Nick Cunningham

DocsBarcelona Industry, which will run May 12-16, has put out its final New Tech Pitch call for non-fiction projects using emerging technologies. The pitching session is organised in collaboration with the advanced arts festival Sónar+D. During the New Tech Pitch, up to six teams will have the opportunity to present their projects before an international panel of financiers and experts. Submission deadline: January 27.

Andrea Prenghyová, founder of dok.incubator, tells BDE that her 3-module International rough-cut workshop is opening up to all doc formats, including online and series, and is no longer targeting theatrical as the core release outlet. “The demands of the market and the possibilities for films are changing,” she says. “This [theatrical] strategy is not any more sustainable for filmmakers. Our mission is to teach people...how to make and release films in a more sustainable way which means they can make some profit.”

GFF25 will close on 9 March with the world premiere of Scottish documentary filmmaker Martyn Robertson’s Make It To Munich, following remarkable Scots teenager Ethan Walker as he defies life-threatening injuries to cycle from Glasgow’s Hampden Park to Munich Football Arena for Scotland’s opening Euro24 match. Another world prem is Alex Holmes’s Hill about the relationship between F1 world champions (and father and son) Graham and Damon Hill.

As the awards mark their 10th anniversary, The Whickers celebrates a decade of supporting and nurturing emerging documentary filmmakers, with £1 million in prize money awarded to date. This year, Ibrahim Nash’at’s Whickers bursary winning film Hollywoodgate, is shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best International Documentary. “They made it happen,” Nash’at says of The Whickers.

In the Oscar short-listed feature documentary, when Will Ferrell finds out his close friend of 30 years is coming out as a trans woman, the two decide to embark on a cross-country road trip to process this new stage of their relationship in an intimate portrait of friendship and transition. Director Josh Greenbaum discusses the film with Oscar-nominated director David France (How to Survive a Plague, 2012).

The Haitian filmmaker’s participation during the 56th edition of the Festival will include a masterclass and a retrospective of his non-fiction work, along with a festival screening of his latest feature film Ernest Cole: Lost and Found prior to its release in Swiss cinemas. The full programme of the 56th edition of Visions du Réel, which will run 4-13 April, will be published on 12 March.

The Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) has joined forces with the #DocsConnect Taskovski Training Program to launch a “transformative initiative” aimed at “strengthening the Filipino documentary film industry…,advancing the growth and international visibility of Philippine documentaries, focusing on building industry expertise and promoting local stories on the global stage.”

For over 50 years, Brian Eno has been at the forefront of musical creativity, technology, and artistic innovation. As a producer, he has helped define and reinvent the sound of some of the most important artists in music, including Bowie, U2 and Talking Heads, and dozens of others. Undeniably, Eno has changed the way modern music is made. Film critic and academic Elvis Mitchell talks to the great man about Gary Hustwit’s eponymous generative AI doc, shortlisted for the Feature Doc Oscar.

In the film, popular Swedish TV-duo Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson embark on a trip to France, aiming to rekindle the zest for life of Filip’s father. The film is produced by Lars Beckung and Petra Måhl. Awarded annually since 1964, the Guldbagges acknowledge achievements in Swedish film during the previous year. The 2025 Guldbagge Awards ceremony was held in Stockholm on January 13.

US filmmaker Ava DuVernay talks to directors Angela Patton and Natalie Rae about their Oscar-shortlisted feature documentary Daughters, screening on Netflix, in which four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington D.C. jail.