Nick Cunningham

Five near-ready doc projects will be presented August 16 during the CineLink Industry Days of the 32nd Sarajevo FF. Industry Days marks the final staging post in the three-module series that kicked off at Sofia in May 2026. Organised by CineLink and the Balkan Documentary Center, Docu Rough Cut Boutique is a platform dedicated to documentary projects at an advanced phase of the editing process.

Polish director Kamila Serwicka discusses her intensely personal debut documentary, telling how a family of women escape and survive years of domestic abuse. “This film is my companion through our transformation. I want to show the power that rises when women unite, to give hope and courage to those who are still silenced,” Serwicka tells Business Doc Europe.

Palestinian Mohanad Yaqubi discusses his latest feature documentary, which he describes as a letter to the late revolutionary Lebanese documentary director Jocelyne Saab, and in which he reframes much of the work she made between 1973 and 1983. “I'm not able to do armed struggle. I'm not able to do political work. I'm not able to do social work. I'm not a doctor. I'm nothing. The only contribution I can make is to save some of these films for the next generations,” Yaqubi explains to BDE the sense of duty he feels as a filmmaker.

Described as “a psychedelic doom scroll through the mind of a master Canadian politician,” and a “genre-bending collage of Canadiana,” Winnipeg director Matthew Rankin’s Ladies and Gentlemen, Brian Mulroney will premiere in the festival’s Midnight Madness sidebar. Additionally, National Film Board of Canada) will world premiere Carol Nguyen’s feature documentary Still Night, Burning House at TIFF 2026, and oversee the launch of the NFB/TIFF short documentary initiative REDEFINED.

Sarajevo FF’s CineLink Talks will “open a wider conversation about how films gain recognition, how that visibility is sustained and what responsibilities follow once institutions decide to support a work,” organisers write of the five panels, scheduled for August 17 and 19. Leading doc voices include producers Radovan Síbrt, Robert Y. Chang and Ada Solomon, as well as IDFA’s Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen and Ji.hlava IDFF’s Marek Hovorka.

European winners include UK docmaker Jason Elliott for I Want to Live, in the Documentary category. In the Alternative/Experimental category, Viktorie Štěpánová (Czech Republic) triumphed with her documentary Volklore, as did Dutch Nina Broers with her short doc Where Is My Sex Drive? The prizes will be presented at TIFF 2026, where gold, silver and bronze placements will be announced across the four categories, which also include Narrative and Animation.

The 2026 TIFF Docs line-up features 21 titles and 18 world prems, and includes new works by celebrated docmakers such as Mila Aung-Thwin, Sophie Fiennes, Alex Gibney, Barbara Kopple and Sine Plambech. More than two-thirds of the films are directed by women. Seven of the selections are Canadian, while 12 hail from both Europe and the US (six each). The final selections originate from Colombia and Peru respectively. The programme will open with Rapinoe, a personal profile of the US soccer star Megan Rapinoe. The 51st edition of TIFF runs September 10–20.

The documentary binds together people from two distant territories – the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Jadar Valley in Serbia – through their shared struggle for the right to decide the future of the place they call home. “As well as being a film about resistance, All We Have Is Us is a reminder that filmmaking itself can be an act of resistance,” the festival writes of the Chilean documentary.

Directed by internationally acclaimed violinist Lara St. John and produced by Patrick Hamm, the feature documentary exposes decades of sexual abuse and institutional failures within the classical music world, via the testimony of survivors, journalists and advocates. The film world-premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, before going on to win the Courage Award at Cinema d’iDEA in Rome.

For the upcoming 25th edition of FIFDH, organisers are looking for 12-16 completed films with an impact campaign, as well as projects in advanced production that wish to develop a campaign. From October 2026 to February 2027, human rights filmmakers will be trained to craft and refine their impact campaigns before being connected during Impact Days (7-9 March 2027) with major impact players operating both internationally and within Geneva’s network of organisations, policymakers, and philanthropists. Deadline: July 28.