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For the third consecutive year, Ji.hlava International Documentary FF will support outstanding auteur filmmaking from Central and Eastern Europe. The new call for applications is now open, with a deadline of August 31. Jihlava's 30th anniversary is reflected in this year's visual identity of rippling waves emanating from a fixed point, which itself points to the festival's core retrospective in 2026 of documentaries whose impact reached far beyond the cinema screen.

Prague-based sales company Filmotor has acquired international sales rights to If Luck Will Come, the debut feature documentary by Danish filmmaker Camille Bildsøe, ahead of its international premiere in the Kids Screenings section of the 79th Locarno Film Festival. The acquisition follows the film's world premiere at CPH:DOX 2026, where it screened in NEXT:WAVE Competition.

World-premiering at Doc Edge (NZ), the feature documentary Return to a Strange Land is described as “a visually striking portrait of the internationally acclaimed choreographer Jiří Kylián and his lifelong muse and love, Sabine Kupferberg… A personal reflection on human existence and the relentless passage of time.” The film is sold by Anisya Kazakova of ANTIPODE Sales International.

The final edition of Sunny Side came to a close June 24. A new international documentary market, supported by the CNC, the City of Strasbourg, the Eurométropole de Strasbourg and the Grand Est Region, will be held in Strasbourg as of June 2027. “After 37 years of championing documentary film, it is time for the long-term future of the documentary market in France to be placed in the hands of the industry itself,” commented Roman Jeanneau, President of Doc Services, which organised SSD since its inception in Marseille in 1990.

CIRCLE Doc Accelerator has unveiled the ten projects chosen for its upcoming edition. The three-module CIRCLE program provides women and gender-expansive filmmakers a space to “nurture their projects, elevate their careers, and navigate existing film power structures.” The programme kicked off June 22 in Edipsos, Greece, continuing through Portorož, Slovenia (October 2026, in partnership with the Slovenian Film Centre) and Trieste, Italy (January 2027, in partnership with When East Meets West).

Billed as a keynote on Global Co-production in an Age of Uncertainty, Danish Helle Faber (Made in Copenhagen) delivered a riveting account of how, together with PINK in Prague, she produced the Oscar-winning Mister Nobody Against Putin by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin. Yes, co-pro can be unbearably frustrating and time-consuming, but this film was different. “Mr. Nobody Against Putin could not have been made by a Danish company alone, nor a Czech company alone. It could only be made because people in different countries chose to share the responsibility, not only for a film, but for a human being,” Faber said.

London’s Finsbury Park Picturehouse will host a July 11 one-day celebration of the creative impact of Smartphone Filmmaking - from no-budget DIY shorts to internationally acclaimed feature films. “Why I’m so fired up by smartphone filmmaking, beyond the dynamism and inventiveness, are the things it enables you to shoot which would be way harder or even impossible any other way.” says Adam Gee, Co-founder of SMart and Head of Documentary Campus Masterschool.

For the 25th edition of FIFDH, organisers are looking for 12-16 completed films with an impact campaign, as well as projects in advanced production that wish to develop such a campaign. From October 2026 to February 2027, human rights filmmakers will be trained to craft and refine their campaigns before being connected during Impact Days (7-9 March 2027) with major impact players operating both internationally and within Geneva’s network of organisations, policymakers, and philanthropists.

Archive is in the frame at SSD on June 24, as top US doccer Louise Rosen moderates two sessions of fundamental interest to attendees. The morning Archives and New Alliances event will offer up three examples of how to monetise archive content, while the afternoon Archive Showcase session “reimagines the archive pitch as a creative encounter.” During the latter event, participating companies (Reuters, British Pathé and Getty Images) will muse on the stories out there as yet to be discovered, all emanating from “a recent discovery…a newly restored [archive] gem.”

A 30-year industry veteran with previous top-level postings at both ARTE and Netflix, Mark Edwards will replace Bastien Gauclère who is moving to Bolivia to oversee French film and audiovisual policy for the Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela). The next edition of Fipadoc Pro will run January 25-28 2027 in Biarritz.