Nick Cunningham

Organisers announced 18 September the documentary programme of the tenth (Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo) which runs October 14-18 in Rome. The MIA market was launched in 2015, organized by ANICA (Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Digitali) and APA (Associazione Produttori Audiovisivi).

The award for the best film (AJB DOC Main Award) went to Smiling Georgia by Luka Beradze, about the “false promises politicians make to retain power“ (in this case the promise of dentures). The Al Jazeera Balkans Program Jury Award went to José Carlos Soares, Tanju Şahin and Aslıhan Eker Çakmak for their film Holy Redemption, which “uncovers Israel's strategies to systematically steal or 'seize' private Palestinian land and displace Palestinians."

In 2021, Georgian Soso, a perennial optimist, decided that his and his family’s future would lie in blueberry farming. So together with wife Nino and their two boys Giorgio and Lazare, he set off on this new adventure with single-minded determination. “The love was surprising,” director Mikaberidze explains what moved her most while making the film. “The love between the parents, the love toward their kids, the love of their land and their animals. It was beautiful. This is what I wanted to show, love.”

DOK Leipzig will undergo a process of self-reflection in 2024 as it examines its own methods of selection during the GDR years. Titled “Third Ways in a Divided World. Utopia and Subversion” the retrospective will “feature a compilation of films that reflect various aspirations of autonomy or view communist and socialist doctrine through a different lens. In this vein, the retrospective also brings up DOK Leipzig’s own history as a festival,” organisers write.

Jazz and decolonization are inextricably linked in Johan Grimonprez’s masterful study of Congo’s independence from Belgium in 1960, the rise of pan-Africanism, the inevitable neo-colonial backlash, and the murder/assassination of Congo’s newly elected PM Patrice Lumumba in February 1961. And about the CIA’s use of jazz legends as a smokescreen for covert operations far beyond US. “History writing is always about re-writing,” Grimonprez tells BDE. “It's trying to look at what's not been written, at what's fallen between the cracks.”

The prizes were handed out September 16 at AJD Industry after three days of frenetic pitch activity and during which 29 projects were presented across four categories (Main Pitch, Rough Cut, Balkan Stars, and Special Selection). The projects competed for co-production and cash awards worth more than 120,000 EUR provided by Al Jazeera Documentary, Al Jazeera Balkans, and other partners.

The Barcelona International Documentary Film Festival (DocsBarcelona) has opened the call for submissions to its 28th edition, to be held from May 8 to 18, 2025. The call will remain open until Friday, November 15, and consists of two deadlines: Early Bird: from September 16 to November 1. Regular Entry: November 2 to November 15.

The Whickers 2024 'Cost of Docs survey of documentary makers' launched at AJD Industry Sept 16 in partnership with Al Jazeera Documentary channel. “This is such an important benchmark tool for our industry and the results will help many lobby for more funding for documentary,” said The Whickers’ Jane Mote. “We are so pleased that Al Jazeera Doc Channel and AJB DOC have agreed to create an Arabic version, and we hope this will help to ensure the diversity of documentary makers responding to the survey.”

In the absence of filmmaker Morteza Atabaki, DOP Zeynep Secil delivered a hilarious pitch for the Turkish documentary 32 Meters, about the indomitable Halime who organises a women-only shooting competition in a remote village in the south of her country. Moderator Rudy Buttignol summed it up: “First of all, it shows never to mess with a woman with a gun, but it also illustrates my mantra that no documentary ever suffered because it was too funny.”

In Mila Turajlić’s new project, the firebrand Elaine Mokhtefi, now in her mid-90s, revisits her days of radical activism within the Third World. “Elaine has now become an interpreter of the past for many young activists,” said Turajlić. “As she is confronted with their questions about the way things fall apart, we see an interrogation between generations in the search to understand what's left of the ideals of revolution, militancy and solidarity.”