Davide Abbatescianni

An obscure parliamentary sitting in the South Caucasus some 33 years ago might not seem the most obvious material for a feature documentary. Yet, in An Incomplete Day in the History of Georgia 10.06.93, Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi transforms deteriorating VHS recordings of a debate over the country’s new currency into a portrait of a state struggling to define itself. The 100-minute film, set to world premiere in IDFA’s International Competition, also carries uncomfortable echoes of Georgia’s political present. Director Jashi talks to Business Doc Europe.

Independent documentary producers must rethink how they finance, market and distribute their work as traditional buyers commission fewer films, executives from Dogwoof, Scenery and US public television station THIRTEEN argued October 22 at MIA 2026. Moderated by Baltic Balkan Productions’ Ieva Ūbele, the panelists examined three different routes to sustaining ambitious non-fiction.

For British docmaker Kim Longinotto, the camera is far from an impartial observer. It can shift power dynamics, encourage unexpected conversations and even change the lives of those standing behind it. Speaking during a ‘fireside chat’ moderated by MIA’s Head of Doc Content Marco Spagnoli on 20 October in Rome, the director reflected on nearly five decades of filmmaking, explaining why she rejects conventional interviews, avoids imposing explanations on audiences and considers emotional involvement essential to her work.

With changing viewing habits reshaping documentary commissioning, representatives of BBC Storyville, Sweden’s SVT and Al Jazeera Documentary told producers at MIA 2026 that opportunities remain, but financing, rights and the way films reach audiences increasingly demand a different approach. The discussion was moderated by Canadian producer and broadcaster Rudy Buttignol, president of NXT.

Minerva Pictures is bringing Alex Infascelli’s 75-minute centenary documentary Ducati – 100 Years of a Legend to Rome’s MIA, where it will be presented on October 21. Narrated by Stefano Accorsi and featuring Keanu Reeves and leading MotoGP riders, the film looks beyond the motorcycles to the people who made them possible. Now in the final editing stage, the feature is seeking additional international broadcast and distribution partners, with its producers keen to reach audiences beyond the motorcycle world.

Barcelona’s most improbable Russian connection has landed at Rome’s MIA market. Boris Yeltsin, Forever Friends, a new doc project directed by Manuel Rodríguez, will explore the extraordinary relationship between the former Russian president and the Catalan doctors who saved him, drawing on previously unseen archives and first-hand testimonies. The film will revisit how emergency surgery brought Yeltsin to Barcelona and how that unlikely bond endured through some of the most turbulent years of post-Soviet politics.

More than four decades after murders and arson attacks terrorised northern Italy and Germany, questions remain about the neo-Nazi group Ludwig and the ideology behind its crimes. Simone Manetti’s Ludwig – The Black Angels investigates those unresolved issues through court records, archival material and first-hand testimony. The 82-minute documentary, courtesy of Italy’s B&B Film with Germany’s Beetz Brothers Film Production and Hearst Networks Italy, is now completed and will be presented at Rome’s MIA as part of the Italians Doc It Better programme.

The moka pot may be an icon of Italian domestic life, but its story is not simply about how coffee is made. In moka, with a small m, director Matteo Severgnini – grandson of inventor Alfonso Bialetti – revisits the people who turned an aluminium coffee maker into a global design icon, drawing on previously unseen family archives to ask how innovation emerges amid technological change. Produced by TIWI, the 56-minute documentary is in the final stages of post-production and will be presented at Rome’s MIA 2026.

French director Mathilde Damoisel is examining more than a century of Italian emigration in Ciao Italia!, a 90-minute documentary that challenges the familiar narrative of successful integration by looking at the discrimination, labour struggles and changing racial identities experienced by Italian communities abroad. Produced by Paris-based Hauteville Productions in co-production with Arte France, the film is currently in production and will be presented at the Doc Pitching Forum during Rome’s MIA, running October 19–23.

From cycling across Africa to negotiating Siberian rivers in temperatures as low as -60°C, Italian explorer Lorenzo Barone has spent much of his adult life seeking out places where survival depends on his own decisions. But the people waiting for him at home are just as central to Extreme Land Solo, a completed 54-minute documentary by Filippo Lupini that will be presented in the Italians Doc It Better showcase at Rome’s MIA, running October 19–23, 2026.