Nick Cunningham

London-based BAFTA award-winning production company Mosaic Films - who pioneered the use of animation to tell sensitive stories using real-life testimonies voiced by their subjects – is launching a new 3-part series September 4 on 'care-experienced' children, twenty years after the company’s debut animation.

On the Adamant by French director Nicolas Philibert and Estonian Anna Hints’ Sundance winner Smoke Sauna Sisterhood are in the frame for the award which combines the ratings of the European public with the ratings of MEPs, each accounting for 50% of the final result. The five nominated films will be screened in cinemas across Europe (with subtitles) within the EU’s 24 official languages. The winning film will be announced March 2024.

Paris-based French-Palestinian filmmaker Lina Soualem talks to Business Doc Europe about her new film that documents the lives of women across four generations within her family, one of whom is the internationally renowned actress Hiam Abbass, the director’s mother. “It's as if the women of my family…each represent a piece of history, a piece of time that doesn't exist anymore,” says Soualem.

Ten new projects were presented August 31 at B2B Doc Industry Days in the Polish city of Gdynia. The ongoing raison d’être of B2B Doc is to “contribute to the development of the film industry on the local level in our countries,” CEO Alex Shiriaieff underlined this week to BDE. The countries within the B2B Doc remit are Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Doclisboa has announced the first confirmed titles for its next edition, running 19-29 October. Five films in the Heart Beat section and five in the From the Earth to the Moon section “draw up a unique, rhythmic, varied landscape; from dance to literature, to music and the pleasures of the palate – and from the stage to the deep green jungle,” write festival organisers.

The 19th edition of the DOK Co-Pro Market invites 35 documentary projects from 30 countries. “Projects [that] explore pressing issues of our time, expand the genre of true crime and offer outlooks on the future,” the festival writes of this year’s selection. The number of submissions this year totalled 316 projects. The DOK Co-Pro Market 2023 will take place from 9 to 10 October during DOK Leipzig.

The industry event of Helsinki International Film Festival and a marketplace for Nordic films and Finnish series, Finnish Film Affair will once again gather hundreds of decision makers to Helsinki on 20-22 September. Presented in the showcase will be nine new feature doc projects from the likes of Virpi Suutari (Once Upon a Time in a Forest) and Truth.com by Tonislav Hristov.

Five Ukrainian (co)productions at advanced stages of production or post- were pitched August 30 during B2B Doc Industry Days in the Polish city of Gdynia. “Our filmmakers are right there on the frontlines. Some have lost their loved ones; many are refugees or living in exile. Despite all that, many of them are still making films to tell stories that need to be heard worldwide,” comments B2B Doc CEO Alex Shiriaieff. Before the event, film teams responded to questions posed by BDE.

The European Film Academy has revealed the “14 powerful feature-length documentary films,” as chosen by a committee comprising a diverse range of European experts, that have been recommended for potential European Film Awards nomination in the European Documentary category. The eventual winner will be announced during the Awards ceremony in Berlin on 9 December 2023.

HBO Documentary Films has acquired US and Canada television and streaming rights to the critically acclaimed Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson. Produced by Confluential Films and Rada Studio, the film premiered in Sundance 2023 where it won the Grand Jury Prize winner in US Documentary Competition.