Nick Cunningham

Swiss producer Gaspard Vignon talks to Business Doc Europe about his doc that details attempts in Switzerland to reintegrate wolves into the countryside. “The wolf’s return carries a strong and polarised political debate in a lot of European countries, especially the alpine countries,” he says. “Inhabiting the Night is clearly a political manifesto and has an impact dimension, but not by addressing this debate directly. The question isn’t ‘pro or anti the wolf,’ but ‘how do we coexist, how do we share a common space?’”

Uruguayan Agustín Flores’ highly personal documentary interweaves the story of Jorge Firpo, a legendary horse trainer, with the director’s own journey through the pain of his father’s suicide. “Leaving the track is inevitable — it will happen to all of us,” Flores tells BDE. “The question is: how do we make life worth living before that moment arrives? Because a life without passion is a life without meaning.”

Ireland/UK’s Mike Downey and Istanbul-based Emir Kuelal Haznevi, both executive producers on Cannes competition 2026 entries Parallel Tales (Asghar Farhadi) and All of a Sudden (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), have joined forces to form the new boutique film financing outfit Saudade Ink to develop, produce and invest in quality arthouse fiction and documentary cinema from across the world.

dok.incubator is looking for film projects from Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary, as well as co-productions with these countries, to join the 2026 workshop. The renewed edition brings “an expanded two-part workshop format, more international tutors, direct feedback from decision makers, and a stronger focus on marketing, audience building, and smart distribution strategies,“ organisers underline.

More than 4500 industry professionals and creatives, among them Juliette Binoche, Joachim Trier, Ruben Östlund, Sandra Hüller and Francis Ford Coppolla, have signed an open letter calling for safeguards to film and audiovisual funding following the proposal to merge the MEDIA strand of the Creative Europe programme into the new AgoraEU mega-programme. “We, European cinema professionals and citizens – all cinema lovers – call upon the European Commission, European Parliament and Member States to future-proof the success and integrity of the vital and precious MEDIA programme and reinforce its resources,” the letter demands.

The award ceremony of the 5th MDAG Industry Awards took place May 10 in Warsaw after four pitch sessions, the presentation of 50 projects and over 350 one-on-one meetings. “This year’s edition brought forward stories that are too rarely heard, yet have the power to shift perspectives and expand our shared experience. We believe the projects presented within MDAG Industry will be bold, moving, and uncompromising, and will find their way to audiences around the world,” commented Industry Head Anna Szczypińska.

In their feature documentary Ice Women, selected for DOK.fest Munich, Jens Becker and Dorothea Braun set out to challenge the male-dominated story of Arctic exploration by shining the spotlight on the courage, resilience, and scientific contributions of women in the far North. For Braun, it all started with an old photograph of a woman in Arctic clothing wearing rifle. “I remember thinking: Why don’t I know her? Why have I never heard about women like her? The more I searched, the more I realized that the absence was not accidental.”

In María Molina Peiró’s Como Todo Mortal (Like Any Other Mortal), a remote robot searches a distant planet both for minerals and signs of life, while far way, beside one of the oldest mines in the world, inhabitants live surrounded by mountains of mineral waste under which are buried both towns and memories. “The main protagonist of this place [is] not even the people or the landscape, but its ecosystem that extends far beyond its own physical and temporal frontiers or limits,” says director Molina Peiró.

Traces, which won the Doc Panorama Audience Award at Berlinale 2026 and is now selected for Polish Comp at MDAG, addresses head-on the collective trauma suffered by survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), as perpetrated by the Russian military on Ukrainian women and men since 2014. "You see these women, you see their faces. They're not covered. They're not blurred. They're ready to talk. They're ready to sacrifice their privacy for the sake of truth,” co-director Kovalenko tells BDE.

In her feature doc world-premiering in International Competition at DOK.fest Munich, Maria Wischnewski profiles Helene Weigel, the great German actress, theatre manager and matriarch, and partner of Bertolt Brecht. “It is a strikingly modern story which, despite all its ambivalence, is far ahead of today’s feminist debates. In a time when we desperately need role models, there is still much to learn from her,” Wischnewski tells BDE.