Business Doc Europe

David Borenstein talks to BDE about his extraordinary feature doc, co-directed with Pavel "Pasha" Talankin, a Russian teacher who secretly documents his small town school's transformation into a war recruitment center during the Ukraine invasion. “To see the road he has taken in the last year and a half, will I ever see something like that again in my life? I don’t know…it is dramatic! That has been a joy to me,” Borenstein marvels at how the softly spoken former teacher has transformed his life.

Produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Ladkani’s Yanuni profiles the remarkable Juma Xipaia, an Indigenous leader from the Xipaya people in Brazil who, in her early 20s, became the first woman chief in the Middle Xingu region, and who has campaigned ferociously to protect her community in the Amazon from exploitation by miners, foresters and anyone else looking to pollute and destroy the ecosystem. “If we lose the Amazon, then we will all lose,” the director tells BDE.

Business Doc Europe talks to Liat Beinin Atzili, the eponymous subject of Brandon Kramer’s Oscar shorted-listed Holding Liat, which follows Liat’s family after her abduction during the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks. “It is possible for me as an individual to go through the experience that I went through but still believe in other people and believe that there can be kindness,” she tells BDE. “People can still hang on to their humanity even in very, very difficult situations.” Liat is joined in interview by the director.

Matt Alesevich and Hemal Trivedi’s short documentary focusses on the deeply personal relationship between Aney, a New York–based healthcare worker, and Farida, a wise and resilient teenager from an Indian nomadic tribe. “People say that there are three types of C that get funded, which are films about cult, crime, or celebrity,” co-director Trivedi tells BDE. “But there's a fourth C which people don't talk about, which is community. And our film is about building community.”

Mariska Hargitay’s Oscar-contending HBO-backed documentary is a deeply personal and clearly cathartic venture in which the filmmaker tries to make sense of her relationship with someone about whom she has only the most fleeting recollections - her mother, Jayne Mansfield. It was a film Hargitay made with the blessing of her siblings. “Not only did they trust me but, at the end, they all shared how healing and how cathartic it was for them. I told them I am making this movie for us,” she tells BDE.

It’s 50 years now since the end of the Vietnam war. A still largely unchronicled aspect of the conflict is the plight of the “Amerasian” children born to Vietnamese mothers but abandoned by their American GI fathers. Sang, the subject of Weronika Mliczewska’s new doc Child of Dust (sold by Rise and Shine and an Oscar contender) is one of these lost souls. The director talks to BDE.

BAFTA-winner Felipe Bustos Sierra’s documentary about one of Scotland’s most spontaneous and successful acts of civil resistance in recent memory will open the festival’s 22nd edition on 25th February. Executive-produced by two-time Oscar® winner Emma Thompson, Everybody To Kenmure Street will world-premiere in World Cinema Doc Comp at the upcoming Sundance FF.

The industry arm of Cinéma du réel (March 21-18 2026) “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 write. The deadline for the Works-in-Progress of ParisDOC 2026 (25-26 March) is January 7 2026.

Twenty-four new projects will be pitched January 28 and 29 2026 in Biarritz. “Without the questions, challenges and dilemmas that documentaries raise, we risk losing some of the essential element in our democratic systems: dialogues, debates and narratives that bridge the divide rather than creating confrontations and information bubbles,” write organisers. “The 2026 Fipadoc International Pitches is our contribution to democracy, so we better can avoid a future of 'democrazy.'”

“Which spaces are open to us? Which ones do we conquer and defend? These are central questions posed by the programme so far,” writes Berlinale Panorama of the first selections for 2026. The Generation team also hail their first selections. “Curiosity, anger and hope, grief and tender solidarity - from Brazil to Taiwan, the programme immerses itself in the lived realities of young protagonists,” they write. Furthermore, eight docs are selected for Berlin Retrospective. The 76th Berlinale runs February 12 to 22 2026.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced December 16 the shortlists in the documentary categories of the 98th Academy Awards®. Fifteen films will now advance within each of the Documentary Feature Film and Documentary Short Film categories. Two hundred and one films were eligible for the Doc Feature category, while 117 films qualified in the Short Doc category.

Netherlands-based Aboozar Amini’s study of two brothers in the Afghan capital won in Main Competition. Additionally, Weronika Mliczewska's Child of Dust got the jury nod in Polish Competition, while Dmytro Hreshko’s Divia picked up the Green Dog Award. The 25th edition of the Polish-based human WATCH DOCS ran December 5-14.