Nick Cunningham

Nava Mama, by Romanian Ana Vîjdea, tells of her return to the village – the mothership of the title – where she grew up, in order to break the cycle of violence that she experienced throughout her childhood. “It was a violence that seemed so pervasive that my grandmother used to cry herself to sleep. She woke up crying and I was crying alongside her without really understanding why,” she told the professional audience in Warsaw.

German production and sales maestro Heino Deckert was handed the 2025 Docs d’Honor Award during the opening ceremony of the 28th DocsBarcelona. The festival is screening two of his films, the Oscar-nominated Rabbit à la Berlin by Polish Bartosz Konopka, and Heimat is a Space in Time, the final film of Thomas Heise, who passed away in 2024. It is the film Deckert is most proud of. “When this film is shown even in 50 years time, people will understand the whole of the 20th Century when they watch it.”

A New Yorker with an astonishing voice and the most vagabond of creative sensibilities, 82-year old Meredith Monk is the genius that few people have ever heard of. Unless, of course, you’re David Byrne or Björk, or Philip Glass for whom “she, among all of us, was – and still is – the uniquely gifted one.” “I've talked to people who've had a whole career producing music documentaries, and the first question they ask is, ‘is she related to Thelonious?” director tells BDE of his inimitable but largely unknown subject.

Outrageous, internationally acclaimed queer artist Ivo Dimchev’s response to the pandemic was to perform more than 400 private concerts in people’s homes in his home country of Bulgaria, as well as in Istanbul, New York, and Los Angeles. But the concert he really needed to perform, and which concludes the film, is for his parents who never stood by him when he needed them most. “I was drawn to Ivo’s defiance—his passion for life,” comments director Kristina Nikolova. “He reawakened something in me that had gone dormant in motherhood and during COVID.”

Running 25 June to 24 August in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, the Oscar-qualifying docfest will present 32 world premieres and 20 international premieres, “Tackling themes of community, resilience, and the universal power of human connection,” organisers write, “these films are bold, raw, and resonant—reflecting the festival’s 20-year legacy of fearless storytelling.”

The 28th edition of the Catalan fest launches May 8, heralding 11 days of frenetic professional and public-facing doc activity, the whole thing kicking off with Andres Veiel’s Riefenstahl, which offers a reminder of the dark role that cinema played 80 years ago, before the Allies’ liberation of Europe. “It felt important to revisit Riefenstahl’s legacy — not to glorify it, but to interrogate it,” says incoming co-director Maria Colomer. “Her images shaped a totalitarian vision, and the film asks us to confront how beauty can be weaponized.”

The programme includes 51 world, 16 international, 8 European and 39 UK premieres from 68 countries of production. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato are named as Guests of Honour while the first solo exhibition in the Alternate Realities Programme features Baff Akoto’s cutting-edge immersive work Collateral Echoes. Talks to include a BBC Interview with Professor Brian Cox, a Channel 4 Masterclass with Oobah Butler, and David Blaine x Nat Geo: Bringing the Magic to Factual.

Sunny Side of the Doc, the international community and marketplace dedicated to linear and non-linear documentaries, revealed May 6 the 42 projects that make up the official selection for its 36th edition (23-26 June 2025, La Rochelle, France). The projects will be pitched across seven thematic sessions, supported by key industry partners including PBS Distribution; Blue Ant Media & Love Nature; RTBF; Al Jazeera Documentary & AJB DOC, and ZDF Studios.

Designed for emerging filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe, the Millennium Docs Against Gravity Short Pitch Program provides a platform for directors of short documentaries to present their work-in-progress to a curated audience of sales agents, distributors, festival programmers, and broadcasters. This year’s presentation takes place May 10 in Warsaw.

“While things like artistic values, or thematic importance are always a place to start…at the end of the day, however simple it sounds, we really are searching for the best films,” Millennium Docs Against Gravity Artistic Director Karol Piekarczyk explains his programming approach on the eve of the festival’s 22nd roll-out. The festival runs 9-18 May across seven Polish cities, and 20 May to June 2 online.