Nick Cunningham

Programmer Rada Šešić has devised a selection of 20 docs, featuring nine world, one international, seven regional and three B&H premieres. Filmmakers will compete for four awards including the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary Film, valued at €4,000 and sponsored by the Government of Switzerland. The 29th edition of Sarajevo FF runs 11-18 August.

Every year the industry forum gathers around 150 documentary film professionals from over 20 countries and serves as an important meeting hub for documentary filmmakers from the countries of the Baltic Sea region, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and beyond. Baltic Sea Docs is organized by the National Film Centre of Latvia.

In Rut Sigurðardóttir’s feature documentary, husband Kristján decides to address the couple's debt situation by taking to the cold Atlantic to fish for cod in a small fishing boat using nothing other than a line and a hook. The boat is called Skuld, a word which means debt, or which can be slang for money. As significantly, in Icelandic mythology Skuld was one of the glorious Valkyrie. BDE sails out to net director Sigurðardóttir.

The Rome-based MIA International Audiovisual Market will present its ninth edition October 9 to 13. The MIA Doc Co-Production Market is the most important Italian event dedicated to documentary projects at development stage, say organisers. What’s more, the event represents “a hotbed of discussion, debate, and confrontation among the most important international executives,” they add.

In the frame will be US filmmaker Mary Helena Clark and UK artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. The London fest will also feature the ‘No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image’ programme, dedicated to works of non-fiction that ‘invent new languages for the representation of gendered experience.’ Additionally, The Invisible Self is a programme of feminist films made in India between 1985-1991.

The festival, running 4-12 August, will showcase 104 films in its eight competitive sections. 3481 films from 111 countries from across the world were submitted for consideration, a 22% increase on 2022. “Films that will for sure move, amaze and, in some cases, even shock the audience with their rawness and directness, a pure testament to the power of documentary film,” commented Veton Nurkollari, Artistic Director, of his selection.

The co-director made the announcement to the Doc Society membership July 6. “Today I am sharing that I’m currently under the care of a neurosurgeon because like 300,000 others every year around the world, I’ve been diagnosed with a brain tumour. I’m stepping back from Doc Society — after 18 years of nonstop creative collaboration, dedicated craft, joyous partying and fierce camaraderie,” Search writes.

From August 18 to August 20, 2023, the first BarCamp of Belarusian independent filmmakers will be held in Warsaw, Poland. Organized by the Belarusian Filmmakers Network (BFN), the event is aimed at “bringing the community together to work out a unified strategy for the development of the Belarusian cinema.” Registrations for the event are requested before July 16.

Highlights include the world premiere of Ian Jefferies’ Choose Irvine Welsh and a preview screening of Susan Kemp’s documentary-in-progress The Lynda Myles Project: A Manifesto. The festival also hosts world premieres of six newly commissioned documentaries in the Bridging The Gap Documentary Short Films programme. EIFF runs 18 to 23 August.

Submissions are sought for the DOK Preview Germany, DOK Short n’ Sweet and DOK Exchange XR Showcase. Three years after China’s controversial National Security Law for Hong Kong, which severely restricts freedom of expression, the latest DOK Industry Podcast invites filmmakers Tze Woon Chan, Kanas Liu and Dr Anson Hoi Shan Mak to discuss the law’s impact on local docmaking. DOK Leipzig runs 8-15 October.