Nick Cunningham

Leipzig’s DOK Industry programme, announced September 14, will open October 9 with a panel titled Displaced by Dictatorship and War: Belarusian Independent Filmmakers in Europe, designed to bring “renewed attention to exiled Belarusian documentary filmmakers amid the country’s escalating political climate and curbs on (artistic) freedom.” DOK Industry runs 9-13 Oct onsite during the upcoming DOK Leipzig festival (8-15 October).

The project development lab will take place between October 19 and 25 during Nebulae, the industry programme of Doclisboa (Lisbon, 19-29 October). This year, 354 projects from 20 Ibero-American countries and Italy applied and 15 were selected (12 film projects and three research and criticism projects). Ten countries are represented and the projects are all at different stages of production.

This year’s Ji.hlava IDFF is primarily dedicated to women, the Czech festival announced September 13, with topics such as female physicality and sexuality, ageing, friendship, childbirth, coming to terms with motherhood, sexual violence, and the effort to break free from gender roles running through the programme. Special guests include Claire Simon and Naomi Kawase. The festival also presents a Marguerite Duras retrospective.

The AJB DOC Main Award went to When Spring Came to Bucha by Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz. The Al Jazeera Balkans Program Jury Award was presented to Nick Read and Ayse Toprak for My Name is Happy. Special Recognition Awards went to Pure Unknown, by Valentina Cicogna and Mattia Colombo, and Flotation, directed by Alesandra Tatić and Eluned Zoe Aiano.

A raft of films in the Panorama section reflect the current state of a region under the influence of Russia, while the Focus: Post-1991 Slovenian Documentary Films section will screen outstanding Slovenian films made over the past three decades. 5x5 Shorts from the East is being presented together with an array of CEE partners while the Doc Alliance Award will screening 3 long and 3 short docs from the region.

The Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries handed out its project awards at the end of the 27th edition which took place September 3-10. “We are very pleased with this year's edition and the opportunity to, once again, serve as a platform for important meetings and connections. With an expanded industry programme we were able to bring to Riga more film professionals than ever,” commented Zane Balčus, Baltic Sea Docs project manager.

Among the first confirmed speakers are Sara Bernstein of Imagine Documentaries; award-winning docmaker and animator Ari Folman (Waltz With Bashir) and James Townley, Chief Content Officer Development at Banijay. Directed by Gaia Tridente, MIA will run October 9-13 in Rome and is again focused on co-production, financing strategies and models, sales and distribution, works-in-progress, nurturing talent and project circulation.

The $25,000 Main Pitch Al Jazeera Documentary Channel prize was awarded to The Rabbis Intifada by Heather “Chana” Tenzer. Al Jazeera Documentary Channel awarded its Work-in-Progress prize to Abd al-Kader Habak for Until The Buzzing Stops, and its Balkan Stars award to I Don't Want To by Hanis Bagashov. The second edition of Al Jazeera Documentary Industry days @ AJB DOC ran September 9-11 in Sarajevo. All awards…

Tana Gilbert’s documentary, about women in a Chilean prison and shot entirely on clandestine cellphones, won the IWONDERFULL Grand Prize and Mario Serandrei – Hotel Saturnia Award for Best Technical Contribution. The jury underlined how, “the director puts us side by side with the incarcerated women, without passing any judgment on their value, and this is a prowess of cinema's poetic license.”

Filmmaker Irina Maldea tells a timely story in her documentary project, selected for AJB DOC Industry. The ‘New Thinking’ of Mikhail Gorbachev was dismissed as Utopian fantasy, the director stresses, but nevertheless a chance for long-term peace was lost forever in the pursuit of short-term gain, and the war currently raging in Ukraine is, arguably, a direct consequence of the short-sightedness of over 30 years ago.