Nick Cunningham

Berlinale published February 6 the entire programme of the 2024 festival running 15-25 February. Documentaries are selected across most festival sections, including two in Berlinale Competition (Architecton by Victor Kossakovsky and Dahomey by Mati Diop) and dozens more across the Encounters, Forum, Panorama, Generation, Berlinale Special, Retrospective and Short programmes.

This year's Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary at the 47th Göteborg Film Festival was awarded February 3 to the Norwegian Ibelin by Benjamin Ree. The prize is valued at SEK 250,000 (€21,950) in services. Honorary mentions were given to Marius Dybwad Brandrud/Petra Bauer for Fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen (Sweden), and to Anssi Kömi/Suvi West for Homecoming (Finland).

The 3-day programme Geneva-based event includes a pitch session during which 16 film teams explain their impact goals/strategies. Doc Society’s Sandra Whipham will make the Impact keynote; selected NGOs and international organisations will explain how they work with films and audiovisual content across all formats and platforms, and the impact campaigns for two urgent docs will be placed squarely in the frame. And much more besides. Industry accreditations now open.

DocsBarcelona will pay tribute to French filmmaking couple Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret during its upcoming edition, running May 2 to 12. The Honorary DocsBarcelona Award “highlights their honest and authentic approach to people and landscapes from a seemingly shy and distant perspective that, at the same time, can turn into art the tension between photography and the temporal dimension of cinema.”

The Danish documentary Life and Other Problems has been selected as the opening film at the 21st edition of CPH:DOX. The opening gala will be held on March 12 in Copenhagen at the Conservatory's Concert Hall, where director Max Kestner and a number of the film's participants will be present. The next edition of CPH:DOX runs March 13-24.

Mancini joins DocFest January 2024 to lead the festival’s industry strategy and activity including Marketplace, with oversight of the festival’s Industry programme and year-round activity. Other new appointments are Sophie Duncan as Marketplace & Talent Programmes Producer, Lisa Marie Russo as Marketplace Consultant, Vanessa Lobón Garcia as Talks and Sessions Senior Producer, and Lieven Heeremans (Podcast Programme Producer).

In Island In Between, nominated for an Oscar in the Short Doc category, S. Leo Chiang reflects on his relationship with Taiwan, China and the US from the islands of Kinmen, just a few miles from mainland China. “Kinmen connects Taiwan to China but also keeps them apart. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to this place. I want to make sense of it. Growing up, this channel of water was the edge of our universe, separating good from evil,” the director underlines.

The 2024 Panorama programme comprises 31 titles, ten of which are documentaries (all world premieres). “Essentially, it’s about communicating experiences and realities of life, history, understanding and empathy,” says section head Michael Stütz. “The films in this year’s programme express their attitudes in many voices, building bridges between lived experiences and cinematic possibilities that inspire us to look to the future.”

Dutch filmmaker Chris Teerink takes on one of the undoubted masterpieces of 20th Century literature in his latest creative documentary, which world-premieres in Rotterdam. “It's like being on a carpet that's constantly pulled from underneath you,’ he says of T.S. Eliot’s epic poem. “That feeling, that sensation, that was the real meaning of the poem for me, and became the focus of the film.”

Norway came up trumps at Sundance 2024 where A New Kind of Wilderness won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary, while Ibelin received The Directing Award and The Audience Award in the same section. The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Doc went to Porcelain War, while Daughters won the Festival Favourite Award and US Doc Audience Award. The Belgian doc Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat won the World Cinema Doc Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation.