Davide Abbatescianni

On 11 October, Rome’s Cinema Barberini hosted a panel titled ‘Archives, Market and Free Access: Value, Cost and Social Use of Audiovisual Heritage,’ moderated by Marco Spagnoli, MIA’s Deputy Director and Head of Doc & Factual. Leading players from Italian outfits Doc/It, Istituto Luce, Fandango and Anica, as well as international trade body Focal International, took the floor.

At MIA 2022, the directing duo Samuel León and Saúl Valverde pitched Diary of an Infiltrator, a 4x45’ docuseries project set to be filmed between Chile, Rome, Berlin and Buenos Aires. The series revolves around the “incredible, untold story” of anarchist filmmaker Miguel Herberg who infiltrated Pinochet’s Chilean military regime from 1972 to 1974, exposing its murderous iniquities.

Directed and edited by Ilaria de Laurentiis, The Rossellini Method promises to be “an archive film portrait of the legendary Italian director: revolutionary, irreverent, contradictory, candid in life and art.” De Laurentiis edited the feature doc The Rossellinis, which was pitched at MIA 2019 and selected for Venice the following year. Producer Raffaele Brunetti talks to Business Doc Europe about his latest Rossellini doc.

What is the moral cost of the War on Terror? Is it legitimate to violate the law in the name of national security? These are the two main questions tackled in the new doc feature, fully titled Ghost Detainee – The Extraordinary Rendition of Abu Omar and pitched at this year’s MIA market. “It is a spy film but also a reflection on what limits our governments can push to defend their own democratic principles,” the Italian doccers tell BDE.

Award winning director, DoP and TV author Edoardo Anselmi and producer Carlo Ghiani last week pitched their new non-fiction project at Rome’s MIA, a TV one-off titled Banksy and The Sad Girl (La ragazza triste di Banksy). The film follows the rescue of the titular contemporary icon and promises to explore the impact of street art today.

The exploration of Earth’s orbit takes centre stage in Blue Sphere, a science-fiction docuseries project pitched at the MIA market in Rome last week. Within an epic that follows space pioneers over several generations, director Jérôme Bernard will invite experts to discuss the human and technological challenges that arise from the conquest of the environment beyond our atmosphere.

Italian pubcaster RAI announced October 12 its decision to join the likes of ZDF, Channel 4 and SVT in the Global Doc Initiative, and unveiled details of a new project on nuclear fusion, to be co-produced with France Télévisions. Both announcements were made at the MIA market, running October 11-15 in Rome, during an event moderated by the MIA Deputy Director and Head of Doc & Factual Marco Spagnoli.

A veteran of the international documentary business, Rishøj Jensen starts his role with immediate effect. Since 2011, he has been working as a producer and outreach manager for Swedish outfit Auto Images, involved in several successful non-fiction features such as Nelly & Nadine, recently crowned Best Nordic Doc at Nordisk Panorama. In 2019, he launched the documentary training and consulting firm Paradiddle Pictures.