Nick Cunningham

Nora Philippe talks to Business Doc Europe both about the Paris-based initiative which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2024, and the need for independent producers to undergo top-level professional training. “You don't survive in the business if you're not trained. If you don't have the necessary skills, if you don't have a network, then you will die. It's a very hard business. You need to have a bit of insanity to do this job, but you also need to be really rational and connected,” she says.

CPH:DOX, EAVE and IMS (International Media Support) announced October 9 participants within the CHANGE programme which seeks to “empower” documentary film projects from the European Eastern Partnership countries. For the 2024/2025 line-up, eight teams from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine will join the co-production training workshop series.

The 2024 jury for the International Competition Documentary Film consists of Maria Bonsanti, Sylvaine Dampierre, Eric Hynes, Avi Mograbi, and Akram Zaatari. The five jury members will present Golden Doves to both the Best Feature Documentary and the Best Short Documentary. Silver Doves will be awarded to the best feature-length documentary and the best short documentary by an up-and-coming director.

Dutch visual artist Barbara Visser discusses her hybrid documentary that questions Marcel Duchamp’s authorship over what some claim to be the 20th Century’s most important piece of modern art. Instead, the artwork ‘Fountain’ may well have been the work of a maverick Dadaist baroness. “The art world needs turmoil and criticism and rearrangement, and so that was really the trigger,” says the director of her subject.

This year’s selection is dominated by women filmmakers across all formats, including the Forum Pitch, Producer Connection, Rough Cut Presentations, and IDFA DocLab Forum. “It is a varied selection in terms of both theme and style, made by talented newcomers and established makers who together represent a colorful palette of voices,” says Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen, Head of IDFA Industry.

October 10 sees the launch of a new European doc fest and Industry programme that has Impact at its root. The Berlin-based Dokumentale offers a programme of 47 dynamic and very diverse docs as well as an Industry programme that will encourage the formation of “purpose-driven partnerships that have the potential to bring about real change.” Festival founders Vivian Schröder & Anna Ramskogler-Witt explain all to BDE.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the co-production and co-financing market “continues to be a pivotal platform, welcoming some of the most promising filmmakers and established members of the industry to present a varied slate of documentary projects at different stages of development,” write organisers. The Sitges-based event runs October 17 to 20.

Paris-based French-Palestinian filmmaker Lina Soualem talks to Business Doc Europe about her new film (long-listed for Best Documentary, European Film Awards 2024) that documents four generations of women in her family, one of whom is the internationally renowned actress Hiam Abbass, the director’s mother. “It's as if the women of my family…each represent a piece of history, a piece of time that doesn't exist anymore,” says Soualem.

The former boss of See NL and Director of New Zealand Film Festival joins ahead of the Rotterdam fest’s 2025 edition. Rabarts was formerly Head of EYE International (now SeeNL) where he was responsible for the promotion of Dutch film and film culture worldwide for four years, and Artistic Director of the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam for 12 years. Recently, Rabarts served as Festival Director at the New Zealand International Film Festival.

During the October 1 award ceremony in London, the jury, which included actor/director Tilda Swinton, presented the prize of £20,000 to Grylls who was selected for her “creative audacity and…ambition to explore a new dynamic to [her] practice.” Two other winners were Luna Carmoon, writer/director of Hoard, and Naqqash Khalid, writer/director of In Camera, both fiction projects.