Business Doc Europe

As founder and artistic director of the Camden International Festival in the US, an event he ran for two decades, Ben Fowlie already had experience of running a top documentary event. Now London-based, he last year together with colleague Vi Courtois launched LDNDOCS, billed as an “intimate showcase of cinematic nonfiction in central London.” The second edition will be taking place next week (20-22 Nov) at the Bertha Doc House in the Curzon Bloomsbury venue. Fowlie talks doc with BDE.

A smile, a breath or a hand touching the floor can become a way of carrying someone else’s memory in Being in You, Michał Stankiewicz’s mixed-reality documentary created with the late American musician and geologist Cat Janice. Following its Venice Immersive premiere, the Polish project competes in IDFA’s DocLab Competition for Immersive Non-Fiction. The director discusses the work with Business Doc Europe.

Artist and filmmaker wendelien van oldenborgh discusses her dynamic feature debut, which invites contemporary analysis of the lives of three female writers from Indonesia, Japan and the Netherlands, whose works, written during the turbulent 1930s and 40s, resisted the prevailing patriarchal and nationalist politics of the time. “Moving between intimate and collective spaces, Lyrical Vengeance shows the emotional work of solidarity, and the importance of spaces where freedom can be celebrated, from the archive to the dancefloor,” says van oldenborgh.

Ruslan Fedotov grew up in Mogilev, a city in eastern Belarus that is on the banks of the Dnieper River. His idea for his feature documentary was to document the lives and experiences on the river of a younger generation in Russia and Belarus. However, as he soon discovered, when you explore the river, you can’t escape traces of the past. “When war started, it [the film] had a completely different meaning.”

Elwira Niewiera’s feature documentary, world-premiering November 15 in Amsterdam, follows four Ukrainian women who have endured horrific experiences - torture, sexual violence, long-term imprisonment, terror and bereavement - since the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022. The director acknowledges to BDE how, while making the documentary, and learning the terrible things people can do to one another, “you begin to lose trust in humanity. That was one of my motivations for making this film, also to show the inner strength and resilience the women have to overcome the worst evil.”

Effervescent Folkestone-based producer and consultant Charlie Phillips, former Head of Documentaries at the Guardian, has only been Programme Director (Advocacy and Curation) at the Documentary Association of Europe (DAE) since September, succeeding Brigid O’Shea, but he is already putting his indelible stamp on the organisation. “I see us like a trade union, a trade body [that can offer] protection in a very hostile world,” he tells BDE.

Vikram Singh’s Camels of the Sea, which won the £100,000 Whickers Film & TV Funding Award in 2024, began with a photograph and an unlikely caption: a herder was preparing to take his camels into the water. Nearly six years of filming later, the Indian director has developed an observational documentary about a coastal community whose livelihoods, relationships and animals are threatened by industrial expansion. He explains more to BDE.

A fictional AI agent (Aquarius) disappears after an update error in Josefina Buschmann Mardones’ Artificial Clouds, sending a digital investigator on its trail through Chile. The filmmaker uses the mystery to explore the landscapes, resources and histories that sustain contemporary technologies. “The idea is to move away from dystopias or utopias around technology through a lateral gaze that is complex, but also funny and absurd - just like life itself,” she tells Business Doc Europe.

Top international sales company Rise and Shine World Sales announced November 14 its launch of a streaming platform dedicated exclusively to outstanding documentary content. The new RISEANDSHINE CHANNEL will be run in partnership with the company’s distribution arm Rise and Shine Cinema. “Every month, a rotating line up of documentaries will be added to the service, giving a curated selection of great stories,” the company says.

Andrei Kutsila’s Letters From The Silenced Country; Yuval Abraham & Rachel Szor’s Naza; Pegah Ahangarani’s Rehearsals for a Revolution; Biljana Tutorov & Petar Glomazić’s To Hold A Mountain, and Whispers in the Woods by Vincent Munier were unveiled November 14 as the five nominees in the European Documentary category of the 39th European Film Awards. All five are also nominated in the European Film category. The winners will be revealed in this year’s award ceremony on 16 January 2027 in Athens.

It’s a bumper year for the Polish doc industry with no fewer than eight Polish productions and co-productions featured across International Competition, Frontlight, Luminous, Signed, Best of Fests, Dead Angle and IDFA DocLab. On November 16 during IDFA Industry, the Polish Docs Pro Showcase will feature five of the most inventive and interesting Polish creative documentary projects in progress. Additionally, Polish films and projects at IDFA will be celebrated during the Guest Meet Guest networking event hosted by Polish Docs and Wajda Film Centre on Sunday November 15.

World Congress of Science & Factual Producers (WCSFP) will be heading to Riva del Garda, Trentino, Italy, for its 35th edition from November 8-11, 2027. The annual gathering brings together hundreds of producers, broadcasters, commissioners, distributors, streamers, scientists, digital creators from around the world to explore the latest developments in science and factual storytelling, forge new partnerships and unlock opportunities across the industry. The recently ended 2026 edition ran Nov 9 to 12 in Tallinn.