Nick Cunningham

The Agora of the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival handed out its Docs-in-Progress and Pitching Forum awards March 12. The main awards in Docs-in-Progress went to Magma (France, Algeria), Home Court (Greece, Netherlands, France, Bulgaria) and Tower, Sun and the Seven of Wands (Georgia), while the Hungarian Highways of Hope won the main IEFTA Award (€10,000) for Best Documentary in Development. All awards…

The Board of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) has appointed Karla Puttemans as its new managing director. A long-time staffer at VAF, she previously led the Dutch-language division of the authors’ association SACD/SCAM, which later evolved into De Auteurs, and headed the audiovisual department at the authors’ rights organization SABAM. Puttemans takes over from current director Koen Van Bockstal, who is stepping down earlier than expected due to health reasons, VAF wrote in a statement released March 11.

The StoryBoard Impact Award, valued at CHF10,000 (approx €10,500) was given to Children of Honey by Igar Ganatra and Immanuel Musa Marco. The Swiss Focus Award (CHF 2,500, approx. €2,600) went to the project Nathalie by Tamara Milosevic. The Sublimages Impact Award, offered by Sublimages and comprising a translation and subtitle creation into one of four languages, was won by the Ukrainian team of directors Alisa Kovalenko/Marysia Nikitiuk and producers Natalia Libet/Olha Beskhmelnytsina for their project Traces.

The Chicken & Egg Films boss addressed the filmmakers, funders, advocates and changemakers gathered in Geneva, to explain how she came to understand the power of storytelling to effect fundamental change, and how Chicken & Egg champions this principle. “Films are just one piece of the larger fight for justice, but they are uniquely well suited to moving the needle on urgent and complex issues, because they touch our emotions in deep, visceral ways - emotions that reports, white papers, news stories, and other forms of media rarely access,” she said. Report follows...

Running 4-13 April, the programme of the 56th Visions du Réel features 154 films from a record 57 countries. Of the 129 new films presented, 88 are world premieres and a further 12 are international premieres. 58 debut films, including 28 first features, complete the picture with no fewer than 31 Swiss (co)productions (compared with 25 in 2024). The festival will open with the world premiere of the Swiss film Blame by Christian Frei.

“We are Hadzabe and we want the world to know who we are.” Children of Honey follows three young Hadza friends—Nd!uba, Nguilabe, and Embilibi—at a critical crossroads of their once-peaceful hunter-gatherer community. With 90% of their ancestral land lost and modern pressures mounting, they must decide whether to hold onto their ancient traditions or be pulled into modernity. Impact producer Simona Nickmanova outlines her strategy to BDE.

The director/protagonist of The Myth of Monsters made an impassioned pitch at the Impact Days March 11. In the project, Beatrice is a late-diagnosed autistic woman, approaching her 40th birthday—a milestone she never thought she’d reach, given that her life has been marked by misdiagnoses, wrongful psychiatric institutionalisation and trauma. “I've spent my whole life trying to fit into a world not built with me in mind, and labelling women like me as difficult, angry, as a monster,” Leong told the Geneva audience.

The Netherlands-based Movies that Matter Festival has announced its official selection for the 2025 edition, showcasing “a powerful line-up of films that explore pressing social and political issues through bold storytelling.” The festival, running 21 - 29 March in the Dutch city of The Hague, will host a total of 98 films, 10 of them world premieres. The festival opens with the world premiere of The Promise, directed by Daan Veldhuizen.

Produced by Esther van Messel of First Hand Films and fellow Swiss outfit Spirited Heroine, Kalari (90/52’) tells of the eponymous Indian martial art that is taking on greater significance for women within a society where gender-based violence is commonplace. “Kalari is a film about new heroines in a country where violence against women is both historically ingrained and a daily reality,” First Hand Films’ Daniel Schneider tells BDE.

In Alisa Kovalenko’s new project, co-directed with fellow Ukrainian Marysia Nikitiuk, six women share their traumatic experience of sexual violence and torture during Russian aggression in Ukraine between 2014-23. “Showing these genocidal crimes of conflict-related sexual violence in Ukraine committed by Russian soldiers, and its systematic use as a weapon of war in brutal violation of international law, will be an effective reminder of a great danger to the civilised world,” says producer Natalia Libet.