Davide Abbatescianni

An elementary school in northern Italy where all the pupils are children of migrants lies at the heart of The Last Class, a new creative documentary by Italian filmmaker Michele Fornasero (SmoKings) currently in late production. The project, pitched at this year’s Thessaloniki Pitching Forum, is produced by Epica Film and Indyca and is seeking co-production partners, financiers, broadcasters and sales agents as it moves towards completion. BDE reports.

Set to world-premiere in the International Competition of the Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival, Soap Fever explores how the American daytime series The Bold and the Beautiful became an unlikely cultural lifeline in Finland during the severe economic downturn of the early 1990s. “It was this total collision of a miserable societal atmosphere and these glamorous American stars who suddenly appeared in the middle of it,” director Inka Achté explains the unexpected appeal of the US soap.

Elisabeth Rasmussen’s rigorous sophomore documentary follows micrometeorite enthusiast and former jazz musician Jon Larsen who claims to have located real stardust here on Earth, despite extreme scepticism from the scientific establishment. “I want the film to reach people who might be inspired or comforted,” Rasmussen explains her intentions to BDE. “It’s about feeling connected – to each other and to the stars.”

Premiering in the Newcomers Competition of this year’s Thessaloniki Docfest, Tirrenica explores the social landscape surrounding one of Italy’s most emblematic infrastructure projects: the Salerno–Reggio Calabria highway. Moving between present-day observational footage and archival material, the film follows lives unfolding along the motorway while reflecting on the promises of development and modernity historically attached to the road. The director ta;lks to BDE.

When Norwegian filmmaker Anette Ostrø began work on The Golden Swan, premiering in the International Competition at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, she was stepping into territory that few directors would ever dare confront: reconstructing the abduction and murder of her own brother, Hans Christian Ostrø, kidnapped in Kashmir in 1995 by the militant group al-Faran. Ostrø talks to Business Doc Europe.

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.