Nick Cunningham

Chile arrives at CPH:DOX 2024 where Oasis, the latest film from the MAFI collective, is in selection following its world bow in Berlin Forum. Additionally, the project Unwelcomed, Amilcar Films' debut doc, will be presented at CPH:WIP. “The presence of Chilean documentaries at events like CPH:DOX demonstrates the growing interest in the Nordic countries and worldwide in our country's creative industry,” says ProChile’s Catalin Butnariu.

New Head of Industry Mara Gourd-Mercado and MD Katrine Kiilgaard spoke to BDE about how CPH goes about the business of doc. This year the Forum presents a whopping 46 projects whose key criteria are artistic quality, relevance and marketability, they stress. “It's that kind of magic formula that ties it all together that we're looking for, something that will interest the industry, that will garner attention and that will potentially go and get those partners and get these projects made,” says Gourd-Mercado.

The professional market of the 27th DocsBarcelona International Documentary Film Festival will run May 6-10. Projects are selected across the Public Pitch, Speed Meetings, Rough Cut and New Tech Pitch sections and participants within each section will present to a panel of international decision makers, funders and distributors. The DocsBarcelona festival runs May 2-12.

A total of 29 new projects have been selected to participate 14-17 April across Visions du Réel Industry’s four pitch events this year. 15 projects in development are selected for VdR–Pitching, and six projects in finishing stages will be presented at the VdR–Work In Progress pitch. Four projects have been selected within both the VdR–Rough Cut Lab and the VdR–Development Lab respectively.

A second StoryBoard Collective/Sunshine Cinema grant of 5,000 CHF was handed out March 12 at FIFDH to support future community screenings of the Kenyan doc The Battle for Laikipia, directed by Daphne Matziaraki and Peter Murimi. During the Geneva festival and market, producer Toni Kamau and Impact producer Elsie Ann Wambui Kariuki outlined their impact strategy for the film, which world-premiered at Sundance 2024.

On the isolated Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, men perform a very particular ritual. They play football together, and then they cry together. Helena de Castro’s debut doc feature will analyse this fascinating variation on the beautiful game. “If we let ourselves cry because of football, then let's use football to unleash all the [other] things we should cry about,” de Castro told the Geneva audience.

The festival’s 13th edition runs March 13–17 and features a raft of international prize-winning docs and hybrids. The NY festival concludes with Bill and Turner Ross’s Gasoline Rainbow before the film hotfoots it to CPH:DOX where it is selected for the new section Parafictions. MOMI will also present the US premiere of Fiona Tan’s Footsteps, with a reception for the Dutch artist scheduled for March 15.

In looking to dub The Lion King into Quechua, the language of the Incas, not only is Fernando, a Peruvian voice actor enriching the life of his 8-year old son Dylan, he is also trying to save his indigenous tongue from extinction. “What we aim to do through our film, a joyful story of a very proud indigenous man, is to transform Quechua from a language of the oppressed into a language of power,” said producer Paloma Iturriaga.

The StoryBoard Impact Award (10,000 CHF) was won by the Peruvian project Hakuchu Munayta by Augusto Zegarra while the Sublimages Impact Award was handed to the Brazilian Brotherhood of Weeping Men by Helena de Castro. An additional 10,000 CHF award was given by StoryBoard, in association with the South Africa-based Sunshine Cinema, to the Kenyan film The Battle for Laikipia.

Doc Society’s Sandra Whipham provided a sobering account March 11 of the current streamer-led documentary landscape, but offered a large measure of hope in urging independent makers to wrestle back financial, executive and creative control. “We need to imagine a new global pool fund where resources are shared equitably to every region, where local experts can make decisions about what and where to spend. Funding this work at scale [and] funding the distribution and impact strategies that we know are effective is the answer to the nightmare of AI-generated content, creative conformity and political retreat we find ourselves in.”