Nick Cunningham

The late Roger Graef OBE, will be posthumously honoured with the prestigious BBC Grierson Trustees' Award during the 2022 British Documentary Awards. Graef’s illustrious filmmaking career spanned six decades and much of his work shone a light on the inner workings of the police and criminal justice system.

Designed to “celebrate the dynamic of European film culture,” the Month of European Film, kicking off 13 November and presented across 35 countries, will comprise “Europe’s own film and award season,” as it celebrates the diversity of European film for four weeks until the grand finale on 10 December with the European Film Awards in Iceland.

As one of the characters puts it in The Hamlet Syndrome, it’s not about choice, it’s about responsibility. She is one of five actors who have returned from active military service on the Donbass frontline, even before the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, to perform in a play loosely based on Shakespeare’s tragedy. For them, the question of ‘to be or not to be’ has immeasurable poignancy and weight in existential terms, as the directors tell BDE.

Joining December 19 from the BFI’s UK Global Screen Fund, Grundy will be responsible for the fest’s business affairs, partnerships & fundraising, production & operations as well as audience development. The role is a new, joint leadership position and will work collaboratively with Raul Niño Zambrano who has moved into the role of Acting Creative Director.

IDFA 2022 unveiled November 2 its juries across nine competitive sections, including International, Envision, Dutch, Youth, Short and Use of Archive Competitions, as well as Doclab. “Made up of some of the most esteemed names in documentary film, our festival juries are an indispensable part of IDFA and fulfil an honorable role of immense value,” writes the festival.

Submitted for consideration in the Academy Awards Feature Doc category, Master of Light tells the incredible and vital story of George Anthony Morton who, having spent eleven years in federal prison for dealing drugs, now paints like a latter-day Rembrandt after honing his artistic skills while incarcerated. Director Rosa Ruth Boesten and producers Ilja Roomans and Anousha Nzume discuss their feature doc.

This makes Netflix the first streamer in the world to have its series and films preserved in the British Film Institute national archive collection. Doc content includes the series Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting An Internet Killer, Night on Earth and Our Planet. “This is a real milestone for the BFI National Archive and gives us a historical record for audiences in decades to come,” says Arike Oke, BFI Director of Knowledge and Collections.

Judith Auffray’s ‘07:15 – Blackbird’ wins top Opus Bonum prize. Best debut to Fanie Pelletier’s ‘Bloom’. ‘Kapr Code’ wins main award in Czech Joy. Best Film in Testimonies is ‘Into the Weeds: Dewayne "Lee" Johnson vs Monsanto company’ by Jennifer Baichwal. Otilia Babara’s ‘Love is Not an Orange’ wins Silver Eye Feature Award, given by the Institute of Documentary Film.

Czech Hana Blaha Šilarová talked to Business Doc Europe ahead of her presentation at Emerging Producers, a training programme designed for 17 up-and-coming European doc producers. Spanning Ji.hlava and Berlinale 2023, the programme will also introduce each to the international film market, and enable them to create a new network of film professionals “to increase the potential of European co-productions.”

Eight project awards were handed out October 28, as well as two festival poster awards. The Ji.hlava New Visions Award 2022 for the most promising European project went to ‘Forest,’ while ‘Recording Mary’ won the Ji.hlava New Visions Award 2022 for the most promising U.S. project. The Silver Eye Award 2022 for Short Docs went to Ukrainian Kateryna Ruzhyna’s ‘Avitaminosis.’