Nick Cunningham

Five new projects were pitched August 14 during Cinelink’s Docu Rough Cut Boutique, the regional platform dedicated to upcoming documentaries at advanced editing stage. Organised in three modules (Budapest, Sofia, and Sarajevo) the projects compete for a slew of cash and in-kind prizes. “There are so many interesting and relevant stories to be told, and the world wants to know these stories,” programme head Rada Sešic told BDE.

The $5000 Docu Talent Award was split between the Ukrainian A Picture to Remember and the Czech-Slovak co-production Chronicle. The DAFilms.com Distribution Award was awarded to An Almost Perfect Family by Romanian director Tudor Platon. During the August 13 pitch event, Ji.hlava IDFF also announced the participants within the Emerging Producers 2024 programme and unveiled its East West Index 2023.

The winners of the Doc Alliances Award 2023 were announced August 12 during the award ceremony of DokuFest in Prizren. The Doc Alliance Award for Best Feature Film, valued at with €5000, went to Death of a City by João Rosas. The Doc Alliance Award for Best Short Film, valued at €3,000, was awarded to The Cervix Pass by Marie Bottois.

Two days after receiving the Heart of Sarajevo Award, the prolific Northern Irish/Scottish director gave a masterclass August 13 during which he addressed a panoply of subjects, among them his upbringing in Belfast during the Troubles, working from the margins, his filming method, the poetry of cinema and turning shyness into a superpower. He was in conversation with Bulgarian academic Dina Iordanova.

Previously called the Factual Showcase, the International Factual Forum is designed to enable television or digital content producers to present their ideas for factual formats and programs to potential buyers, executive producers, television networks, streaming platforms, and other key figures in the entertainment industry attending MIA 2023. Deadline for submissions: September 8. The MIA market runs October 9-13 in Rome.

For Sarajevo-born Miroslav Mandic, nature doesn't exist merely to be exploited by the human species. Because when it is, it has a tendency to bite back - with tsunamis, earthquakes or pandemics. In his short film Hug, nature is in the ascendant, its beauty, power and subtlety revealed against a dramatic soundscape which itself finds counterpoint within a dynamic modernist score. The director explains his rationale to Business Doc Europe.

20 films feature in the festival’s designated Doc Competition, while non-fiction is also prominent within the Dealing With The Past and Kinoscope programmes. The 29th edition opens August 11 with Nenad Čičin-Šain’s U2 doc Kiss The Future. Additionally, the festival’s professional arm Cinelink Industry Days presents a slew of dynamic new doc projects from the region, plus talks and debates.

The full title of Sovran Nrecaj’s short doc in Sarajevo Competition is Fran and Verka: Or A Usual Day In An Abandoned Village, in which Sovran Nrecaj follows the last two folk left in a tiny parish following the 1999 war in Kosovo. The film is the first of a series of micro-histories from the region that the director wants to tell, “to bring these stories back from under the radar and diversify the already existing narratives,” Nrecaj tells BDE.

Open Doors, Locarno Pro’s talent development program for artists from under-represented communities around the world, handed 3 awards August 8 to the Dominican Republic project Tres Balas (Three Bullets), directed by Génesis Valenzuela, produced by Wendy Espinal. The prizes include a CHF 20,000 Open Doors cash grant alongside a €8,000 development grant offered by CNC (France).

Eight new creative documentary projects from Central and Eastern Europe will be presented at Sarajevo’s CineLink Industry Days on August 13. The most promising project will receive the Docu Talent Award, accompanied by a cash prize of $5,000 USD, in co-operation with Current Time TV. The DAFilms.com Distribution Award will cover services valued at €3000 and includes international VOD release on DAFilms.com for two years.