Davide Abbatescianni

On May 21, Cannes’ Marché du Film hosted a talk titled “Fighting for the Commons in a Time of Critical Destabilisation.” The event saw the participation of director-producer Raoul Peck and Dominic Asmall Willsdon, IDA’s Executive Director. In particular, Peck zoomed in on his Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (showcased in the Special Screenings strand), and on advocacy, capitalism and how doc production has changed over the last 30 years, among other topics.

At Marché du Film, BDE spoke to May Odeh of the Palestinian Film Institute (PFI). The body is visiting the Croisette on the occasion of the May 19 Palestine Showcase, where the focus is placed on four new non-fiction projects. “It aims to spotlight the talent, creativity, and diversity within the Palestinian filmmaking community, providing a platform for Palestinian filmmakers to share their stories and perspectives with an international audience,” underlines Odeh of the Cannes event.

Crowned the most promising European project at last year’s Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, Pepa Lubojacki’s debut project If Pigeons Turned to Gold zooms in on four family members, including Lubojacki’s own brother and cousins, unhoused for over a decade and struggling with addiction. The work-in-progress, produced by Wanda Kaprálová for CLAW AV with Guča Films, was presented both in Prague and last month at CPH:DOX.

Fifteen years after her “first film” fell apart, US director Zia Anger has made My First Film, a deeply personal take on the experience, as told through her alter ego Vita (played by Odessa Young). “Rather than making a documentary or a hybrid, my intention was to make something that is fictional but based on a true story. As the making of the film went on, it felt more and more the unravelling of the story was just as important as the story itself,” she tells BDE.

Traversing the majestic Andean Highlands, the Atacama Desert and the Coastal Cliffs, the documentary Unwelcomed unveils the harsh reality of the migration crisis in Latin America and northern Chile’s radicalisation. The pic, set to premiere in 2025 and directed by Sebastian Gonzalez Mendez and Amilcar Infante, was one of the WIP projects presented at CPH:DOX 2024.

Inspired by the wild popularity of American WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) in India, two brothers create their own wrestling league. Assembling a band of aspiring wrestlers, they put at stake money, social acceptance and love, in pursuit of a daring dream. This is the premise of The Dirty Dream, pitched at CPH:DOX 2024 and helmed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh who were Oscar-nominated filmmakers for their 2021 doc Writing with Fire.

At CPH:DOX 2024, BAFTA- and Emmy-nominated director Ursula Macfarlane (The Lost Sons, Untouchable, Charlie Hebdo: 3 Days That Shook Paris) and award-winning producer Mandy Chang pitched their new feature, whose working title is The Second Woman. One of the buzziest projects presented at this year’s edition, it promises to be a radical, provocative documentary built around a legendary 24-hour play starring actor Ruth Wilson.

At CPH:DOX 2024, Business Doc Europe attended the WIP presentation of John Webster’s new doc Burnt Heart. In it, a group of Finnish firefighters form a specialist brigade to prepare for the large wildfires of the future. They travel to Portugal to learn from their elite colleagues already fighting on the frontlines of our climate emergency. He defined Burnt Earth as “a character-driven story about very relatable, ordinary people doing something extraordinary.”

At Forum, director Juan Alvaro Hein pitched his new project, a western documentary revolving around fatherhood and identity as experienced by three Danish-Argentinian gauchos. Hein described his film to the Copenhagen audience as “a simple but significant story of human connection” depicting “the downfall of nature and [of a] culture.”

On March 18, CPH:DOX 2024 hosted the DISCO Network’s Independence Project presentation and workshop, which advocates for independent documentaries across culture, society, and democracy. The 90-minute event, titled “Our Declaration of Independence,” saw the participation of Beadie Finzi, Director of Doc Society, and Jad Abi-Khalil, Executive Director of Lebanon-based cultural association for Arab Cinema Aflamuna (formerly known as Beirut DC).