Nick Cunningham

Katrine Kiilgaard has been appointed Managing Director of the organization behind the three biggest Danish film festivals CPH:DOX, CPH PIX and BUSTER. Together with Artistic Director Niklas Engstrøm, she will have the overall responsibility for running and further developing the festivals.

New collaboration supports diverse filmmakers around the world and films exploring the theme of migration as ‘a central story of our time.’ Three selected short docs will each receive $25,000 in grant support, individual project mentorship, and ‘career advancing public activations’ to assist in the completion and distribution of the projects.

One of the awards season’s most high profile film events, the IDA (International Documentary Association) Doc Awards ceremony, will now be held online Friday March 4 amid rising public health concerns related to COVID-19 , the association announced January 6.

Nine competition sections include International, Music, French and Impact. Dutch doc doyenne Heddy Honigmann is 2021 Guest of Honour and the festival will present additional focuses on Benelux documentary and a Taste of Doc section on matters both culinary and gastronomic. Festival and Industry events to be presented on-site in Biarritz 17-23 January.

Two-day Story and Rough Cut sessions for February, April and May 2022 designed to ‘provide makers a method for a clearer dramaturgical structure for their documentary project.’ Sixteen DocCelerator workshops have been presented since the initiative was launched by Copenhagen-based Paradiddle Pictures in May 2020.

Raul Niño Zambrano set to leave IDFA and join Sheffield DocFest (June 23-28) as head of programmes from the end of January. Other new appointments to the Sheffield senior leadership team are immersive director Francesca Panetta, who takes over as alternate realities curator, and Sarah Mosses and John-Paul Pierrot of Together Films (UK) who will head up the festival’s marketing and audience strategy and campaign in 2022.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences shortlists for Documentary Feature and Short Subject for the 94th Academy Awards were unveiled December 21. One hundred thirty-eight features were eligible for consideration in Doc Feature category. Nominations for the 94th Academy Awards will be announced February 8 2022. The 94th Oscars® will be held March 27 2022.

The Swiss-based sales outfit announces its pick-up of Ultraviolette and the Blood-Spitters Gang which won IDFA’s ReFrame Award for Creative Use of Archive. The announcement comes hot on the heels of VICE Media’s worldwide acquisition of Lightdox’s Swedish award-winning campaigning doc Arica, by Lars Edman and William Johansson Kalén.

First documentaries selected for Berlinale Special, Panorama, Generation and Forum sections, and include films by Magnus Gertten (Sweden), Olivia Rochette/Gerard-Jan Claes (Belgium) and Laurent Charbonnier/Michel Seydoux (France) and the Myanmar Film Collective. The selection “highlights the power of cinema as a tool that connects people, places and times ahead,” says Carlo Chatrian.

Visions du Réel 2022 has announced that the Special Guest of its 53rd edition running 7 to 17 April 2022 will be Kirsten Johnson (Dick Johnson is Dead, 2020 Sundance US Doc Jury Award winner) who will present a retrospective of her films as well as a selection of films to which she has contributed, which includes Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour (2014, co-producer and camera).