Nick Cunningham

If there is one country that is punching well above its weight in doc terms, it is Norway, which has seen huge recent success with the likes of 2024 Sundance winners Benjamin Ree (Ibelin) and Silje Evensmo Jacobsen (A New Kind of Wilderness) through to this year’s Oscar win for No Other Land (a minority co-production), and much more besides. In Nyon, the Norwegian Film Institute is partnering with VDR-Industry April 8 on a WiP programme of docs ready for launch onto the international circuit. NFI’s Elisabeth Aalmo guides BDE through her selection.

In Grzegorz Piekarski & Natalia Pietsch’s 70-minute doc world-premiering in Nyon, shepherdess Rengin and barber Burak are forced out of their homes in the historic Kurdish town of Hasankeyf as Turkish plans to build a dam go ahead. In the subsequent flooding, millennia-old traditions and ways of life will be eradicated. “These are strong words, but we are talking about cultural genocide,” co-director Natalia Pietsch tells BDE about the devastation suffered by the town’s inhabitants.

There is a common misconception among the non-cognoscenti that being an ultra football fan equates to being a thug. Far from it, argues Swedish Ragnhild Ekner, herself an avowed fan of IFK Göteborg. Being an ultra is simply about unflinching, communal and very vocal devotion to the team, whether it be in Sweden, Morocco, Argentina or Indonesia. “I wanted to create a love letter to this phenomenon, give it the energy that I feel in the stadium, give it a body or some kind of shape,” she tells BDE of her feature doc receiving its international premiere in Nyon.

Swiss teenager Noah may have been in and out of correctional establishments for most of his life, but there is nothing correctional about the friendship he forged with Parisian director Matias Carlier. “On my side, I was simply there, listening. I didn’t judge him, I didn’t respond to his doubts, I didn’t try to correct him, the director tells BDE. “Where many people around him would lecture him, I simply remained present.”

In addition to four new docs world-premiering in official selection at Visions du Réel, the Polish doc industry will be represented in Nyon by a delegation of producers presenting six projects to the international professionals in tow. Polish producers will also be active on a co-production round table with fellow producers from Canada, Norway, Scotland, Switzerland and France.

Visions du Réel will be particularly busy this year for Charlotte Ducos, Documentary & Marketing Strategies Consultant and Deputy Head of Festivals & Markets at Swiss Films. 31 films from Switzerland are selected for the Nyon doc event, and 15 new projects will be pitched over the coming days, including the SWISS FILMS Previews presentation of six new documentary films nearing completion and soon to be launched onto the festival circuit. Ducos talks to Business Doc Europe.

With the madness of March behind us (at least in terms of the number of doc fests on offer), April seems altogether calmer and more introspective, a state of mind that is reflected in the Visions du Réel 2025 programme. “We are much more focusing on cinematic and artistic approaches that suggest, I guess, a different kind of ambition. Basically, we are looking for shapes and ideas, authors and personal approaches more than topics,” says Emilie Bujès, Artistic Director.

The Ex Oriente Film documentary laboratory comprises 12 feature-length documentary projects and 5 docuseries projects represented by director-producer or creator-producer teams who will attend 3 residential sessions and additional online sessions. “We Empower ambitious projects that won’t compromise on their story and creative language to fit in. We are always looking for creators who take us on a journey we didn’t even know was possible,“ organisers write. New deadline: April 15.

The dok.incubator rough-cut workshop announced April 3 its final selection of documentaries for 2025. “From the political and environmental changes of today’s world to the shifts happening deep inside us, the films to be developed at this year’s workshop all touch the question of adapting to a new reality,” the organisation writes of the projects from countries as far afield as Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Europe and the US.

DocsBarcelona Industry will take place from May 12 to 16. One of the leading non-fiction markets in Southern Europe, more than 800 accredited professionals from the European, Latin American, and international documentary community will have the opportunity to connect, co-produce, and collaborate on these 33 new and advanced projects. The selected participants will take part in various Forum activities: Public Pitch (14/05), Rough Cut Pitch (15/05), New Tech Pitch (13/05) and Speed Meetings.