Nick Cunningham

Movies that Matter will “move forward with a single-director structure” as of 16 April 2026, the festival says in an online post. Margje de Koning will take on the role of Managing Director-Trustee. Laurens Korteweg, who has served as Business Director-Trustee since September 2023, will leave the organisation following a carefully planned transition period. The decision has been taken in response to ongoing financial pressure and is aimed at safeguarding the organisation’s future, the festival writes.

Oscar-nominated actress Fernanda Torres talks to Petra Costa, herself nominated for a feature Doc Academy Award in 2020 for The Edge of Democracy, about the latter’s latest work, Apocalypse in the Tropics, nominated in the Bafta Best Documentary category 2026. The film examines the influence of evangelical Christianity on far-right politics in Brazil, especially during Jair Bolsonaro’s term of office (2019-23). In 2025 Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison after he was found guilty of orchestrating a coup d'état to overturn the 2022 election results.

In her feature doc Angelica Ruffier recalls a teenage crush she had on a particular teacher, while at the same time dealing with the recent death of her father. “The director, through an amazing craft of acting and directing, gives us a perceptive on womanhood too rarely portrayed in cinema…[she is] a very unique voice who made us travel through generations charged with loneliness with absolute honesty and radical tenderness.”

After nearly fifty years under wraps, the film, which was conceived and shot by the legendary William Greaves and directed by his son David Greaves, spotlights footage from a 1972 gathering of luminaries of the Harlem renaissance. Last month, NEON received 18 Oscar nominations for the 98th Academy Awards, the second highest amount for any motion picture studio.

The film, directed by Kristina Mikhailova, will have its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in the Forum Special section. River Dreams marks a historic milestone as the first documentary from Kazakhstan ever selected for Berlin. “My film is a love-hate letter to Kazakhstan, told through a female gaze, already an act of resistance where I come from,” says director Mikhailova. (See exclusive first look at the film’s official poster.)

CPH:DOX announced February 5 the line-up of artworks and experiences for its 2026 INTER:ACTIVE exhibition, running March 11-22 and centred on the theme of HYPERVIGILANCE’ “The works in this year’s INTER:ACTIVE exhibition expose the collective anxiety of a society on high alert, where we struggle to retain agency over our image, body, and voice,” comments CPH:LAB’s Head of Studies, Mark Atkin.

Visions du Réel announced February 5 that U.S. filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras will be the Special Guest at the opening of the 24th edition of VdR–Industry, the Festival's programme dedicated to industry professionals. Laura Poitras is the author of a post-9/11 trilogy, which concluded with the Oscar-winning film CITIZENFOUR. Poitras’ latest film, Cover-Up, which world-premiered at Venice 2025, paints a portrait of American journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke a series of major stories, from the Watergate scandal to the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib during the Iraq War.

The feature doc concerns Rio’s Projeto ViDançar initiative that offers underprivileged children, living in the notoriously violent Complexo do Alemão favela, the opportunity to express themselves through ballet. The idea came to producer Mike Downey (also outgoing Chair of the European Film Academy) back in 2013 when in Rio to shoot a film. Friend Stephen Daldry was there too, in part to present a screening of his Billy Elliot. “I think, there and then, the seeds of this documentary were sown,” says Downey, who also reflects to BDE on his 25 years at EFA.

Running March 8 to 10, the Geneva-based industry programme will present a packed schedule of keynotes, screenings, case studies and analyses of best practices from around the world. Core to proceedings is the pitch of 12 international film projects developed during the Impact Lab training programme, and a 4 further impact projects in Swiss Focus. The event offers filmmakers the opportunity to connect with impact producers, philanthropists and key human rights organisations based in Geneva and beyond.

French sales company Andana Films has boarded Tawfik Sabouni’s The Other Side of the Sun (see trailer) which receives its world premiere in Berlin Panorama 2026, in which the director returns to post-Assad Syria to meet four fellow former detainees of the notorious former Saidnaya prison. “The film reveals the horror of a system and its executioners, while also bringing out a profound human beauty born from the protagonists’ listening and solidarity,” says Stephan Riguet, Andana Films MD.