Nick Cunningham

The International Competition brings together 12 films, including seven world premieres, three international premieres, one European premiere, and three debut works. The Portuguese Competition will feature 12 titles, including seven world premieres, one European premiere, and four national premieres. In total, the festival will present 211 films from 54 countries, including 93 feature films and 118 short films. Doclisboa 2025 will take place from October 16 to 26.

The Best Documentary Project was handed to Sense and Sensibility (Hanna Nordenswan), receiving €3000 from the City of Helsinki. The Best F-Weird Project was named as Boobs (Milla Puolakanaho, Juha Ilmari Laine). This year, FFA featured 44 projects in total, with five fiction films in progress and nine in development, nine documentary projects, six series as well as the 10 unique F-Weird projects across genres and formats. The Nordic Selection showcased five projects from all Nordic countries. The 14th FFA closes September 26.

“In Your Shadow is vital because it makes visible something that exists in so many families and societies: the silence that grows around trauma,” Dutch producer Renko Douze tells BDE of Thabi Mooi & Tom Fassaert’s work-in-progress, In Your Shadow. In the feature doc, after thirty years of silence, filmmaker Thabi takes her father on a journey to confront his past as a soldier in the South African liberation struggle.

“We are out to make an eclectic, kaleidoscopic film that positions itself as a documentary, an essay film, a fictitious reconstruction of memories, with several animations to serve as the glue keeping it all together,” Valk tells BDE of his fully funded project, which will be ready for delivery in May 2026. After losing irreplaceable moments stored on a hard disk, filmmaker Robert-Jonathan Koeyers returns with his family members to the locations they visited in 2018 to fill in the collective gaps in their lives and memories.

For most of us, the Moon is the beautiful heavenly body that illuminates the night sky, but for Big Industry it is hot property, a place to be colonised for its assets. “Our film about the Moon turned out to be a mirror for what is happening on Earth,” co-director Luuk Bouwman tells Business Doc Europe. “It digs into bigger themes like power and ownership, trust and distrust, distribution of resources, the commons and the private. That makes it a universal story relevant for international audiences.”

The first edition of NLWave kicks off Sept 24, offering a selection of international execs and festival programmers an exclusive first look at the latest cinematic output from the Netherlands. In terms of documentary, eight projects either at early stage or as works-in-progress, will be presented. Additionally, three recently completed feature docs will be screened. Docmakers in the frame include IDFA winners Luuk Bouwman and Tom Fassaert, as well as powerhouse production houses such as Submarine, Baldr Film, 100% and Mint Film Office.

In Taliban‑ruled Afghanistan, a small circle of young women risks everything to meet in secret and read banned books – from Anne Frank’s Diary to Michelle Obama’s Becoming. “Thanks to the directors’ persistence and the rare access they secured, we now have a Finnish-Norwegian co-production with clear space for further international partners to join what is truly a one-of-a-kind film,” Finnish producer Marko Talli tells BDE of his FFA project.

Northern rap comes to Helsinki in Miina Alajärvi’s Rapland, pitched at FFA by producer Oona Saari. “This film is an important project in Finland and internationally, since it will shed light on the vibrant culture of the north that is not so well known even in South Finland. It will offer the audiences a window to rap culture thriving in the north,” Saari tells BDE. “For Finns and Sámi it is important to hear our own languages cherished in rap music.”

The brain of Nikke, who has Down’s Syndrome, sees and expresses the world differently, much of the time via the medium of drawing. In Sanna Liinamaa’s hybrid doc, Nikke’s brain leaps from his skull and undertakes an adventure through an animated world. “His Down’s syndrome is not at the centre of the film, but it is part of his background and influences the way he sees and expresses the world,” Finnish producer Jorma Kaulanen tells BDE. “[The film] is a visual, emotional and playful journey into the human mind.”

Finnish producer Outi Rousu discusses her new feature doc, about humankind’s relationship with the blood-sucking mosquito. “Extreme situations illustrate how difficult it is to control nature,” Rousu tells Business Doc Europe. “Human faith in its abilities is tested when [we encounter] the chaos and uncontrollability created by mosquitos. But the illusion of control over nature still lives deep within us humans.”