Nick Cunningham

“The Polish Panorama does not merely explore our own backyard. Polish creators eagerly travel the world to bring stories that seem distant only at first glance, yet reveal their universality upon closer examination,” write selectors of this year’s local selection. The festival also reveals the jurors who will deliberate across all competition sections at KFF 2024.

The May 12 Awards Ceremony of the third MDAG Industry Awards came at the end of 4 days of deliberation that entailed 4 pitching sessions, 37 projects and over 280 one-on-one meetings. The CANAL+ Poland Award (3,000 euros) was given to Dekonstrukt by Mateusz Góra Kamil Wilk while Sugarland by Julia Smakjam won the Polish Filmmakers Association cash award of PLN 10,000 (2,333 euros). All awards…

During DocsBarcelona Industry, firebrand Catalan director Albert Serra and editor Artur Tort examined the processes behind Serra’s highly anticipated doc debut, Afternoons of Solitude, about bullfighting. After a career making fiction, why a doc now? “Everybody knows that making a fiction [is] more interesting and better than making a documentary,” he replied. “The only possible answer to this is to say, I do a documentary because it's impossible to make a fiction about [this subject].”

The winner of the VIKTOR DOK.international Main Competition Award was announced as Johatsu – Into Thin Air by Andreas Hartmann und Arata Mori. The VIKTOR DOK.deutsch Wettbewerb prize was won by Zwischen uns Gott by Rebecca Hirneise while the winner of the VIKTOR DOK.horizonte Competition – Cinema of Urgency prize was revealed as Kamay by Ilyas Yourish and Shahrokh Bikaran. All prizes…

Additionally the Docs&Cat jury awarded Casa Reynal by Laia Manresa as Best Catalonian doc. “In this 27th edition, we increased by 60% the number of spectators in the cinemas, which reinforces not only the interest of Barcelona's audiences in documentaries but also the local and international creative effervescence of filmmakers who work with reality,” said Artistic Director Anna Petrus.

The big winner was Adelina by Aurela Berila which won both the DocsBarcelona Project Award and the HBO Max Best Pitch Award, as well as the San Sebastian Lau Haizetara Award. Dolya Gavanski’s Confessions of a Female Gamer picked up two prizes; the East Doc Platform Award and the Artist-in-Residency Program Award (Jacob Burns Film Center & Women Make Movies. All awards…

Greek director Efthymia (Efi) Zymvragaki and dok.incubator’s Andrea Prenghyová discussed the development of Light Falls Vertical which, from the most unlikely of starts, was selected for IDFA Envision Competition before being short-listed for the European Film Awards 2023. “Efi didn't have money…Efi didn't have a team [and] there was a producer who was not really a producer,” Prenghyová remembers of their first contact.

The maverick, madcap director of the eponymous ‘How to…’ series for HBO Max shared his working methods and creative processes with the audience of Docs Barcelona Industry this week. “The closest thing I can relate it to is when you're at a bar and someone's just talking at you for an hour,” he said of his interview technique. “That's the kind of vibe that I try to recreate in the work, where I like to find someone that can just talk without interruption and just doesn't care what I think, which is, I feel, how most conversations historically for me go.”

Paris-based French-Palestinian filmmaker Lina Soualem talks to BDE about her film that documents four generations of women in her family, one of whom is the internationally renowned actress Hiam Abbass, the director’s mother. “It's as if the women of my family…each represent a piece of history, a piece of time that doesn't exist anymore,” says Soualem, whose film screens May 10 in DocsBarcelona’s Docs&Love sidebar.

“I think that it's easier to describe the essence of MDAG by telling how we do it. We promote the festival's films and their directors rather than just promote the festival itself,” CEO and Fest Director Artur Liebhart tells BDE on the eve of his festival’s 21st edition, which will once more play across seven Polish cities. MDAG runs May 10 to May 19 before going online May 21 to June 6.