Nick Cunningham

New data published by Ji.hlava IDFF in its East West Index 2021 reveals that last year saw a mammoth 22% drop in film selections at 14 key European festivals as a result of the pandemic. “Losing such a big space for filmmakers might affect the diversity of presented films and change the European film infrastructure,” warns Ji.hlava IDFF boss Marek Hovorka.

The awards were handed out during the Doc Day Lunch of the Marché du Film in Cannes. Rocco Di Mento won the Best Feature Award for The Blunder of Love, which comes with a €5000 cheque to be spent on his next project. The Best Short Award to Bless You! directed by Tatiana Chistova, with includes €3000 contribution towards her next project.

When he came to assemble his documentary Little Palestine: Diary Of A Siege, Abdullah Al Khateeb discovered he had around 500 hours of material. He had shot and shot and shot. “Most of the footage was not made in order to make a documentary,” the director remembers to Business Doc Europe.

The Netherlands Film Fund and the Swedish Film Institute are drivers on a new international fund, named New Dawn, designed for projects with a director, producer and/or screenwriter from one of the groups that the United Nations Human Rights Act specifies as "a discriminated group." Six other European funds are currently "finalizing the criteria for the new fund," together with their Dutch and Swedish partners.

Bianca Stigter’s Dutch/UK co-pro is constructed out of a three-minute home movie shot in a Jewish town in Poland in 1938, using a 16mm camera. Produced by Floor Onrust of Family Affair Films (Amsterdam), the film’s associate producer is Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave). The narrator is Helena Bonham Carter.

Producer Kat Mansoor may be a self-confessed “urban girl who didn’t spend much time in nature growing up”, but together with filmmaker Andrea Arnold and DOP Magda Kowalczyk, was prepared to get up close and personal to shoot the bovine beasts featured in Cow, which screens Out of Competition at Cannes.

New to the Berlin-based sales company slate is Roger Federer: the Reunion and Dragon Women, about top female operatives in the field of finance. Rise and Shine continue sales on the female wrestler doc Luchadoras, which picked up three awards at last week’s Thessaloniki Film Festival, as well as the avian-themed love affair The Storkman.

The Palestine Film Institute arrives with four docs-in-progress at Cannes Docs, the feature doc 'Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege' selected for ACID, the Palestinian-produced 'The Sun and the Looking Glass' nominated for the Doc Alliance Award. Fiction interest is found within the Critics Awards for Arab Films and the selection of Friendships’ Death (1987) for Cannes Classics.

Ahead of the July 9 Sheffield Doc Fest Showcase at the Cannes Marché, festival chief Cíntia Gil outlines to Business Doc Europe one of the core remits of her festival, to fire the trajectories of great new doc projects, which is why she and her colleagues are partnering with Cannes Docs for the first time this year.

For Liselot Verbrugge of Deckert Distribution, Cannes 2021 isn’t about “60 meetings in four days,” rather a process of easing back into the business of face-to-face meetings, often for the first time with people she has only got to know online. And, of course, continuing sales on an eclectic slate of arthouse docs, which include pre-sales on two titles selected for Locarno.