Nick Cunningham

The 29th edition of Baltic Sea Docs concluded in the Latvian capital of Riga on 7 September, after a week of workshops, seminars, pitching sessions, and screenings. The co-production pitching forum featured 26 documentary projects from the Baltic Sea region, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus, and once again served as “a vital platform for creative documentary filmmakers to refine their projects and present them to leading industry professionals,” organisers write.

Peter Mettler’s epic two-part documentary comprises a diary shot over three years, commencing just before the pandemic, during which he had to deal both with the death of his parents and a very serious illness of his own. Throughout the 7-hour work, he seeks answers to the question: is the grass always greener on the other side? “It evolved into something quite profound, and led to an appreciation of the cycles of living and dying, and the understanding that I'm completely part of that. We're all part of that. There's no getting around it,” Mettler tells BDE.

The new prize was awarded September 6 during the 82nd Venice International Film Festival. The jury said, “Remake evokes exquisitely the pain of loss, and letting down those we love the most - but it also brings us to a deeper understanding of how grief expands and teaches us. It shows the power of candid storytelling on the healing process, and offers a new lens on how art can help us confront truth, and find solace.”

Crimea-born filmmaker Vladlena Sandu shares the award with Cyril Aris, director of the fiction feature A Sad and Beautiful World. Both films polled 77.4% within the audience vote. Memory, part of a series of films that Sandu has made about her own and her country’s past, depicts her harrowing childhood experiences in war-torn Chechnya.

The 24 selected project teams will pitch to 60+ international funders from Europe and beyond. Traditionally, decision makers from France TV, ARTE, RTBF, RTS, SVT, Al Jazeera, ZDF and many other broadcasters have attended, together with distributors, sales agents, festival programmers and film funds. The International Pitches take place on January 28-29, 2026 in Biarritz. The deadline for submissions is October 3.

Folk comes to the Lido September 5 in Robert Gordon and Joe Lauro’s story of the Newport Folk Festival, which was a hot bed of political radicalism and musical evolution in the early 1960s. Featuring the likes of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and John Lee Hooker, it's a film made for theatrical exhibition, the filmmakers argue. “In Venice, we will play to a 1400-seat theatre, and that's the size of some of the Newport stages!”

The 69th BFI London Film Festival (8 – 19 October) announced September 3 the full programme line-up, presented in cinemas and online across the UK. Two documentaries are selected for Official Competition: Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story by Yemi Bamiro, and Lucrecia Martel’s Landmarks (Nuestra Terra). Meanwhile, 8 films are selected for Doc Competition. Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s Broken English is selected as a Special Presentation. All doc selections…

CPH:DOX’s international financing and co-production event CPH:FORUM is now open for submissions, accepting projects until November 5, 2025. This includes the second edition of CPH:RoughCut, which will present 5 projects at rough cut stage looking for distributors (including theatrical), sales agents, buyers, high profile festival premieres and other forms of exhibition.

The Dutch/Afghan filmmaker discusses his riveting new documentary, world-premiering in Venice, which immerses the audience in the daily lives of a young Taliban solider and his teenage brother. “My film depicts the effect of war on people,” says Amini. “Not only the war in Afghanistan, it's the war everywhere. War is not only destructive for cities, buildings, houses, hospitals and roads. It also destroys the souls of people generation after generation after generation.”

Cinéma du réel competition comprises up to twenty international documentary films of any length looking to kickstart their French career at Cinéma du réel, and up to twenty French docs which will world-premiere at the festival. “Such a carefully curated selection of international and French documentary films within the production of an entire year commits us, and we thank all the professionals who entrust us with their films and trust us to defend them,” says Catherine Bizern, Artistic Director.