. “We close this edition of MIA knowing that we have taken an important step in the market’s evolution,” comments Gaia Tridente, Director of MIA.

Independent documentary producers must rethink how they finance, market and distribute their work as traditional buyers commission fewer films, executives from Dogwoof, Scenery and US public television station THIRTEEN argued October 22 at MIA 2026. Moderated by Baltic Balkan Productions’ Ieva Ūbele, the panelists examined three different routes to sustaining ambitious non-fiction.

For British docmaker Kim Longinotto, the camera is far from an impartial observer. It can shift power dynamics, encourage unexpected conversations and even change the lives of those standing behind it. Speaking during a ‘fireside chat’ moderated by MIA’s Head of Doc Content Marco Spagnoli on 20 October in Rome, the director reflected on nearly five decades of filmmaking, explaining why she rejects conventional interviews, avoids imposing explanations on audiences and considers emotional involvement essential to her work.

With changing viewing habits reshaping documentary commissioning, representatives of BBC Storyville, Sweden’s SVT and Al Jazeera Documentary told producers at MIA 2026 that opportunities remain, but financing, rights and the way films reach audiences increasingly demand a different approach. The discussion was moderated by Canadian producer and broadcaster Rudy Buttignol, president of NXT.

Minerva Pictures is bringing Alex Infascelli’s 75-minute centenary documentary Ducati – 100 Years of a Legend to Rome’s MIA, where it will be presented on October 21. Narrated by Stefano Accorsi and featuring Keanu Reeves and leading MotoGP riders, the film looks beyond the motorcycles to the people who made them possible. Now in the final editing stage, the feature is seeking additional international broadcast and distribution partners, with its producers keen to reach audiences beyond the motorcycle world.

Barcelona’s most improbable Russian connection has landed at Rome’s MIA market. Boris Yeltsin, Forever Friends, a new doc project directed by Manuel Rodríguez, will explore the extraordinary relationship between the former Russian president and the Catalan doctors who saved him, drawing on previously unseen archives and first-hand testimonies. The film will revisit how emergency surgery brought Yeltsin to Barcelona and how that unlikely bond endured through some of the most turbulent years of post-Soviet politics.