Business Doc Europe

Noli me Tangere (a world premiere in Lisbon) is one of the many essay films that renowned Lebanese auteur, Ghassan Salhab, has made over the years. He began working on it in the spring of this year, just before the new conflict with Israel flared up, at which point Salhab was stopped in his tracks for three or four weeks. But he eventually resumed work, shooting material until July of this year. “I decided that if the war entered into my life, not for the first time unfortunately, let it enter into the film,” he tells BDE.

In her feature documentary, world-premiering in Lisbon, Inês Oliveira profiles the prolific stills photographer Mariana Viegas who worked on the sets of some of Portugal’s most revered filmmakers, such as Šarūnas Bartas, Pedro Costa and Manoel de Oliveira. “These were films that marked me, they are still important films for me,” Oliveira observes to BDE, and describes Viegas’ photos as “somehow like a time machine,” giving viewers new perspectives on the important work of these major auteurs.

“I’ve always been fascinated by - and have often wondered about - the extent to which the places we live, and the cycles of nature that surround us, influence who we are and who we become,” Ribeiro tells Business Doc Europe of the circumstances which have now led her to make Vent du matin (a world premiere in Portuguese competition at Doclisboa), a film that unfolds over a year within the vineyards of Beaujolais.

Rayna Teneva grew up in Kazanluk, a Bulgarian town famous for its arms factory, Arsenal AD, and for its rose oil, made from flowers picked in Bulgaria’s “rose valley.” The artist and filmmaker, who is now based in Vienna, isn’t therefore surprised that her feature Geography Is Destiny (an international premiere in Doclisboa’s International Competition) is so often described as being about “guns and roses.” Nonetheless, as she tells BDE, she hopes audiences will see beyond such an obvious cliché.

Doclisboa’s Marina Thomé discusses this year’s offer to international professionals attending Nebulae, the festival’s industry programme that kicks off October 16. “Success, for us, is creating an environment where filmmakers can develop author-driven projects that challenge cinematic form and language, while creating spaces for reflection through roundtables, conversations with festival programmers, training activities, labs and live cinema performances,” she underlines to BDE.

Doclisboa (15-25 October) is one of the first events in a packed autumn season for documentary markets and festivals that also includes Ji.hlava, DOK Leipzig and, a few weeks later, IDFA. Festival director Hélder Beja argues, however, that the Lisbon footprint is very different to those of the other events. “We truly defend and believe in film above all,” Beja tells BDE. “We have gone a little bit away from the term ‘documentary’ these days, even if we have it in the name of our festival. ‘Documentary’ is a word that very rarely appears in everything that we write.”

Minerva Pictures is bringing Alex Infascelli’s 75-minute centenary documentary Ducati – 100 Years of a Legend to Rome’s MIA, where it will be presented on October 21. Narrated by Stefano Accorsi and featuring Keanu Reeves and leading MotoGP riders, the film looks beyond the motorcycles to the people who made them possible. Now in the final editing stage, the feature is seeking additional international broadcast and distribution partners, with its producers keen to reach audiences beyond the motorcycle world.

Barcelona’s most improbable Russian connection has landed at Rome’s MIA market. Boris Yeltsin, Forever Friends, a new doc project directed by Manuel Rodríguez, will explore the extraordinary relationship between the former Russian president and the Catalan doctors who saved him, drawing on previously unseen archives and first-hand testimonies. The film will revisit how emergency surgery brought Yeltsin to Barcelona and how that unlikely bond endured through some of the most turbulent years of post-Soviet politics.

The 30th edition of Ji.hlava IDFF kicks off October 23, featuring more than 350 films from around the world. The festival will open with the European premiere of Return to a Strange Land, directed by Olga Malířová Špátová, about internationally acclaimed choreographer Jiří Kylián. This year's festival trailer was created by Naomi Kawase as an appeal against war. Czech documentary filmmaker Helena Třeštíková and Vietnamese-American filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha will receive the Award for Contribution to World Cinema.

Iconic Italian physicist Fabiola Gianotti is a woman on a mission. Having completed her historic tenure as Director-General of CERN, during which time the Higgs Boson particle was discovered, she is now facing her most complex battle yet in advocating for the Future Circular Collider (FCC), the multi-billion-dollar successor to the Large Hadron Collider, and which represents “humanity’s next attempt to answer some of the universe's greatest remaining mysteries.”

More than four decades after murders and arson attacks terrorised northern Italy and Germany, questions remain about the neo-Nazi group Ludwig and the ideology behind its crimes. Simone Manetti’s Ludwig – The Black Angels investigates those unresolved issues through court records, archival material and first-hand testimony. The 82-minute documentary, courtesy of Italy’s B&B Film with Germany’s Beetz Brothers Film Production and Hearst Networks Italy, is now completed and will be presented at Rome’s MIA as part of the Italians Doc It Better programme.

The moka pot may be an icon of Italian domestic life, but its story is not simply about how coffee is made. In moka, with a small m, director Matteo Severgnini – grandson of inventor Alfonso Bialetti – revisits the people who turned an aluminium coffee maker into a global design icon, drawing on previously unseen family archives to ask how innovation emerges amid technological change. Produced by TIWI, the 56-minute documentary is in the final stages of post-production and will be presented at Rome’s MIA 2026.