Nick Cunningham

Today kicks off two days of major archive activity at Sunny Side, with a showcase of six core archive companies, and panels on the decolonisation of First Nations archives and the preservation, restoration and promotion of African archives. In a June 26 keynote, Dawn Porter will share her experiences working with archives and present her latest film about Nelson Mandela. In addition, 18 archive companies are exhibiting this year in the Main Hall of SSD. Archive supremo Elizabeth Klinck tells BDE what to expect.

Nathalie Bourdon, Director of Distribution & Market Development at NFB, tells Business Doc Europe about her busy slate of Sunny Side films, prominent among which is Christopher Auchter’s The Stand, in which a small group of Haida people demand that the government work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and their future. The film received a Special Mention of the Youth Jury at Sheffield Doc Fest.

Exiled Gazan filmmaker Wafa Jamil delivered an impassioned pitch for her highly personal documentary that explores the themes of displacement, resilience and identity. “I'm carrying on not just as a filmmaker, but as a mom, as a daughter and a sister having a family surviving a genocide,” she told the professional audience in La Rochelle.

18-year-old Abhilesh's uncle wants him to succeed in the wrestling academy so as to further his political career, but the boy just isn’t cut out for fighting, torn between duty and an unspoken yearning for something more. “In today's world, when wars are being waged by hyper-masculine men, our film quietly explores how masculinity isn't about following rigid ideas of social expectations but can be found in vulnerability, empathy and the courage to express yourself beyond your assigned roles,” Jadhav told the La Rochelle audience.

The Finnish Film Foundation has invested €660,000 in nine documentary projects during its latest round of funding. These include two majority and four minority doc feature projects, two series and a short doc. A major beneficiary is The Pitcher series, about Finnish baseball player Konsta Kurikka making it big in the US, which received 216,873 euros in FFF support.

Directed by Olaide Sadiq and produced by Ahmed Peerbux, Anna Prichard and James Saville, the film world-premiered at the 32nd Sheffield DocFest. Festival Creative Director Raul Niño Zambrano and Managing Director Mimi Poskitt commented: “Grenfell: Uncovered is one of those documentaries that stays with you, it’s courageous, meticulous, and absolutely necessary.”

Java Films will once again present the €3000 Roch Bozino Engagement Award at Sunny Side 2025, in honour of the company’s late founder. The prize will be given to a project within the Current Affairs & Investigation or New Voices pitches. Highlights of Java’s SSD slate include Zelensky (directed by Yves Jeuland, Ariane Chemin and Lisa Vapné), which received a Special Screening at Cannes. In addition, the company’s new DocRoom initiative (YouTube) boasts 80,000 views across 70 countries for its first offering, Lie to Me by Bår Tyrmi and Dag Mykland.

The Grand Jury Award for the International Competition went to Welded Together by Anastasiya Miroshnichenko while the Grand Jury Award for the International First Feature Competition was won by Comparsa directed by Vickie Curtis and Doug Anderson. This year DocFest presented 51 World Premieres, 16 International Premieres, 8 European Premieres, and 39 UK Premieres from 68 countries of production. All awards…

Eight projects will be presented in La Rochelle, four of which are competing within Sunny Side’s themed pitch sessions. The other four are at various stages, from development through to post-production. The projects are represented by Polish Docs Pro which delivers wide‑ranging promotion of the Polish documentary scene at a slew of international events throughout the year.

In the Guatemalan barrio of Ciudad Peronia, sisters Lesli and Lupe organise a spectacular comparsa, or street festival, to remember the 41 girls who burned to death in 2017 in a so-called ‘safe home,’ and to protest at the unacceptable levels of femicide, rape and sexual abuse in the country. “It aligned with the kind of storytelling we wanted to do, that was character-centred and about how real people make real change in their community without waiting for the system to change or without waiting for permission,” co-director Vickie Curtis tells BDE.