Nick Cunningham

Jason Loftus’ Eternal Spring (長春): The Heist of China’s Airwaves is vying for Academy Award nominations in three categories; Doc Feature, Animated Feature and International Feature (Canada). Since its world-premiere at the Thessaloniki Doc Fest in 2022 the film has picked up a hatful of awards, including the two top audience prizes at Hot Docs. Earlier in 2022, Loftus discussed his film with BDE.

US filmmakers Cynthia Wade and Sharon Liese go inside the country’s largest manufacturer of American flags to tell the story of some of the company’s employees, the majority of whom are refugees and immigrants. The resulting award-winning short launched on National Geographic December 8 and hits Disney Plus on Dec 21. What’s more, Wade and Liese tell BDE, the story has been optioned for Broadway musical treatment…

In 2022, Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius went back to Mariupol, Ukraine, during the heart of the war, to be with the people he had met and filmed in 2015. The subsequent film is a chilling and heart-wrenching portrait of life during wartime, and a posthumous but living monument to the director who was killed in late March by the invading Russian forces.

The DOK.fest Munich co-production market (May 2023) has put out a call for “strong projects for the German-speaking countries.” Non-fiction formats at any stage of development are welcome. The submission deadline is February 1 2023. The same deadline also applies to entries for DOK.digital – Award for New Narrative Formats (€2500) and the VFF Documentary Film Production Award (€7500).

Dutch journalist and documentary filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak – long associated with Dutch broadcaster VPRO as a programme maker, editor of the Tegenlicht programme and its overall editor-in-chief – has been appointed as new Eye Filmmuseum director by the organisation’s supervisory board. She will succeed the current director Sandra den Hamer on 1 April 2023.

The 2023 World Cinema Documentary Competition comprises 12 documentary features that include two films from Ukraine (Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days In Mariupol, Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies), the latest film from Chilean Maite Alberdi (The Eternal Memory), the Swedish/Danish Fantastic Machine; and Jakub Piątek’s Pianoforte, in which young pianists take part in the legendary International Chopin Piano Competition.

“The European Film Academy’s Documentary Film Selection is as powerful and as diverse as ever,” says EFA Chair and President of the LUX Prize of the European Parliament, Mike Downey. “The feature-length documentary films that have been recommended for nomination for the European Film Awards 2022 (December 10) are the crème de la crème of European cinema.”

The selected international projects will attend the co-production forum in Galicia (Spain, 8-9 March 2023) where they will compete for an award of €10,000 and several prizes in services. The initiative has its sights set on transforming Galicia into a creative hub for international, independent projects with a strong artistic vision.  

Agora invites docmakers to submit creative and TV documentaries, doc series and documentaries for children within the Agora Doc Market, Docs in Progress and Thessaloniki Pitching Forum sections. At the same time, Agora presents the renewed Agora Lab, a three-day consulting and educational workshop for emerging filmmakers from Greece.

My Name Is Happy tells the story of Kurdish aspiring singer Mutlu who, on the verge of stardom, suffers a terrifying and life-changing attack by a deranged suitor. Five years later, her carer & beloved sister Dilek is killed by her boyfriend. Despite her injuries Mutlu, now a huge TikTok star and ardent campaigner against femicide, pursues justice for her sister, supported by her ever-present family. Filmmakers Nick Read and Ayse Toprak discuss their feature documentary with Business Doc Europe.