Nick Cunningham

Sixteen new Swiss projects plus one Swiss minority co-pro will be presented across the VdR-Industry programmes in 2024. These are in addition to the 25 Swiss (co)productions that feature in the festival’s official selection. The subject of the Switzerland Meets… event this year are the Austria and German doc industries, during which co-production and networking opportunities between professionals from the featured countries will be examined.

DOXA Documentary Film Festival, Western Canada’s largest documentary film festival running May 2 to 12, will this year showcase a total of 48 features and mid-length films, as well as 34 shorts and a range of Industry events. The festival opens with Shannon Walsh’s Adrianne & the Castle. Closing the festival is Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story.

BDC Discoveries programme entails a six-month process of intense project development across 3 phases (Beldocs in May, Sofia Documental & DOK Leipzig in October) targeted at docmakers from the Balkans, or international teams with Balkan-related projects who are looking for collaboration within the region.

The jury members will bestow the festival’s prizes during the Awards Ceremonies that takes place on Friday 19 April. The Awards for VdR-Industry will be handed out April 17. The 55th edition of Visions du Réel runs April 12–21 2024.

This year's main East Doc Platform Award was handed March 28 to the Polish project Under His Spell by Lukasz Konopa. The HBO Max Award went to director Aneta Ptak for her project Birdie. The Czech Television Award went to the doc series Tito: The West's Favorite Dictator by Hungarian director Bence Máté. All awards follow…

The Russian auteur will attend the Catalan docfest with Architecton, the final part of his ‘planet’ trilogy after ¡Vivan las antípodas! (2011) and Aquarela (2018). “The festival has always accompanied the films of Victor Kossakovsky, who returns with a sensorially shocking film that questions the use that human beings make of natural resources to build and, unfortunately, also to destroy," comments Anna Petrus, Artistic Director of DocsBarcelona.

Asmae El Moudir’s The Mother of All Lies & Radical by Christopher Zalla win the Grand Jury Awards. Other winners include Mediha by Hasan Oswald and Mediha Ibrahim Alhamad; Kix by Bálint Révész and Dávid Mikulán; Eddyʼs oorlog by Joost van der Valk, and Mast-del by Maryam Tafakory. The Dutch human rights festival runs to Saturday March 30.

The Innovation WIP is aimed at documentary or documentary-inspired stories, regardless of category, format or technology, whether XR (virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality), podcasts, video games, dome creation or videomapping. Five creative teams will be selected to benefit from tailor-made support and presentation of their work during Sunny Side of the Doc, running June 24-27. The application deadline is April 2.

Ten film professionals will award the Docs&Pearls, Docs&Cat and DOC-U prizes at DocsBarcelona 2024. The 27th edition of the Catalan festival will run 2-12 May, while DocsBarcelona Industry is set for 6-10 May. Agent of Happiness, by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, will open the festival on May 2.

Arkadiusz Bartosiak’s portrait of distinguished Polish actor, director, manager and social activist Andrzej Seweryn will open the Polish festival May 26 as well as compete in the National Competition. “This is not a biographical film but a dynamic portrait of an eminent European artist captured in motion,” the festival writes.