Cannes 21

Six documentaries-in-progress were garlanded during the July 13 award ceremony of Cannes Docs 2021. The top prize of €10,000 was awarded to Cent’anni by Maja Doroteja Prelog. In total 32 projects from eight partner organisations competed for the prizes.

New data published by Ji.hlava IDFF in its East West Index 2021 reveals that last year saw a mammoth 22% drop in film selections at 14 key European festivals as a result of the pandemic. “Losing such a big space for filmmakers might affect the diversity of presented films and change the European film infrastructure,” warns Ji.hlava IDFF boss Marek Hovorka.

The awards were handed out during the Doc Day Lunch of the Marché du Film in Cannes. Rocco Di Mento won the Best Feature Award for The Blunder of Love, which comes with a €5000 cheque to be spent on his next project. The Best Short Award to Bless You! directed by Tatiana Chistova, with includes €3000 contribution towards her next project.

When he came to assemble his documentary Little Palestine: Diary Of A Siege, Abdullah Al Khateeb discovered he had around 500 hours of material. He had shot and shot and shot. “Most of the footage was not made in order to make a documentary,” the director remembers to Business Doc Europe.

Like the great surrealist himself, Spanish filmmaker Javier Espada was born in the town of Calanda in Aragon and was a teenager when he first discovered Buñuel’s work, he tells BDE. He sneaked into a screening of one of the director’s movies and was immediately beguiled. The movie he saw featured drumming music very similar to that played in his home town at Easter.

The Netherlands Film Fund and the Swedish Film Institute are drivers on a new international fund, named New Dawn, designed for projects with a director, producer and/or screenwriter from one of the groups that the United Nations Human Rights Act specifies as "a discriminated group." Six other European funds are currently "finalizing the criteria for the new fund," together with their Dutch and Swedish partners.

It was a disaster which shocked football fans everywhere and led to rigorous new safety measures within football stadiums. Now, the Heysel tragedy is to be revisited in Heysel, Bloc Z, an epic new six part docu-series announced in Cannes this week. The first episodes should be ready for broadcast late 2022, just before the World Cup in Qatar.

An absorbing and at times seductive film that will delight fans of the music and those intrigued by the super cool era in which they operated.

The Chilean doc scene is blossoming in the wake of Maite Alberdi’s Oscar nomination for The Mole Agent. That is the message from Constanza Arena, the director of promotional agency, CinemaChile. In spite of the travel restrictions placed on Latin Americans because of the pandemic, Arena has made it to the Cannes market. Six Chilean producers are also in town.

Young Afghan multi-media journalist and documentary maker Mortaza Behboudi has been in Cannes to present his new film Moria, Beyond Hell, about the enormous refugee camp on the island of Lesbos. Behboudi spoke to BDE ahead of its broadcast on Arte.