Davide Abbatescianni

How do you prove a documentary’s effectiveness in a climate of shrinking public resources, risk-averse commissioning and opaque platform metrics? That question sat at the heart of the DocSalon event titled Data on Impact, Please! Essential Needs in Non-Fiction Financing, an open-format conversation held on 15 February that repeatedly returned to a simple diagnosis: the sector is being asked to justify itself with data it often cannot access, cannot standardise and has little capacity to collect.

On February 16, EFM 2026 hosted a session titled Future Heritage – Securing the Future of Digital Cinema Archives, during which experts delivered a clear message to the documentary sector: the industry has embraced digital production, but long-term preservation remains dangerously fragile. The panel was part of Doc Salon’s Archive Day.

At EFM 2026, a packed Café Connect saw a revealing conversation between German filmmaker Andres Veiel and Deadline’s Matt Carey. The 30-minute discussion, held on 17 February, ranged from Veiel’s latest feature Riefenstahl to questions of archival ethics, documentary responsibility and the renewed relevance of historical material in a tense global political climate.

On February 16, EFM hosted a candid roundtable that examined gaps and opportunities in international documentary co-production between Germany and Morocco. The Moroccan–German Non-Fiction Assembly, organised within the DocSalon strand in partnership with Morocco’s Cinematographic Centre (CCM) and FIDADOC Agadir, brought together producers, broadcasters, festival programmers and filmmakers to explore how ties between the two industries might be strengthened in practical terms.

At Berlin’s EFM, one of this year’s conversations about documentary form and legacy focused on Barbara Forever, Brydie O’Connor’s debut feature portrait of pioneering US experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. After bowing at Sundance last month, the film is celebrating its international premiere in the Forum Special sidebar of the Berlinale. BDE reports.

At the upcoming European Film Awards, host Mark Cousins will veer away from what he sees as the growing emptiness of formula-driven cultural rituals. But rather than reject the awards format outright, Cousins aims to work through it, he tells BDE, retaining the core business of giving out prizes while puncturing the overall predictability of such events. “This is almost like taking our vows again, our cinematic vows, reminding ourselves why this art form is so extraordinary,” he says.

As doors open on 2025 IDFA Forum 2025, one of the most delicate and emotionally resonant titles in the Rough Cut line-up is Bugboy, the new documentary by Greek director Lucas Paleocrassas. The film is produced by Anemon Productions (Greece) in co-production with Toolbox Film (Denmark) and Flach Film Production (France), with world sales being handled by Austria's Autlook. Shot over three years, it examines the growing bond between a sensitive teenager, Yorgos, and the insects he cares for - an unlikely friendship that gradually becomes a map of the boy’s inner world.

With Getting the Message, Neasa Ní Chianáin steps inside the heart of political power at a moment when public trust in institutions is eroding and the climate emergency is accelerating. Over 18 months, Ní Chianáin gained unprecedented “fly-on-the-wall” access to Ireland’s Green Party leader and Minister for the Environment, Eamon Ryan, capturing both the mechanisms of democracy and the private moments that reveal the human cost of political life. The project is one of the Rough Cut presentations of this year's IDFA Forum, and will be presented November 16.

France-based filmmaker Nolwenn Hervé arrives at IDFA Forum 2025 with The Cord, a rough-cut project produced by Estelle Robin You for Grande Ourse Films. The documentary follows Carolina, a fearless activist operating in the crumbling health system of Maracaibo, Venezuela—an environment where, as the director notes, “life hangs by a thread,” and where women are forced to fight daily for their own survival and that of their babies.

Iranian helmer Marjan Khosravi brings Dreams of the Wild Oaks to IDFA Forum 2025 as a rough-cut project, now in post-production and produced by Milad Khosravi for Seven Springs Pictures, with French and Spanish co-production partners on board in the form of Avant la Nuit and Lukimedia. Set within a Bakhtiari community in southwest Iran, the film follows Samaneh, a young girl racing against time to save her freedom. Caught between a forced marriage and the ancestral ritual of Cease Blood Sacrifice, she embarks on a quest to find rare and endangered birds—a path that challenges her beliefs and tests the limits of her father’s love.