Business Doc Europe

Oscar-winning US director Alex Gibney talks to Business Doc Europe ahead of the September 30 UK release of Knife, about the shocking onstage attack on Salman Rushdie in New York in 2022. “He comes out of all of this learning all sorts of life lessons and not being mired in bitterness, resentment and hate,” Gibney observes of Rushdie. “He was certainly haunted and debilitated mentally by the attack, and he had to get that strength back. The only way he knew to do it was to push through.”

The industry programme of Nordisk Panorama kicks off in earnest this weekend, heralding 5 days of intense pitching, deal-making, networking and debate in the Swedish city of Malmö. The Forum runs 20-22 September, while the market kicks off September 18. As healthy as the Nordic doc industries are, NP’s Lea Maria Strandbæk Sørensen underlines to BDE how its professionals must look beyond their regional partners to ply their trade. “No-one is served by being self-sustained within the bubble, never looking out, and never collaborating with anyone else," she stresses.

Afsaneh Salari’s new feature documentary Tehran, Under the Skin scrapes away at a side of Iranian life you won’t see in many other documentaries, namely the booming world of cosmetic surgery. Thousands of Iranian women every year are heading to surgeries to get noses sculpted, stomachs tucked, breasts lifted or skin tightened. The film, sold by CAT&Docs, has its world premiere in TIFF Lightbox this weekend. Director Salari talks to BDE.

In Letters from the Silenced Country, exiled Belarusian director Andrei Kutsila, now living in Poland, combines archives, found footage and animation, as well as testimonies derived from letters written behind prison walls, to deliver a searing indictment of the regime that governs the country was forced to leave. “I only hope that this film will offer the international audience this opportunity to understand better our society, what is going on now, in my country.”

In a film that has as many plot twists as any fictional movie, a kidnapping at sea splits a Yemeni family apart, as a mother’s fight for survival reveals the human cost of Europe’s border regime. Director Sine Plambech emphasises to BDE that this is “not an activist film… I see it as an artistic documentation of a human rights violation - but definitely I want people to watch it and say ‘is this a good idea, to continue to outsource the border responsibilities to countries with conflicts and war and militia and weapons? Does that live up to our European values?”

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.

DocsBarcelona has opened the call for submissions for its 30th edition, running 29 April to 9 May 2027. The festival will once again bring together a selection of the best international, Spanish and Catalan documentary cinema, with several competitive sections, special screenings, premieres and a major retrospective. Deadline for short docs: 28 September 2026. Deadline for feature docs: 30 November 2026. Early bird deadline for feature films: 2 October 2026.

The People’s Choice Documentary Award was presented to Barry Avrich for Darlene Love: I Know Where I’ve Been, while the People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award was presented to Matthew Rankin for Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney. Honourable Mentions went to The Black Box is Orange by Yuula Benivolski (Best Canadian Discovery Award), and Man in Motion: The Rick Hansen Story by Adrian Buitenhuis (Best Canadian Feature Award).

“Claus Melvad is an extraordinary inventor whose autism, ADHD, OCD and Tourette’s are both a source of huge challenges and, in his own words, his superpowers,” Danish producer Signe Skov Thomsen tells BDE of the subject of An Unlikely Hero, pitched at Nordisk Panorama 2026. But can Claus’ technology shed light on a crucial blind spot of climate science - that of rising sea levels? And can he prove to himself and his daughters, who have inherited his diagnoses, that he can make a difference and play his part in saving the world?

“Out of Place stands out through its intimate approach to Palestinian exile and culture, combining a deeply personal story with broader contemporary questions of identity, belonging, and displacement,” Swedish producer Mónica Hernández Rejón tells BDE of her Nordisk Panorama project, in which exiled Gazan director Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi returns to his homeland where he senses an unspoken shift in the city, its people and himself.

In his debut feature doc, Ömer Sami sets out to revive the memory of his legendary childhood idol, the teacher Scott Peake, but what he discovers en route is far more complex than he had imagined. “The film reminds us of the value of teachers and their ability to profoundly affect generations. Whatever was invented in Scott’s stories, his impact on his students was real,” says Danish producer Monica Hellström of Ström Pictures.

Throughout his much-documented fall from grace, Finnish Olympic champion Mika Myllylä filmed his family with his home video camera, from which another, deeply personal story emerges. “The project combines a highly recognisable Nordic figure and major sports archive with an intimate family story that does not depend on prior knowledge of Mika,” producer Pasi Hakkio tells BDE of his Nordisk Panorama WIP. “That gives the film two routes into an audience: the very strong Nordic recognition of Mika, and the much broader international themes of family, addiction, elite sport, shame and inherited patterns.”