Nick Cunningham

After the Kurdish people of Afrin, northern Syria, lose their homes and ancient olive trees to a Turkish attack, they seek refuge in the Shabha refugee camp. There, Adol, a resilient woman in her fifties, emerges as a symbol of hope for the community. ”For local audiences, [the film] is a mirror of urgent social realities. For Nordic and international audiences, it challenges stereotypes about life in exile, showing instead a poetic, deeply human portrait of resistance and dignity,” producer Erika Malmgren tells BDE.

On the island of Grímsey, 60km north of Iceland, life was always wonderfully out of step with the modern world. It was a haven governed by the weather, fish stocks and the changing light. But that was all in the past. “This film is a record of yet another remote community threatened by commercialism and climate change that is on the edge of extinction,” Icelandic producer Dögg Mósesdóttir tells Business Doc Europe of her feature doc project, Islander, a work in progress at Nordisk Panorama.

“Witch Club Satan is not just a band — it’s a cultural phenomenon that challenges norms around gender, power, and performance,” says Norwegian producer Mari Nilsen Neira of the feature project Hex, about Norway’s black metal scene….and witchcraft. “This project is vital because it gives a platform to voices that are too often marginalized: radical, queer, and feminist artists working within extreme music and performance art.”

In his new feature documentary, Danish docmaker Michael Madsen seeks to explore, together with visionary architect Daniel Libeskind, “the edge of human creativity” through the completion and recording of six architectural challenges over six days. “On the one hand, Architecture as Invention will aim to be a creative playground; and on the other, it will aim to be a portrait of this century as envisioned by Mr. Libeskind: the chaos, the wars, the destruction, the Holocaust; but also, the love, the memories and the dreams,” producer Per Damgaard Hansen tells Business Doc Europe.

At the 68th edition of DOK Leipzig, three juries of filmmakers, artists, and industry professionals, along with an audience jury, will award short and feature documentaries and animated films in competition. The Golden and Silver Doves will be awarded to the winning films on Saturday, 1 November, at the Schaubühne Lindenfels in Leipzig. The 68th edition of DOK Leipzig will run October 27 to November 2.

Nine new international immersive documentary projects have been selected for CPH:DOX’s talent development and training programme, CPH:LAB. CPH:LAB introduces a curated line-up showcasing a diversity of topics, genres and artistic approaches as well as a diverse representation among the storytellers. The Copenhagen docfest will continue its collaborations with Sunnyside of the Doc and DOK Leipzig, it also announced.

The Danish Oscar Committee has selected David Borenstein’s documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin as Denmark’s official submission in the International Feature Film Award category. The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2025, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award, and its Danish premiere at CPH:DOX in March 2025.

Films on Madonna, David Lynch, Boy George, Jeff Buckley are selected for the Heart Beat section, whose selections span “multiple art forms and expressions, celebrating the creative act,” write organisers. From the Earth to the Moon section features three heavyweights of world cinema — Werner Herzog with Ghost Elephants, Lucrecia Martel with Landmarks, and Laura Poitras, co-director of Cover-Up. The 22nd edition of Doclisboa runs 16 - 26 October.

Parasisi is a feature-length documentary, directed by VAF Wildcard winner Zaïde Bil and co-directed by Sébastien Segers, about the Wayana indigenous community on the border of Suriname and French Guiana. The film joins 24 other doc projects (7 new pitches, 11 docs-in-progress and 6 completed doc features) at the Ghent event running 7-8 October.

The program will feature new films from Czechia and beyond, film retrospectives, and the “best of world experimental cinema,” the festival writes. Taiwan-based Tsai Ming-liang will shoot and present the world premiere of the new Walker series film at Ji.hlava. The discussion platform Inspiration Forum will focus on the topics of love, money, radicalization, and the future of Europe. The 29th Ji.hlava IDFF will run October 24 to November 2.