Business Doc Europe

In Hungry, world-premiering February 2 in IFFR’s Harbour section, Austrian director Susanne Brandstaetter offers a sobering account of how, in the not-so-distant future, humankind has allowed itself to become extinct. With no humans left on Earth to explain exactly why this, it is left to an alien visitor to the planet to determine the food-related sequence of events, the “cause and effect” that led to our demise as a species. The filmmaker serves up the conclusions for Business Doc Europe.

A feast for the eyes and ears, the hybrid Krakatoa, presented both theatrically within IFFR’s Harbour section and as an installation within Art Directions, recreates the volcanic explosion of 1883 which resulted in the loudest sound ever heard. It is a film with contemporary resonance, within an ecological sense. “It’s a goal to rethink our position with the planet… we have to make a kind of sacrifice to nature in order to appease it, in order for it to become stable again, and establish an equilibrium.”

Reading through her teenage diaries reminded director Angelica Ruffier of a romantic obsession she once developed for her history teacher. That memory forms the basis of her new feature doc, selected for IFFR Tiger Competition. “The really difficult part was to read them now…” she tells BDE of a sense of shame she felt when she first looked back over the old notebooks. However, she soon realised that what she had written was, in fact, frank and accurate, a record of “pure” experience.

The Polish feature documentary Closure tells the most desperate of personal stories, that of a dad searching for his lost son. “This film became one of the most challenging I’ve made on every level, because it required holding two impulses at once,” says director Michał Marczak. “On the one hand, I wanted to keep the crew minimal and intimate. On the other hand, I wanted the film to carry an epic scope, to convey emotion through images and atmosphere, through showing rather than telling.”

In his new doc series, the first part of which world-premieres in Sundance Episodic, Danish director Andreas Dalsgaard chronicles the decade-long legal battle between the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier and the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev over the enormous mark-ups that Bouvier applied to the sales. “I trust neither of them and never trusted them. They play a billion-dollar game that complicates things for everyone,” Dalsgaard tells BDE.

For 10 years, Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes followed Isra’a and her family from Syria to Germany and back again, as they were forced to navigate war, exile and emotional anguish. As we see in the film, selected for Sundance World Documentary Competition, characters don’t always behave as you would expect. “Good people do bad things. People are morally complex. We don’t seek to sit in judgement. We just want to put it out there, the effects on a family of being transplanted into an alien culture and how that can tear them apart,” co-director MacInnes tells Business Doc Europe.

French sales company Andana Films has boarded Tawfik Sabouni’s The Other Side of the Sun which receives its world premiere in Berlin Panorama 2026, in which the director returns to post-Assad Syria to meet four fellow former detainees of the notorious former Saidnaya prison. “The film reveals the horror of a system and its executioners, while also bringing out a profound human beauty born from the protagonists’ listening and solidarity,” says Stephan Riguet, Andana Films MD.

European Film Promotion has appointed international media executive and producer Irina Ignatiew-Lemke as its new Managing Director. She will take over the role from Sonja Heinen on 1 August 2026, who will step down after ten years in charge. “[Irina] understands both the creative and business side of today’s global film landscape and has a strong sensibility for the diverse realities, structures and needs of EFP’s member countries,” says EFP President Vítor Pinheiro.

To Hold a Mountain wins World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary while the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary goes to Nuisance Bear. Other prizes in World Documentary Competition are awarded to Birds of War (Special Jury Award for Journalistic Impact); Everybody To Kenmure Street (Special Jury Award for Journalistic Impact), and One In A Million (Directing Award). All doc awards…

Xuban Intxausti’s Live Till Death examines the experiences of Basque women as they confront cancer “through a collective, feminist, and transformative lens.” It follows members of the Iñurri association as they defy the stigma often attached to the disease. “It’s a little thing, you know, a little story in a little country, but somehow I think that it's something amazing, because they are facing the illness in a new way,” director Intxausti tells BDE.

Valley of the Heart (CZ) tells the story of Purna between the ages of 24 and 33. He is a young man who has grown up in a secluded valley deep within Nepal, but he longs for escape. When his father dies, he leaves the valley for the first time to settle in the Czech Republic. “The emotions of beginning anew, of estrangement and adaptation, are deeply familiar. I believe that whatever melancholy emerges from this dimension of the story will be balanced by the vitality of the courtship scenes and the cultural collisions that ensue,” producer Jiri Konečny tells BDE.

What if the Iran-Contra affair had turned out differently forty years ago? Would there be peace in the Middle East now? Tal Barda’s Israeli/German three-part series Strings of Power poses this question. With “incredible” access to some of those involved, director Barda unearths archive footage and documents, alongside new material that has come to light. The director talks to Business Doc Europe.