Nick Cunningham

The 22nd edition of the DOK Co-Pro Market of DOK Leipzig welcomes 35 projects from 34 countries looking to connect with new international financing and co-production partners. This year’s selection represents a wide geographic spread, spanning all continents and featuring countries typically less represented in the international film arena, including the DR Congo, Namibia, Palestine, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria. Women filmmakers also maintain a strong presence in the line-up, comprising 50 percent of directing talent.

The Ji.hlava New Visions Forum, a core industry event of the Ji.hlava International Documentary FF, will showcase a new selection of documentary projects from emerging and established filmmakers. A total of 29 projects from 15 countries will be presented during the Forum, taking place October 28–30, offering their teams the opportunity to connect with potential co-production, financing, sales, and distribution partners.

Serbia-based sales company Films Mundi has acquired exclusive international sales rights (excluding Poland) to Kamila Serwicka’s feature documentary Blossoming (A teraz wiosna). The acquisition follows the film’s world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival’s Semaine de la Critique, where it won the Grand Prix Semaine de la Critique – Prix SRG SSR. “It was the film’s poetic, atmospheric quality, emotional honesty and tenderness that drew me so strongly to it," Neda Lukić, Founder of Films Mundi, tells BDE.

Running March to October 2026, the main objective of the EURODOC flagship programme is to enhance the artistic and financial development of film projects, to improve know-how in terms of international co-production and company management, and to reinforce the set of continuously evolving skills a career in independent production requires. “We believe that project development and career-building go hand in hand,” the organisation writes. Deadline for application: November 23 2026.

Paris-based Italian director Giuseppe Schillaci talks to Business Doc Europe about his new feature documentary, world-premiering in Venice, which recalls a period in the 1980s when a programme of regenerative investment in a run-down Paris housing estate led to a glorious spike in community empowerment and connection. It was “an intimate yet collective moment of solidarity and social transformation - before the banlieues went up in flames,” he says.

“One of the strongest USPs of Wise Guys is its extraordinary access,” producer Madara Melberga tells BDE of fellow Latvian Ieva Ozoliņa’s feature documentary, currently in early post-production, in which two former gangsters decide to go legit, while still relying on the skills honed in their criminal past. “Ieva has been allowed remarkably close [access] to men who come from the highest levels of the criminal and prison hierarchy. It is an environment that normally remains closed to outsiders, particularly to people with no connection to criminal circles.”

“What began as a playful creative experiment developed into a deeply personal story exploring the mother-son dynamic, the concept of home, and rebuilding distant family relationships,” explains Estonian producer Merili Laur of Beautiful Stupid Thing, directed by Carlos E. Lesmes and selected for Baltic Sea Docs. In the film, which is currently in post-production, Carlos and his mother Angela reunite after she takes the transformative decision to migrate from Colombia to Estonia.

In Ukrainian Yevhen Titarenko’s I See No Death, currently in early post-production and selected for Baltic Sea Docs, two friends volunteer for the war and become FPV drone operators. The camera stays with them long enough to observe how death gradually stops being an event and becomes a job. “The drones themselves are not the main subject of the film for us,” producer Natalia Khazan tells BDE. “What interests us is a simple question: what happens to a person when they kill another human being but do not physically see their death?”

The Nyon-based docfest is inviting films for its Official Selection, which includes six competition sections, as well as projects for VdR–Industry activities. Films in competition receive their world, international or European premiere. The early deadline is November 2. The final deadline is December 15. The 58th edition of Visions du Réel will run 9 to 18 April 2027.

Nordisk Panorama and ARTE, Europe’s leading cultural streaming service, are launching a new partnership to strengthen opportunities for emerging documentary projects and build closer connections between Nordic filmmakers and the European industry. At the heart of the partnership is the new ARTE European Talent Development Award, worth €10,000 and given to one of the 24 documentary projects pitched at Nordisk Panorama Forum.