Business Doc Europe

In her debut documentary Greek director Eirini Vourloumis, who describes herself as a night creature, follows three veteran “old school” taxi drivers, Konstantinos (known as Puma), Sunny, and Giorgos, as they drive around the city. “Each character is a reflection of myself,” she underlines to BDE, adding that the film is “my personal ode to the two things I love, which is Athens and taxi drivers!”

In The Great Experiment, Stephen Maing and Eric Daniel Metzgar offer what they call “a kaleidoscopic portrait of life in America,” during one of the more polarised periods in the last 250 years, from 2017 to 2020. Entirely shot in black and white, the film gives snapshots of different communities and generations, everything from ‘Gays for Trump’ activists to Black Lives Matter to the rise of MAGA. Even though politics are never far away, the film places emphasis on the people, the “humanity,” and how Americans find ways to “co-exist,” Maing tells BDE.

German Jens Schanze’s new documentary places the spotlight squarely on western governments and the rush to extract lithium, vital for everything from cellphones to the car industry, from the Bolivian Andes. “Conditions under which work is done in those mines is not far from conditions a couple of hundred years ago,” Schanze points out. Risks of accidents are very high. The exploitation of the workers is one aspect of “colonial history that you can see in the present.”

When she returns to her family home in Valparaíso (Chile), Gabriela Pena discovers more and more about what happened to her family during the Pinochet era. Meanwhile, her relationship with her mother, who is back in Spain, remains very strained. “We started to understand that travelling to this house and to this city was a way of wanting to connect with my mother,” Gabriela reflects. “From the beginning, we knew we had to combine the present with the past. That was the most difficult thing to do in the film.”

In Swiss filmmaker Ian Purnell’s feature documentary, selected for Main Competition at CPH:DOX, a cable-laying vessel traverses the high seas en route to one of the remote Aleutian Islands that separate the Bering Sea from the Pacific Ocean. The crew’s mission is to delivery fibre optic connectivity to the Arctic islanders, hitherto denied to them because of their sheer remoteness. Purnell connects with Business Doc Europe.

Revered Faroese actress Birita Mohr hasn’t performed for 12 years and some fans in the Faroe Islands may even have forgotten her, but her son, theatre director, actor and jazz musician Búi Dam, certainly isn’t one of them. To him, she is a legend. In his feature documentary Birita (a world premiere in CPH:DOX) he puts her back on stage to jog the public’s memory. “One of the goals with the film, and also the play, was to take care of her legacy both for the public and for the family - for my children to know who their grandmother was,” Dam tells BDE.

DocsBarcelona will open its 29th edition on May 7 with the Iranian film A Fox Under a Pink Moon, in which sixteen-year-old artist Soraya Akhlaghi documents her attempts to escape Iran, where she lives with her abusive husband, and reunite with her mother in Austria. The festival, which runs From May 7 to 17, 2026, also gives a glimpse of first selections in its Official and Visions Competition sections.

The awards of the 28th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival were handed out March 15 2026. The Int’l Comp Golden Alexander was handed to Closure by Michał Marczak, while the Silver Alexander went to Birds of War by Janay Boulos & Abd Alkader Habak. The Newcomers Competition Golden Alexander “Dimitri Eipides” was won by At No Cost by Mary Bouli, while the Newcomers Silver Alexander went to Replica by Chouwa Liang. All awards…

Mr. Nobody Against Putin by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin won the Oscar® for Best Documentary Feature at the 98th Academy Awards, held March 15 in LA. “In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now,” the film's protagonist and co-director Talankin said in Russian from the stage via a translator. The Oscar® for Best Doc Short went to All the Empty Rooms by Joshua Seftel.

The 24th FIFDH attracted more than 32,000 festivalgoers who not only watched 50+ films (incl 35 docs) but attended discussions featuring more than 200 guests from the worlds of art, science, politics and activism. Thirteen films received awards at the prize ceremony, held on March 14. “These films shed light on realities too often overlooked, and open up powerful new perspectives. We are proud to celebrate works that inspire courage and give voice to those too often unheard,” said Laila Alonso Huarte and Laura Longobardi, Editorial Co-Directors, FIFDH. All doc winners, plus further Longobardi comment.

Organised by the Institute of Documentary Film in cooperation with the One World Festival, the 15th edition of East Doc Platform once again opens part of its programme to the public through talks, screenings, and discussions exploring contemporary documentary filmmaking. “This year’s programme focuses on questions shaping the field today – from audience engagement and distribution to creative practice and changing industry structures,” write organisers.

Four new Swiss documentary projects, ripe for outreach treatment, were presented this week during FIFDH Impact Days in Geneva, with To the Moon and Back by Elisa Gómez Alvarez picking up the Swiss Impact Award, valued at CHF 2500. Business Doc Europe reports on the winning project, and the three other presentations: A Search for Love by Carlotta Piccinini, Imagine Peace by Fabian Chiquet and One Step Closer by French director Mehran Tamadon.