Nick Cunningham

The award for Best Doc went to the Georgian film 9-Month Contract, which examines the struggles of a single Georgian mother who turns to surrogacy, and the limits imposed by poverty. The Best Hungarian Film award was given to My Father’s Daughter, a story about the search for a lost sister. The festival continues online until 30 November, including all winning and special mention titles.

The Geneva-based human rights festival unveiled this week the 12 internatonal projects for its Impact Lab training program in 2026. Each project representative will receive expert training to craft an impact strategy ahead of presentation to dozens of NGOs, international organisations and philanthropists, both in Geneva and beyond. The next edition of FIFDH Impact Days runs March 8 to 10 2026.

Albert Serra’s Afternoons of Solitude; Fiume o morte! by Igor Bezinović; Riefenstahl by Andres Veiel; Songs of Slow Burning Earth by Olha Zhurba and Kamal Aljafari’s With Hasan in Gaza were unveiled November 18 as the five nominees in the European Documentary category of the 38th European Film Awards. All five are also nominated in the European Film category. The winners will be revealed in this year’s award ceremony on 17 January in Berlin.

A 5-day training initiative designed to strengthen the children’s doc sector kicked off November 17 at IDFA, with a cohort of 15 filmmakers from across Germany, Flanders, Poland, and the Netherlands. The stated aim of the program is to ‘foster international co-productions, encourage mutual exchange within the industry, and strengthen the children’s documentary genre as a whole.’

In her new feature doc, which world-premieres in Amsterdam, Lynne Sachs sets out to discover why, over the years, receiving business cards from strangers has left such a strong imprint on her consciousness. For her the process was like the tale of Hansel and Gretel. “You leave the crumbs…and they lead you back somewhere…The whole project was to figure out how we are affected by those intersections of our lives with other people's.”

The Whickers announced November 16 that it is increasing its Film & TV Funding Award from £100,000 to £120,000, and its runner-up development award from £20,000 to £25,000. The announcement was made at IDFA during the launch of the organisation’s annual Cost of Docs survey for which filmmakers are invited to share the true cost of documentary production. The deadline for applications for The Whickers Film and TV Fund is January 30, while the deadline to submit responses to the survey is December 16.

The November 17 Polish Docs Pro Showcase will present five new docs in progress to the professionals in attendance at IDFA Industry. At Docs for Sale, industry guests can watch and assess some the most successful Polish docs of the last 12 month, including Silver by Natalia Koniarz – a multiple winner at Krakow FF, Child of Dust by Weronika Mliczewska and What the...Hen? by Joanna Deja, as well films from the IDFA 2025 official selection, such as Confession of a Mole by Mo Tan (Envision Competition), and Passion According to Agnieszka by Wojciech Staroń (Luminous).

Eight new documentaries nearing completion and developed at dok.incubator 2025, will be pitched November 16 during the organisation’s annual showcase at IDFA. “This year’s collection of films offers an extraordinary range of styles, from musical and comedic documentaries to deeply personal auteur films, including a film which is also being turned into an HBO docu-series,” says Andrea Prenghyová, CEO of dok.incubator. “These are profound works shaped by years of devoted filmmaking.”

“Chile arrives at IDFA with a vibrant and diverse presence that celebrates both new voices and master documentarians, reaffirming the creative strength and international recognition of our cinema,” Flor Rubina, Deputy Director of Chiledoc, comments of her country’s presence in Amsterdam this year. Highlights include Blue Silence (by Matías Rojas Ruz) in International Short Film Competition, and two films in Signed; Letters to My Dead Parents by Ignacio Agüero and Invisible Life by Bettina Perut and Iván Osnovikoff.

In Benjamin Bucher’s debut feature, Joyce, a 22-year-old African-Chinese dancer, tries to find her way in Europe – torn between artistic and identity-related self-discovery, and financial dependence on her mother’s TikTok business. “The film deals with universal themes that many of us can relate to, such as the search for independence, migration and globalisation, identity and the attempt to preserve real moments in an increasingly staged world,” producer Olivier Zobrist tells BDE.