Nick Cunningham

Brigid O’Shea has been appointed the sole director of Documentary Association of Europe while Marion Schmidt (former co-director) will remain in her seat on the executive board and join the team of senior consultants. DAE was founded in February 2020, and has since grown to a community of more than 700 members from 36 countries.

The professional market of the Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival will take place May 6 to 10 with John Wilson, Albert Serra, Efthymia Zymvragaki and Estephan Wagner among the main guests. Every year DocsBarcelona gathers approximately 600 professionals who attend conferences, pitch sessions, speed meetings and other activities.

This year, 42 projects from 21 countries will compete for the Best Pitch Prize. The selected projects will be presented across seven thematic pitch sessions. Australia will be back in force 2024, with a total of seven documentary projects. Five further projects are selected for the Innovation WIP support programme dedicated to innovative documentary creation. Sunny Side of the Docs runs June 24-27 in La Rochelle, France.

The UK festival will join forces with the International Documentary Association (IDA) on the Alternate Realities Exhibition and Summit of its 31st edition, taking place 12-17 June 2024. The exhibition will be curated by DocFest Creative Director Raul Niño Zambrano alongside IDA’s Keisha Knight, Director of Funds, and Abby Sun, Director of Artist Programmes, supported by Alternate Realities Programme Producer Jack Rutherford.

The Grand Jury Prize of International Feature Film Competition was given to The Landscape and the Fury by Nicole Vögele (Switzerland) while the Special Jury Award was won by Rising Up at Night by Nelson Makengo (Democratic Republic of Congo, Belgium, Germany, Burkina Faso, Qatar). The Jury Prize in the Burning Lights Competition was awarded to A Fidai Film by Kamal Aljafari (Palestine, Germany, Qatar, Brazil, France). All awards...

Over CHF 100,000 of prizes were distributed to sixteen winning projects during the 2024 Visions du Réel Industry Awards Ceremony. The project The Last Days of the Hospital won the Eurimages Co-production Development Award (€20,000) while the Special Eurimages Co-production Development Award (€20,000) was handed to the Ukrainian project Fixing the War. The visions sud est award went to Hanz Rippe Gabriel, for their project The Shadow of Yolüja. All awards...

In recent years Nijsmans has been project manager for the international promotion of documentaries, short films and immersive productions. He was also involved in the organisation of CONNEXT, the annual film and series showcase event. He takes up the role April 17 and replaces Christian de Schutter whose departure from Flanders Image was announced in December 2023. Flanders Image is the audiovisual export agency for Flanders and Brussels, Belgium.

In her feature doc, which receives its Swiss prem at VdR, Dutch director Saskia Gubbels observes, at first hand, how change is effected within the Amsterdam Fire Department towards wider gender and ethnic inclusivity. The central character, commander Gerrie, puts up little objection to his every move, nor those of his team, being followed, but he certainly wasn't going to change behaviour for the camera, says director Gubbels.

A doc as a western. A western as a doc. Who could ask for more? In his debut feature Alexis Franco tells a story of elemental forces and extreme opposites. Desert and water. Childhood and old age. Wind and fire. Life and death. All set against the vast backdrop of the Argentinian Pampas, and populated by the director’s own gaucho family. Franco talks to Business Doc Europe about life in the big country.

The Docs&Pearls Official Section, featuring 15 films, also addresses other contemporary debates such as the dangers of the digital world and the empowerment of women. “This year's Docs will be full of discoveries and doors that open to invite us to walk along paths not yet explored, full of questions and tools to unlearn and relearn different ways of thinking and being in the world," comments Artistic Director, Anna Petrus.