Nick Cunningham

European Film Promotion has appointed international media executive and producer Irina Ignatiew-Lemke as its new Managing Director. She will take over the role from Sonja Heinen on 1 August 2026, who will step down after ten years in charge. “[Irina] understands both the creative and business side of today’s global film landscape and has a strong sensibility for the diverse realities, structures and needs of EFP’s member countries,” says EFP President Vítor Pinheiro.

In Hungry, world-premiering February 2 in IFFR’s Harbour section, Austrian director Susanne Brandstaetter offers a sobering account of how, in the not-so-distant future, humankind has allowed itself to become extinct. With no humans left on Earth to explain exactly why this, it is left to an alien visitor to the planet to determine the food-related sequence of events, the “cause and effect” that led to our demise as a species. The filmmaker serves up the conclusions for Business Doc Europe.

To Hold a Mountain wins World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary while the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary goes to Nuisance Bear. Other prizes in World Documentary Competition are awarded to Birds of War (Special Jury Award for Journalistic Impact); Everybody To Kenmure Street (Special Jury Award for Journalistic Impact), and One In A Million (Directing Award). All doc awards…

A feast for the eyes and ears, the hybrid Krakatoa, presented both theatrically within IFFR’s Harbour section and as an installation within Art Directions, recreates the volcanic explosion of 1883 which resulted in the loudest sound ever heard. It is a film with contemporary resonance, within an ecological sense. “It’s a goal to rethink our position with the planet… we have to make a kind of sacrifice to nature in order to appease it, in order for it to become stable again, and establish an equilibrium.”

The Polish feature documentary Closure tells the most desperate of personal stories, that of a dad searching for his lost son. “This film became one of the most challenging I’ve made on every level, because it required holding two impulses at once,” says director Michał Marczak. “On the one hand, I wanted to keep the crew minimal and intimate. On the other hand, I wanted the film to carry an epic scope, to convey emotion through images and atmosphere, through showing rather than telling.”

After the December 2025 announcement to cancel its 2026 edition, Sunny Side of the Doc will return to La Rochelle (France) from 22 to 24 June 2026 with a new format in partnership with Documentary Campus. “Together with Documentary Campus, we are reinforcing our role as a key marketplace while creating fresh opportunities for the professionals who firmly stood up for it," says Aurélie Reman, Sunny Side MD.

Directed by acclaimed Belgian filmmaker Pieter-Jan De Pue, Mariinka will celebrate its world premiere at the CPH:DOX 2026 opening gala in the concert hall of the Royal Danish Academy of Music on March 10 at 19:00, in the presence of the director and the film crew, including two of the main protagonists in the film. The 23rd edition of CPH:DOX will take place March 11–22 in Copenhagen.

Five films are nominated in the BAFTA Documentary category. Two of these (Mr Nobody Against Putin and The Perfect Neighbor) are also nominated within the 2026 Oscar Feature Doc category. Meanwhile, one documentary is nominated in the BAFTA Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer category. The winners will be announced during the 79th BAFTA film awards ceremony, set to take place Sunday, February 22, at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

The feature-length doc tells the story of the wildly popular, annual Easter Sunday tradition in San Francisco known as Hunky Jesus. Hosted by the legendary drag and activist group the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, “the event is a defiant expression of community, performance, and radical joy in the face of exclusion and repression,” the festival writes. The 40th BFI Flare will run 18 – 29 March 2026 at BFI Southbank, London.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced January 22 2026 the nominations in the documentary categories of the 98th Academy Awards®. Five films will now advance to each of the Documentary Feature Film and Documentary Short Film categories. Two hundred and one films were eligible for the Doc Feature category, while 117 films qualified in the Short Doc category. In December 2025 the shortlists were whittled down to 15 films within each category.