Davide Abbatescianni

On 16 February, EFM hosted an intimate roundtable discussion titled "Non-Fiction Awards Campaigns," moderated by Matt Carey, Deadline’s Documentary Editor. Carey interviewed Salma Abdalla, recently appointed Head of Communications at the Austrian Film Institute and a seasoned sales professional, having formerly headed up Autlook. The core topic of the talk was award campaign strategies for documentaries.

On 15 February, the EFM hosted a panel titled “Encouraging Growth: The Journeys of Highly Acclaimed Documentaries,” moderated by Deadline’s Matt Carey. The event featured Mediawan’s Head of Doc Sales, Arianna Castoldi, and Les Films du Losange’s Head of Int’l Sales, Alice Lesort, who discussed the remarkable trajectories of Johan Grimonprez’s Oscar-nominated Soundtrack to a Coup d’État and Mati Diop’s Golden Bear winner Dahomey, two films that have resonated strongly with both audiences and critics worldwide.

Business Doc Europe caught up with Paula Ossandón Cabrera, Director of Chiledoc. During our chat we zoomed in on a recent survey published by the body highlighting the Southern American country’s thriving non-fiction scene, areas for improvement, co-productions, nurturing talents and, of course, Chile’s presence at this year’s Berlinale and EFM.

Do You Love Me is Lana Daher’s personal journey through the fractured historical, social, cultural, and political landscapes of Beirut. Using mainly archive footage, the film weaves together the past and the present in a quest to better understand Lebanon’s history and current status. Business Doc Europe sat down with the helmer, who presented her doc project at this year’s IDFA.

BDE caught up with Chinese-Dutch film producer Jia Zhao, who spoke about her new documentary project Whispers in May, showcased in the IDFA Forum and helmed by Dongnan Chen. The feature, produced by China’s Tail Bite Tail Films and Dutch outfit Muyi Film, follows Qinghua, a Yi ethnic teen, who sets out on a road trip with her two best friends to find a skirt for the menstruation rite of passage.

At IDFA 2024, we caught up with Renko Douze, producer of Tom Fassaert’s Forum project Between Brothers. The pic follows two elderly brothers - one a psychologist, the other a lifelong psychiatric patient - who set out to unravel the mystery of their father’s disappearance. Their son and nephew is filmmaker Fassaert, who joins them on a tragicomic road trip, untangling the roots of their inseparable bond. “Fassaert’s films are renowned for their emotional depth and intimacy,” Douze tells BDE.

The Eternal Soldier follows the story of the titular tragic figure who has fought and died in every war since the dawn of time, only to be resurrected again and again. “Our narrative device is to use a real telephone conversation between two opposing commanders in Chechnya as a central scene in the film and then to imagine their prior and subsequent lives, extending their stories all the way into eternity where they finally realise that they are in fact two sides of the same coin,” says producer Friedemann Hottenbacher.

Business Doc Europe spoke with Francesco Virga and Anna Di Toma of Doc/it during what is proving to be a frenetic IDFA for Italian docs. The country is represented by eight titles in the festival’s official selection, nine Docs for Sale titles, and four Forum projects. Virga and Di Toma focused on the Italian presence, the state of the country’s documentary scene, and Doc/its main activities at the Amsterdam-based gathering, among other topics.

Vienna-based sales agency Filmdelights presents two films in IDFA official selection - Dear Beautiful Beloved by Juri Rechinsky and Personale by Carmen Trocker - as well as acclaimed filmmaker Jasmila Žbanić’s new project Blum and Eva Kübar’s My Partners as part of their Docs for Sale slate. “To put it simply, our editorial policy comes down to films we find interesting and that resonate with us,” Christa Auderlitzky, Managing Director tells BDE.

In Pictures in Mind, Eleonora Camizzi uses the medium of cinema to confront her father, Vincenzo, who has schizophrenia, asking him the difficult questions she has avoided for years. Set in a minimalist, symbolic space, the documentary explores their strained relationship and the challenges of living with a father in a different reality. The director recalls: “When we first watched it together, he said, ‘luckily I said yes to this project; it’d be a shame if this film didn’t exist.’”