News

Asmae El Moudir’s The Mother of All Lies & Radical by Christopher Zalla win the Grand Jury Awards. Other winners include Mediha by Hasan Oswald and Mediha Ibrahim Alhamad; Kix by Bálint Révész and Dávid Mikulán; Eddyʼs oorlog by Joost van der Valk, and Mast-del by Maryam Tafakory. The Dutch human rights festival runs to Saturday March 30.

The Innovation WIP is aimed at documentary or documentary-inspired stories, regardless of category, format or technology, whether XR (virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality), podcasts, video games, dome creation or videomapping. Five creative teams will be selected to benefit from tailor-made support and presentation of their work during Sunny Side of the Doc, running June 24-27. The application deadline is April 2.

Ten film professionals will award the Docs&Pearls, Docs&Cat and DOC-U prizes at DocsBarcelona 2024. The 27th edition of the Catalan festival will run 2-12 May, while DocsBarcelona Industry is set for 6-10 May. Agent of Happiness, by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, will open the festival on May 2.

Arkadiusz Bartosiak’s portrait of distinguished Polish actor, director, manager and social activist Andrzej Seweryn will open the Polish festival May 26 as well as compete in the National Competition. “This is not a biographical film but a dynamic portrait of an eminent European artist captured in motion,” the festival writes.

24 hours after 10 Hot Docs programmers exited the festival en masse, the Canadian doc fest unveiled its selection of 168 documentaries representing 64 countries, featuring 51 world and 32 international premieres. The 2024 festival will open April 25 with the international premiere of Luther: Never Too Much, directed by award-winning filmmaker Dawn Porter. Hot Docs 2024 runs April 25 to May 5, promising “an unparalleled celebration of non-fiction storytelling on a global scale.”

European Film Promotion (EFP) and Hot Docs announced March 26 the nine titles selected for this year’s annual Changing Face of Europe programme which seeks “to illustrate and examine a new and contemporary Europe from a cultural, social, geo-political and economic perspective.” Hot Docs – Canadian International Documentary Festival, takes place 25 April – 5 May 2024.

Nine projects have been selected for the May 10 Progress Pitching session of Millennium Docs Against Gravity Industry 2024. These include new works by Ukrainian Alisa Kovalenko (We Will Not Fade Away, 2023) and the Polish Maciej Cuske (The Whale from Lorino, 2019). A 10th project will be announced this week at the close of this week’s East Doc Pitching Forum (Prague). Millennium Docs Against Gravity Industry runs May 9-13 in Warsaw.

Danish production company Snowglobe announced March 25 that Journeyman Pictures has acquired world sales rights for David Borenstein’s documentary Can’t Feel Nothing, following its world premiere in the F:ACT Award section at CPH:DOX. The film is written by Borenstein and co-writer Christian Einshøj, and produced by Mikkel Jersin, Katrin Pors and Eva Jakobsen.

The Flats by Alessandra Celesia won the main Dox:Award prize. The F:ACT AWARD prize was handed to Black Snow by Alina Simone. The NORDIC:DOX Award went to The Son and the Moon by Roja Pakari. The NEW:VISION Award was won by Preemptive Listening by Aura Satz, while the NEXT:WAVE award went to Grand Me by Atiye Zare Arandi. The HUMAN:RIGHTS Award was handed to ‘Black Box Diaries’ by Shiori Ito, while the Audience Award went to No Other Land by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal. All winners and citations…

Greek director Elina Psykou, whose Stray Bodies plays in CPH:DOX F:ACT AWARD, spoke to BDE about the recent protests in Thessaloniki over the film’s poster that depicts a semi-naked and pregnant Madonna nailed to the Cross. Psykou, who received online hate mail over past weeks, says she is apprehensive about the film’s wider opening in Greece on March 28, but will not be deterred from using the same poster. “I don't want to let fear conquer,” she says. “But I have to admit that after all these days, I'm very exhausted.”