Nick Cunningham

Ji.hlava IDFF asked alumni of its EMERGING PRODUCERS programme to select the films they most admire and which have, in part, defined their approach to the art of doc. Unsurprisingly, there were two documentaries in the top three, with Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil proving Top Doc. Third place went to Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing. But thereafter, fiction ruled, with docs accounting for a mere 19 of the top 88 films that received four or more nominations. Kindly read on…

Victor Kossakovsky’s Architecton and Mati Dopi’s Dahomey will compete, together with 18 fiction films, for Golden and Silver Bear awards during the 74th Berlinale (15-24 February 2024). Three documentaries are also selected for the festival’s Encounters section. These are Direct Action by Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell; Une Famille by Christine Angot, and Favoriten by Ruth Beckermann (with Ilkay Idiskut).

Belgium-based Moldovan filmmaker Olga Lucovnicova, whose debut My Uncle Tudor won both the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at Berlinale 2021 and the European Film Award, world-premieres her latest short at Sundance. The new film tells the story of a strange non-human creature that was found in 1996 in a region of Russia shrouded in mystery, 1700km east of Moscow. Lucovnicova explains more to BDE.

Do you remember when tech start-ups would find you a place to stay for the night, or locate a taxi just a minute away, or deliver you a burger? Just to make the business of living that little bit easier. Well, now start-ups are dealing in death, enabling grieving folk to communicate with AI-generated versions of their deceased loved ones, via web chat or VR. “[People] don't believe in God anymore…but at the same time, they can't deal with the fact that death is finite,” co-director Moritz Riesewieck tells BDE. “And these tech companies have a big chance to fill this gap.”

This year Italy is in the frame at the Biarritz-based Fipadoc, running 19-27 January. The festival opens with Giulia Giapponesi’s Bella Ciao, which precedes a programme of recent Italian docs, and a professional assessment of how to work with and within the Italian doc industry. Key competition programmes in Biarritz are for International, French, Music and Impact docs, and the 2000+ international delegates can enjoy a packed Industry programme of pitches, master-classes, talks and debates.

A leading figure in independent Chinese cinema, and contemporary cinema more broadly, Jia Zhang-Ke will present a masterclass while the festival will screen a retrospective of his films. “The 55th Visions du Réel (12-21 April) will be my first trip to Europe after these four years. I feel like embracing the world again, as excited as a child about to go on a long trip for the first time. I am heading to Nyon, for cinema that reveals the world as it really is."

Mstyslav Chernov’s doc is nominated in two categories, for Best Documentary and Best Film not in the English Language. Other nominees in the Best Doc category are American Symphony, Beyond Utopia, Still: A Michael J Fox Movie and Wham!. The 2024 Baftas will take place on 18 February at London's Southbank Centre.

With a focus on everything from fertility and 'ableism' to discrimination and trauma, CPH:DOX 2024 will engage in conversations about the body as a battleground. The festival also introduces a new cinema at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg festival centre, designed to be more inclusive for guests with disabilities. The 21st CPH:DOX runs March 13-24, 2024.

We are told at the beginning of the Oscar-nominated short doc The Barber of Little Rock that the racial wealth gap in the US is not a million-dollar problem, nor a billion-dollar problem, rather a trillion-dollar problem. But at least one person, Arlo Washington, both a barber and a banker, is looking to right this financial wrong, and vows to “advance equity, create opportunities and build the community.” Filmmakers John Hoffman and Christine Turner talk to BDE about their Oscar-shortlisted film.

Filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno discusses the Oscar short-listed film with US directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson. The synopsis for the Sundance Grand Jury U.S. Doc Prize winner reads how it “travels through time and space to reveal the enduring influence of Nikki Giovanni, one of America’s greatest living artists and social commentators.”