Nick Cunningham

IDFA chief Orwa Nyrabia discusses the Oscar shortlisted Descendant with director Margaret Brown. The films tells the story of the descendants of the last known enslaved Africans who were brought to the United States aboard the ship Clotilda. “How can there be people in my family that I love but who are also racist?” asks Brown, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama. “That's a paradox to me…How do I reckon with that? How do I make art about that?”

The online DocCelerator programme, which organizes workshops to help filmmakers sharpen the focus of their documentaries, has restructured for its Spring 2023 edition. The programme will now run two strands - DocCeleratorStory and DocCeleratorWorkInProgress - to provide structured story input to docmakers at all stages of development and production.

Four new German docs will be presented in the Berlinale section dedicated to screening the best of local output and which is this year characterised by “conflicts and collisions.” Section opener Seven Winters in Tehran, about a dreadful travesty of justice, and Lonely Oaks, about the death of a protester, reveal a “concern for the future [that] comes naturally to up-and-coming German filmmakers,” the festival writes.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia talks to Indian director Shaunak Sen about the Sundance-winning All That Breathes, one of the front-runners in the race for this year’s Feature Doc Oscar. The film follows two brothers in a polluted Delhi who dedicate their lives to protecting the abundant but magnificent black kites that circle the skies above the city. “I would say it began with a vague interest in a kind of abstract triangulation of air, birds, humans,” Sen tells Kapadia.

MeetMarket, Sheffield’s flagship industry event for new documentary features and series, is open for projects. Now in its 18th year, the MeetMarket is one of the world’s most important markets and pitching forums for documentary and factual programming, and looks to connect docmakers from across the world with UK and international industry experts. Submissions deadline: February 17 2023.

In Melanie Manchot’s feature debut (in late post-production), a recovering alcohol and substance addict re-enacts moments from his own chaotic past life as he takes on the acting role of historical embezzler Thomas Goudie, whose public arrest in 1901 was reconstructed on celluloid (BFI Archive). Part observational doc and part fiction, all the support roles in STEPHEN are played by former or recovering addicts. “The shoot was probably the best three and a half weeks of my life,” Manchot tells BDE. “And I think for most of the cast as well.”

When the polar bears turn up every year in the Canadian town of Churchill, Manitoba, so do the tourists, thousands of them, and a lot of news crews besides. Oh, and filmmakers too. Jack Weisman and Gabriela Osio Vanden explain to BDE why their Oscar short-listed 14-minute doc will give audiences paws for thought. “Something I've taken away from this project is that if you place the camera at the right spot at the right time, the film will always reveal itself,” says Weisman.