Cannes 21

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.

Biljana Tutorov, Program Director of CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator, explains to Business Doc Europe the association’s raison d’etre, its Showcase offer of four docs-in-progress during Cannes Docs 2021 and why specifically it is called a ‘Circle’.

Ahead of the Chiledoc presentation of new docs-in-progress at Cannes Docs, the association’s director Paula Ossandón Cabrera explains to Business Doc Europe the success of her country’s documentary sector over the past decade, the power of collaboration and how geographical diversity equates to an equally rich diversity of output.

With 27 feature docs selected across most festival sections in 2021 (the previous highest was 18 in 2019), Cannes Docs chief Pierre-Alexis Chevit is in naturally buoyant mood on the eve of the festival, especially when combined with the re-opening of the market which will allow face to face interaction once more. Chevit gets down to business with BDE.

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.

For Liselot Verbrugge of Deckert Distribution, Cannes 2021 isn’t about “60 meetings in four days,” rather a process of easing back into the business of face-to-face meetings, often for the first time with people she has only got to know online. And, of course, continuing sales on an eclectic slate of arthouse docs, which include pre-sales on two titles selected for Locarno.

The Palestine Film Institute arrives with four docs-in-progress at Cannes Docs, the feature doc 'Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege' selected for ACID, the Palestinian-produced 'The Sun and the Looking Glass' nominated for the Doc Alliance Award. Fiction interest is found within the Critics Awards for Arab Films and the selection of Friendships’ Death (1987) for Cannes Classics.

What do you get when you cross a leading trade editor, a very well-connected former festival director/critic, arguably Cannes’ top snapper over the years and a UK producer with an archive of Croisette coverage going back over a quarter century? Answer: potentially the most definitive documentary history of the Cannes FF, currently in production ahead of delivery for next year’s 75th edition.

International Film Initiative of Bangladesh presents four docs-in-Progress during the South Asia Showcase at Cannes Docs 2021. Elsewhere, 2021 marks the first time a Bangladeshi film is selected to compete in Cannes (Rehana Maruim by Abdullah Mohammad Saad, Un Certain Regard), and Bangladeshi producer Arifur Rahman will present his project Solo (Eka) at La Fabrique.

Producer Kat Mansoor may be a self-confessed “urban girl who didn’t spend much time in nature growing up”, but together with filmmaker Andrea Arnold and DOP Magda Kowalczyk, was prepared to get up close and personal to shoot the bovine beasts featured in Cow, which screens Out of Competition at Cannes.