Business Doc Europe

Cats and dogs feature very prominently in Life Is There, the lyrical and evocative new documentary directed by Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez that receives its world premiere in Ji.hlava’s Opus Bonum competition. “I don’t want human beings in the centre of the story. I think that the animals are living with us,” the director tells BDE. “In the film, I talk about orphans. These animals are also like orphans, in really dangerous situations. I feel a real identification with them…also, I wanted to say that these animals are sacred for me.”

Several years ago, Berlin-based filmmaker Janis Westphal heard about a very unusual housing project in the heart of Berlin Kreuzberg whose residents are homeless alcoholics. Originally founded by a priest, it was one of the first facilities of its kind - a place which followed a radical policy of ‘acceptance.’ In his feature doc Haus der Trinker (Last Round), world-premiering in Leipzig, Janis Westphal tells the story of the establishment, and meets some of its residents. He answer questions posed by BDE.

James Longley’s tale of a hard-working Afghan boy living in an orphanage alongside other sons of “martyrs,” undergoing a strict religious education, seemed like a bureaucratic nightmare to make, until US producer Alex Gibney stepped in. “I can't think of another producer alive who would have taken on a project with so many inherent risks,” Longley tells BDE. “Without an Alex Gibney, films like this - where the path is rocky and the outcome is initially uncertain - will stop being made.”

The Industry boss briefs Business Doc Europe on what documentary professionals can expect during her 2026 DOK Industry programme, which kicks off October 26. “Our emphasis is always on providing a welcoming, meaningful and inclusive working space for all DOK Industry participants,” Tennstedt underlines her offer. “What unites most of them is what brings them to DOK Industry: new encounters, collaborations, inspiration, exchange and skill sharing.”

In his low budget feature documentary, made on the hoof and world-premiering in Leipzig, Lukas Marxt observes the Los Angeles fires that broke out in late 2024/early 2025. “It is very difficult to describe the mix of feelings you have,” Marxt tells Business Doc Europe. “Obviously, fire always brings a certain kind of beauty - but there is no beauty in this destruction where people are really losing everything they have, and partially their future.”

To say that Anne, the subject of Konrad Schlaich’s feature doc world-premiering in Leipzig, has a tough life would be to understate it. She is an impoverished single mother in her mid 30s who has a history of addiction and whose teenage daughter, Leonie, 14, is already in trouble, missing school and slipping into drug dependency too. “At first, I was judging Anne as a very bad mother, but then I ended up talking to her and I was very surprised how much she shared about her past,” the director recalls to BDE. “I wanted to know more and I felt very intrigued about making a portrait of her.”

Five Polish producers will be representing six projects during DOK Industry as part of the Delegation Mix&Mingle/Round Table meetings. In addition, the project The Gap by Paweł Ferdek, will take part in co-pro meetings as part of the DOK Co-Pro Market. Additionally, eight films, five of which are docs, are selected for the festival, including three in International Doc Film Comp: Blossoming by Kamila Serwicka; I’m Painting a Self-Portrait, but All I See Is My Sister’s Face by Helena Stańczyk; and Letters from the Silenced Country.

One of the completed projects presented at DOK Industry in 2026 is Simone Unger’s debut feature doc Matter and Spirits, selected for DOK Preview Germany and which focusses on three precious objects in a Leipzig museum, giving them voice and tracing their histories back through a colonial past. “The film helps to understand why it is necessary to continue the debate about the colonial heritage and the question of restitution,” says German producer Alexander Tanz of Lumalenscape.

In her highly personal feature documentary, director Annina Lehmann explores the rural landscape of her childhood in Brandenburg, asking people about their fears and longings. Between ethnographic study and a search for home, the film encounters ghost stories, village parties, feelings of loss and craving for connection. “The film grows out of a specific place, and from Annina’s own childhood there,” producer Margarita Amineva-Jester tells BDE ahead of the Oct 26 presentation of the project in Leipzig, “but the emotional and political forces it explores are visible across Europe, the United States and much of the world.”

“Eastkids explores the long-term consequences of reunification through the lives of people who experienced it directly, and a younger generation who inherited its consequences without experiencing it themselves,” German producer Leon Harms tells BDE of Julius Gintaras Blum’s feature doc project, selected for Leipzig’s October 26 pitch event. The doc centres on the city of Chemnitz, once the heartbeat of East German industrialism but which has all but lost its identity post-reunification.

In the middle of Brussels, “the heart of Europe,” an Audi factory is closing. Production of the hybrid Q8, priced at 100,000 Euros, is moving to Mexico and 4,000 people are set to lose their jobs, among them Ali, Aziz, Joaquin and Mousse, who are profiled in German Mimi Zak’s feature doc, presented as a WiP in Leipzig. “The film stands with the people who carry the weight of this chaotic, hit-or-miss transformation on their shoulders,” producer Floris Steinbach underlines to Business Doc Europe. “It tells their story - and it’s a European story, not just a Belgian one.”

In International Competition, the City of Lisbon Award for Best Film went to For the Moon by Éric Baudelaire, while the Doclisboa Award for Best Portuguese Comp Film was won by Everyone’s Voice. The Doclisboa International Competition Jury Award went to Noli me tangere, by Ghassan Salhab, and the Médecins Sans Frontières – Portugal Jury Award for Best International Competition Director was presented to João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata for 13 Pins. All awards…