Cinéma du réel

‘From a child’s perspective, I soon questioned the imbalance in these relationships, wondering how these incredibly young women had the strength to leave their homes,’ Portuguese director Leonor Noivo describes how a seed planted in her childhood eventually grew into her latest work, Filipinas, which follows the fate of three women at different stages of their experiences as live-in maids - a phenomenon she’d observed growing up in 80s and 90s Macao.

This weekend saw the presentation of the awards of the 47th Cinéma du reel. The Grand Prix, valued at a total of €8,000 was handed to James Benning for his film, little boy. The Cinéma du réel International Award 2025 was won by two films, In the Manner of Smoke by Armand Yervant Tufenkian, and Monólogo Colectivo by Jessica Sarah Rinland, with a split pot of €5,000. The ParisDOC Works-in-Progress prize went to Bahía Honda by Alejandro Alonson. All awards…

With running times ranging from 10 to 119 minutes,  the 37 films in Competition will “once again showcase contemporary documentary in all its diversity, as world, international or French premieres.” The Paris-based festival runs March 22-29.

“Two out of three protagonists of Anatomy of a Portrait are on stage while the third, despite being the reason for their initial encounter, is a ghost,” begins the synopsis of Mattia Colombo and Francesco Clerici’s latest documentary opus, presented at this week’s ParisDOC Work-In-Progress forum. BDE was intrigued enough to catch with the film’s producer, Marco Malfi Chindemi to find out more.

“First and foremost, it is a rare and unique point of view, one of the very few representatives of Chechen culture in contemporary cinema,” says French producer Alexandra Mélot ahead of the March 27 ParisDOC Work-in-Progress screening of Imago by director Déni Oumar Pitsaev. “Imago is an initiation tale about a free-spirited young man's search for his roots as he confronts the traditional dogmas of his clan, which he left as a teenager to exile in France.”

BDE caught up with Elijah Stevens, producer of Barbara Forever, ahead of the project’s March 26 Work-in-Progress presentation at ParisDOC. Directed by Brydie O’Connor, the film is described as the first ever feature documentary to exclusively tell the story of the lesbian experimental filmmaker, Barbara Hammer. “Her work [has] become a blueprint for a new generation of queer and radical artists to write our own histories into existence,” says Stevens.