Business Doc Europe

Paris-based Italian director Giuseppe Schillaci talks to Business Doc Europe about his new feature documentary, world-premiering in Venice, which recalls a period in the 1980s when a programme of regenerative investment in a run-down Paris housing estate led to a glorious spike in community empowerment and connection. It was “an intimate yet collective moment of solidarity and social transformation - before the banlieues went up in flames,” he says.

Director Victor Kossakovsky and botanist Stefano Mancuso take viewers on an unprecedented journey into the life of trees. As Kossakovsky tells BDE, when he was three or four years old, growing up in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, he was shown a leaf by his mother. She explained how trees are highly complex and sensitive organisms. “It is my first memory of myself,” Kossakovsky tells BDE of this early nature lesson.

In his new 3D feature doc, Wim Wenders profiles the work of Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The parallels between architecture and filmmaking are obvious, points out Wenders, who works in a similar way to his illustrious subject. A house, he believes, “is a story,” and in a film, each shot can be regarded as “a brick in time” out of which scenes and then entire movies are built. “I don’t think the movie is remotely there when you have a script. Actually, I don’t think it is there at all. It is only in the shooting process that the film takes shape,” he adds.

The Soviet Union is revealed in all its contradictions in Sergei Loznitsa’s sprawling new archive-based documentary Imperium (screening this week in Venice Open - Out of Competition). The footage he uses was shot by Italian filmmakers in the early 1970s. They travelled to every corner of the Soviet empire, from major cities like Moscow and St Petersburg to far flung towns in central Asia; from Ukraine to the Baltics, from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan. The Ukrainian director talks to Business Doc Europe.

Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller’s 25-minute ‘horror’ film, which started shooting in January this year, shows ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents terrorising the residents of Minneapolis. “We knew it had to be filmed then,” Poitras tells BDE. “It [the US] is a country that has violence at its core; it has empire at its core, and it is engaging in violence [all the time],” she adds.

In Luke Lorentzen’s sublime meditation both on community and competence, we meet some of the workers at the 60-strong Brooklin boatyard who, over four seasons, are tasked with building a 56-foot luxury sailboat. It is a film populated almost exclusively by men. “I think it just emerged...how they treat one another, and how they are men who are both very strong and very sensitive,” Lorentzen tells BDE. “They just have a spirit to them that I really enjoyed being with, and that felt different from the [male] ego or power or dominance that we often see in our culture.”

Serbia-based sales company Films Mundi has acquired exclusive international sales rights (excluding Poland) to Kamila Serwicka’s feature documentary Blossoming (A teraz wiosna). The acquisition follows the film’s world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival’s Semaine de la Critique, where it won the Grand Prix Semaine de la Critique – Prix SRG SSR. “It was the film’s poetic, atmospheric quality, emotional honesty and tenderness that drew me so strongly to it," Neda Lukić, Founder of Films Mundi, tells BDE.

Running March to October 2026, the main objective of the EURODOC flagship programme is to enhance the artistic and financial development of film projects, to improve know-how in terms of international co-production and company management, and to reinforce the set of continuously evolving skills a career in independent production requires. “We believe that project development and career-building go hand in hand,” the organisation writes. Deadline for application: November 23 2026.

The Nyon-based docfest is inviting films for its Official Selection, which includes six competition sections, as well as projects for VdR–Industry activities. Films in competition receive their world, international or European premiere. The early deadline is November 2. The final deadline is December 15. The 58th edition of Visions du Réel will run 9 to 18 April 2027.

Nordisk Panorama and ARTE, Europe’s leading cultural streaming service, are launching a new partnership to strengthen opportunities for emerging documentary projects and build closer connections between Nordic filmmakers and the European industry. At the heart of the partnership is the new ARTE European Talent Development Award, worth €10,000 and given to one of the 24 documentary projects pitched at Nordisk Panorama Forum.

During the Fipadoc International Pitch session (Biarritz) the 24 selected project teams will pitch to 60+ international funders from Europe and beyond. Decision makers from France TV, ARTE, RTBF, RTS, SVT, Al Jazeera, ZDF, HBO and many other broadcasters will be present together with distributors, sales agents, festival programmers and film funds. Application deadline: October 2 2026. Fipadoc Industry Days will run January 25-28, 2027.

The deadline for submissions of projects to MIA’s Italians Doc It Better showcase is September 6. Italians Doc It Better looks to facilitate the circulation of new Italian documentaries by providing producers with a platform to present their projects and secure international distribution. Eligible titles must be 100% Italian productions or co-productions in which Italy holds a majority share.