Business Doc Europe

Fourteen Dutch documentary projects, twelve of which are at advanced stage, will be presented during the second edition of NLWave (September 30 to October 2), an initiative of the Netherlands Film Fund and presented in co-operation with SEE NL. The 2026 showcase comprises a who’s who of top Dutch creative and business talent, and presents a wealth of fascinating stories that span the globe. Simone van den Broek, Head of Documentary and Fiction at the Netherlands Film Fund, guides Business Doc Europe through this year’s selection.

World-premiering in Utrecht, Joeri Pruys’s Final Cut looks at how the provocative TV show Body Art, made by Pruys’s father in the 1970s and starring the then little-known Serbian artist Marina Abramović, turned into one of the most notorious cases in the history of Dutch censorship. “The rules around who is actually the owner of this material are very vague,” Pruys tells BDE. “That is why in the film I am also saying it is my heritage, so I should be able to do with it whatever I want, because my father created this. It’s Marina’s work as well, so she should be free to use it.”

Ahead of the 15th Finnish Film Affair, running September 23 to 25, Head of Industry Lydia Taylerson answers questions posed by Business Doc Europe. During the event, eight documentary feature projects will be pitched to the professionals in attendance. “In all honesty, I think Finland's unique selling point is the lack of hierarchy within the film industry here,” Taylerson says. “Anyone who attends Finnish Film Affair also feels that. You can be a producer just starting out in your career, and over morning coffee be chatting with senior programmers of Tribeca or SXSW.”

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.

IDFA 2026 has unveiled a slate of 47 “outstanding” projects, culled from 859 submissions, for the 34th edition of IDFA Forum (November 15–18). Following an assessment involving 42 external experts, the final line-up brings together projects in development, production and near-completion, showcased across the Forum Pitches, Roundtable Presentations, Rough Cut Presentations and IDFA DocLab Forum.

Sales and distribution outfit Lightdox has acquired the international sales rights to Nostalgia for the Future, the new documentary by Belgian filmmaker and visual artist Brecht Debackere, narrated by acclaimed actress Charlotte Rampling. The film takes audiences deep into the mysterious world and extraordinary archive of legendary filmmaker Chris Marker, offering an intimate and visually inventive portrait of one of cinema’s most elusive figures. The film plays this week at Film Fest Ghent.

The Grierson Trust announced Oct 8 that Anna Godas, CEO and co-founder of Dogwoof, will be the recipient of the prestigious Grierson Trustees Award for 2026, sponsored by the BBC, and given in recognition of her role in distributing and producing multiple award-winning feature documentaries for more than 20 years. The award will be presented at this year’s British Documentary Awards ceremony, taking place November 10 November at London’s Roundhouse.

This year’s DOK Industry programme will be jam-packed with animation, not just to complement the festival’s programming line, but also “to establish DOK Industry as a meeting point for the international animated film community,” the festival writes. “Across all parts of the festival, DOK Leipzig is always exploring the boundaries of animation: from animated documentaries via experimental films all the way to the DOK Neuland extended reality exhibition,” organisers add.

CPH:DOX’s international financing and co-production event CPH:FORUM has put out the call for its 2027 edition. The deadline for submissions is November 3, 2026. The Forum will this year place emphasis on doc projects aimed directly at young audiences, and will continues its focus on creative documentary projects that tackle science “in ways that redefine the cinematic language and push the boundaries of what a science documentary can be,” write organisers.

The second edition of NLWave, the Utrecht-based two-day showcase of new Dutch film content, came to a close October 2 following the presentation of 35 early stage projects and works in progress. Fifteen of these were documentaries, some of which seem destined for selection at festivals before the end of 2026, into early 2027. The event attracted 60 industry toppers from the sales, distribution and festival sectors.