Nick Cunningham

The 32th edition of Nordisk Panorama, the main funding event for the Nordic documentary community and which takes place Sunday-Tuesday 21-23 September, invites independent documentary projects at all stages from Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Åland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The submission deadline is 19 May 2025.

For its 40th anniversary edition, DOK.fest Munich (May 7 to 18) will present three competition and 16 thematic film sections. The festival will open with Friendly Fire by Klaus Fried (Germany). Other world premieres in DOK.international Competition include In Hell with Ivo by Kristina Nikolova (Bulgaria) and Ice Grave by Robin Hunzinger (Finland, France, Sweden). “Our aim is to maximise participation…DOK.fest München stays dual!” the festival adds of its online programme that runs 12-25 May.

Running May 8 to 12, MDAG Industry 2025 “offers a true backstage pass to the documentary world, crafted in response to the current needs of the audiovisual market, following trends, anticipating changes, and embracing innovation,” organisers write. Highlights include pitches of new and completed Polish projects, a keynote by Mette Hoffmann Meyer, an “anti-masterclass” delivered by Mark Cousins and round-table consultation opportunities with a raft of leading doc professionals.

Over the coming months, the dok.incubator rough-cut programme will workshop eight documentary projects from Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary, soon to be released internationally. They will be worked in parallel with eight previously announced International projects. “From topics spinning around ecology, animal rights, beauty standards and independent press to personal family stories and artists’ portraits, the selected [regional] films have the ambition to premiere at prestigious festivals in the coming year,” organisers write.

Acid will screen world premieres of Sepideh Farsi’s Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk, and Namir Abdel Messeeh’s second feature doc Life After Siham, as well as the French premiere of Sylvain George’s Obscure Night – Ain’t I A Child? The Critics Week sidebar for first and second features will include a sole doc, Imago by Déni Oumar Pitsaev, as will Directors Fortnight, which has selected the Ukrainian feature doc Militantropos by Alina Gorlova, Yelizaveta Smith and Simon Mozgovyi.

Copan by Carine Wallauer won in Brazilian Feature and Medium-Length Film Comp while Writing Hawa by Najiba Noori took top prize in the International Feature & Medium-Length Film Comp. Sukande Kasáká/Ailing Land and Am I the Skinniest Person You’ve Ever Seen? were awarded Best Brazilian Short Film and Best Int'l Short Film, respectively.

Clarisa Navas' The Prince of Nanawa won the Grand Prize in the International Feature Film Competition, while Bani Khoshnoudi's The Vanishing Point won the Jury Prize in the Burning Lights Competition. The Jury Prize in the National Competition was won by Les Vies d'Andrès of Baptiste Janon and Rémi Pons. The The Audience Award went to Cutting Through Rocks by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni. All prizes…

For almost half a century, legendary New York photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank diligently captured his own life on film and video. But the footage was never seen, because for years it sat in the basement of his New York apartment, collecting dust. Until now. “We had it transferred professionally to high resolution files and it was like unlocking a time capsule. It's a visual diary of his life over those decades,” director Laura Israel told the professional audience in Nyon.

Vladlena Sandu’s dramatic and poetic hybrid film tells a deeply personal story of life during the Chechen war as neighbours are murdered, her family is targeted, and the capital Groznyis  turned into a battlefield. The film also seeks an answer to a fundamental question. How can the cycle of violence - that shapes the lives of children and is inevitably passed to the next generation - be broken?

The first All-Inclusive Award (€5,000) will be presented to Patrice: The Movie by Ted Passon. The prize honours documentary film productions in which filmmakers with disabilities play a leading role. DOK.forum also announces Industry Training Talks for 2025, the seven projects selected for this year’s Master’s Pitch and The Baltics as this year’s region in focus.