Business Doc Europe

For the uninitiated, the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers is a major international industry event during which the factual media community gathers to share, explore and reveal how science, history and other content-rich subjects are communicated to a mass audience. This year the midweek conference is held in Tallinn, running November 9 to 12. “It's genuinely unique in the TV festival world,” WCSFP Editorial Diretor Sara Ramsden tells BDE. “It's small enough to have the intimacy of human connection, but big enough to matter.”

Business Doc Europe talks to David Čeněk, Dean of the revered FAMU (Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague), which this year celebrates its 80th birthday. “We do not want to produce filmmakers who all think or work in the same way,” he says of the establishment’s historical and ongoing approach. “We want students to develop their own artistic language, while learning to work collectively and to defend their creative decisions.”

Iranian director Farzad Khoshdast, talks to Business Doc Europe about his new film Third Land, produced by Kaveh Farnam and Dorri Rezaei and selected for Czech Joy, about an exiled Iranian family in Turkey caught in a desperate 13-year limbo having fled their oppressive homeland, only to be stonewalled in their desire to repatriate to the US. “Unfortunately, the situation surrounding my film and my personal safety has become increasingly serious,” he tells BDE. “I am facing renewed judicial pressure from the Iranian authorities, including a case at Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, where I have been accused of ‘propaganda against the Islamic Republic.’”

Tete Hoffmann’s documentary (which world premiered this week at DOK Leipzig) portrays her father, the Berlin-based author Jan Christ, in the final years of his life, when he was dealing with his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. She started shooting it nine years ago in 2017, when the first symptoms of his condition began to show. “I wasn’t a filmmaker…but this was a moment when I knew my dad and I had to deal with some kind of ending,” she tells BDE. “I had this impulse to use the camera as a tool, as a medium to get in conversation with him, and also in a playful way.”

Short-listed for a European Film Award, and in the Oscar race across three categories (Best Documentary Feature; Best international Feature Film [Montenegro] and Best Cinematography), Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić’s Sundance-winning feature documentary To Hold A Mountain is a paean both to nature and to love…and to resistance. The directors discuss their highly moving film with Business Doc Europe.

In Saudades Eternas, an international premiere in Ji.hlava, French director Emma Boccanfuso follows the remarkable Mother Courage-like Sueli, a flamboyant local woman living in a Rio favela and fighting to hold her extended family together, while running her own makeshift bar and enjoying plenty of gossip with the neighbours. “I very quickly found myself propelled into the heart of the home and the intimacy of this family,” the director tells BDE. “From there, a deep friendship was born, to the point that I have been coming back several times a year to see them for the past ten years.”

Organisers of Cinéma du réel's ParisDOC Works-in-Progress programme have invited submissions for the next edition, running 24-25 March 2027. ParisDOC Works-in-Progress 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 underline.

Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker Tatiana Huezo will be the Guest of Honour at IDFA 2026, which takes place from November 12 to 22. IDFA will present a Retrospective of Huezo’s work, alongside a personal Top 10 film selection. Also announced is the Dead Angle: Common Ground focus program; a spotlight on pioneering American filmmaker William Greaves; and the 20th anniversary of IDFA DocLab, themed Shared Realities.

Bringing together leading voices from science, film and television, alongside a special live performance from Eurovision entry Puuluup, World Congress of Science & Factual Producers (WCSFP), taking place in Tallinn from 9-12 November 2026, will put Estonia's creative and scientific talent in the spotlight as Estonian neuroscientist Jaan Aru, Estonian Film Institute CEO Edith Sepp, physicist and TV presenter Aigar Vaigu join the programme.

The International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH) and the Olympic Refuge Foundation (ORF) are joining forces for a new initiative in 2027 and are launching a call for documentary films focusing on the role of sport amidst humanitarian crises. “In particular, the festival is looking for films that demonstrate the role of sport in the lives of individuals or communities affected by humanitarian crises and/or displacement driven by conflict or climate change,” organisers write.

In 2026, the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (Nov 6-22) will present a strong selection of documentaries in its two competitive programmes, with an International showcase of 11 world premieres from around the globe in International Competition and nine documentaries in Baltic Competition. “These films ask us to look more closely, question our assumptions and resist easy explanations. In a world where so much comes to us already interpreted, that feels especially necessary,” says doc curator Marianna Kaat.

CPH:DOX has announced the appointment of Josef Kullengård as its new Head of Industry & Training. Having played a key role in strengthening Göteborg Film Festival's position as a leading Nordic industry marketplace, Kullengård brings “a strong combination of strategic leadership, editorial experience and international industry expertise,” the Copenhagen docfest writes. Kullengård will join CPH:DOX on February 15, 2027, following the upcoming edition of Göteborg Film Festival.