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Doc Edge, New Zealand’s premier international documentary festival and an Oscar® qualifying event, announced June 9 the finalists for its Doc Edge Awards 2025. The Awards will be held on Thursday, 3 July, at the Grand Millennium Auckland, and will be handed out across four categories: New Zealand Feature Film, New Zealand Short, International Feature Film, International Short.

Heroic Bodies may not be the most skillfully made of documentaries, but its stories and images show a formerly unseen side of women's oppression in an impactful way, and also indicate how slowly but surely the balance is swinging in the other direction. The film provides an important contribution to the liberation and self-determination of women in Sudan - and around the world.

Scheduled for presentation in hybrid form in 2021, Visions du Réel Industry events to run online April 14 to April 17 before on-site professional activity kicks in April 18-22, COVID permitting.

Nordisk Film & TV Fond announced August 20 this year’s nominees for the Nordic Council Film Prize. Doc noms are the Greenland production Twice Colonized (Sundance 2023, Grand Jury World Cinema Doc nominee), directed by Lin Alluna; and the Danish doc The Son and the Moon by Roja Pakari and Emilie Adelina Monies, which won NORDIC:DOX Award at CPH:DOX 2024. The €40,000 prize will be awarded October 22.

The 2025 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), which runs November 7 to 23, will showcase docs in both International and Baltic Competitions. For the first time, Baltic documentaries and feature films will compete in separate programmes. “The films in Doc@PÖFF programme open a restless world where bold, author-driven works captivate with their search for balance and understanding — and demonstrate that documentaries can be even more engaging than fiction,” says doc curator Marianna Kaat.

Ten international films are in the long list in the Documentary category, while four documentaries are long-listed in the Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer category. Round two voting runs to January 20, with final nominations to be announced Tuesday 27 January on the BAFTA YouTube channel. The winners will be revealed Sunday February 22.

During the 2024 Agora, Sophie Shevardnadze presented her Docs in Progress project, titled Eduard. The debut feature of the Tbilisi-born filmmaker is an unprecedented portrait of Eduard Shevardnadze, a man who held power in Georgia for an extended period of time and couldn’t let go of it without bloodshed. The work is particularly poignant for the director as she is, herself, the granddaughter of the former Georgian leader.

Directed by Marek Šulík, Ms. President is described as “time-lapse portrait of Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová.” The festival programme, extended this year from six to ten days (October 25 – November 3), will offer up new documentaries from across the world, retrospectives, the best of experimental filmmaking and a number of non-competitive programme sections. Industry runs October 29-November 1 2024.

Presented at the Italians Doc It Better showcase, the new documentary by Elisa Motta and Matteo Ferrarini offers a sensorial and poetic journey through sound, while exploring the power of listening as a path to reconnection. “OTO is a film that inverts the traditional hierarchy between sound and image, disrupting the usual grammar of documentary,” the creative team tells Business Doc Europe.

Directed by acclaimed Belgian filmmaker Pieter-Jan De Pue, Mariinka will celebrate its world premiere at the CPH:DOX 2026 opening gala in the concert hall of the Royal Danish Academy of Music on March 10 at 19:00, in the presence of the director and the film crew, including two of the main protagonists in the film. The 23rd edition of CPH:DOX will take place March 11–22 in Copenhagen.