Nick Cunningham

Trapped in the freezing forest between Belarus and Poland, 16-year-old Kurdish refugee Runa must assume all family responsibilities for her father and brothers after the death of their mother. In her hybrid doc receiving its US premiere at Slamdance, Polish Agnieszka Zwiefka follows Runa as she tries to create a new life for her family in Poland, in the process telling a story both terrifying and inspirational. “This is actually our obligation as documentary filmmakers. Who would we be if we didn't react to such a humanitarian crisis at our doorstep,” Zwiefka underlines to BDE.

Presented in partnership with Documentary Campus, CPH:CONFERENCE will take place this year from March 24-28, bringing together a “stellar” line-up of filmmakers, industry leaders, and visionaries, including Christo Grozev, James Jones, Alexis Bloom, Kate Townsend, Sam Soko, Mstyslav Chernov, Nathan Grossman and many more.

At Berlinale 2025 Ji.hlava IDFF presented the current cohort of professionals partaking in its Emerging Producers programme, and put out the call for the next programme that will run 2025 through 2026. Every year the festival selects 18 talented producers (17 European and one representing a guest country), to whom it provides educational, networking and promotional support. The applications deadline for the next programme is March 31.

A total of 71 full-length and short documentaries from Greece will be screened in the festival’s International, Newcomers and >>Film Forward Competition sections, as well as in the Open Horizons, Platform+ and Special Screenings sections. “Vibrant and fascinating, unraveling heart-wrenching human stories and burning up-to-the-minute issues, the Greek documentaries take centre stage,” write festival organisers.

Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s feature doc tells the story of American actor Christopher Reeve after a horse-riding accident left him paralyzed, and his subsequent work as an activist for disability rights. The film pipped two Oscar-nominated films to the Bafta post – Black Box Diaries by Shiori Ito and No Other Land by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal.

In their short film world-premiering at Berlinale 2025, Daniel Azadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko find links between the construction of Munich’s Olympic shopping mall, a horrific racist attack that was perpetrated there half a century later, and a little-seen (but soon to be restored) protest film by Sohrab Shahid Saless, Iranian by birth but considered part of the German New Wave of the 1970s and 80s. The directors talk to BDE about their own film’s contemporary relevance.

The long-time director of DOK.fest München, Daniel Sponsel, will take over the presidency of the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) on 1 October 2025. “After almost 16 intensive and successful years with the festival team, I have now come full circle. I am delighted to be returning to my roots in the film industry in this new role and to be actively involved in shaping the future of the university,” says Sponsel.

Docu Rough Cut Boutique describes itself as “the leading regional programme for documentaries in post-production coming from Southeast Europe and the Caucuses, famous for its boutique format of only five selected projects.” Created by the Sarajevo Film Festival and Balkan Documentary Center, the programme is organized in three working modules: Sofia (March 2025), Cluj (June 2025) and Sarajevo (August 2025).

The moving and prescient The Moelln Letters (Die Möllner Briefe) shines a light on a dark episode from Germany’s past when, in November 1992, the city of Moelln witnessed the first racist attack within a reunified Germany, with three people killed by arsonists, devastating the lives of İbrahim Arslan and his family.

Vibeke Løkkeberg’s feature doc, about the inaugural International Women’s Film Seminar in Berlin (1973), is set to become a multi-part TV series, announced Norwegian producer Anders Tangen of Viafilm February 14. The film opens this year’s Berlinale Forum (also Feb 14) where it is presents as a world premiere. “We still sit on a gold mine of material that we can use for a multi-part series of 30-minute episodes with different accents, allowing us to dig deeper and shine light on other topics,” says Tangen.