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Norway came up trumps at Sundance 2024 where A New Kind of Wilderness won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary, while Ibelin received The Directing Award and The Audience Award in the same section. The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Doc went to Porcelain War, while Daughters won the Festival Favourite Award and US Doc Audience Award. The Belgian doc Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat won the World Cinema Doc Special Jury Award for Cinematic Innovation.

Viktória is a young emerging filmmaker trying to navigate through a landscape of uncertainty. Like most of her peers, she is concerned about what her future will bring. Can humanity slow down climate change? Should she bring another life into such an uncertain world? To find answers she looks to the past, specifically to an 1872 expedition during which intrepid mariners sailed into the unknown, only to be frozen into the Arctic ice sheets for more than two years…

Haunted by memories of misogynistic oppression faced during the Syrian civil war, filmmaker Zaina Erhaim reconnects with four brave women she filmed during the height of the conflict. “I wasn't planning to do a film. I was trying to document what the women were going through because I was expecting to die and I wanted something to stay, to tell the story afterwards,” Erhaim told the FIPADOC during her January 24 pitch.

Spanish producer Katia Pinzon of Barnabe Productions and Iranian co-producer Elaheh Nobakht of Eli Image presented the Spanish/Iranian/French co-production, Singing Wings, at FIPADOC’s Wider Scope pitch session January 24. The project, which is directed by Iranian Hemen Khaledi, follows the destinies of a wounded stork and an elderly Kurdish woman.

“There is something fascinating, overwhelming, and almost mystical about standing in front of a glacier. It’s the closest thing to when we directors believed in God as children,” Spanish director Rafa Molés Vilar enthused to the FIPADOC professional audience of his project La Pietà, co-directed with Pepe Andreu Ibarra, which follows the Icelandic Björn siblings who lived at the foot of the largest glacier in Europe.

The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk issued a statement January 24 demanding the immediate release of pioneering Myanmar documentary filmmaker Shin Daewe who was sentenced to life in prison January 10 for violating counter-terrorism law following her arrest for possessing a drone. “[We] call on the Myanmar authorities to release her immediately and unconditionally,” ICFR underlined.

CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator is seeking 10 women and non-binary filmmakers (directors or producers) with creative documentary projects at any stage of development to apply for the upcoming seventh edition of the program. Focusing on both professional and personal growth, CIRCLE is an initiative crafted by filmmakers, for filmmakers, which guides them through their creative journeys and connects them to the European and international documentary film landscape.

Nathalie Mierop has been appointed new director of SEE NL, replacing Ido Abram. SEE NL is a collaboration between Eye Filmmuseum and the Netherlands Film Fund, dedicated to the international promotion of Dutch films, film industry and film culture. Mierop commences her new role January 25. “I am very much looking forward to working with the rest of the SEE NL team to bring Dutch cinema and the Dutch film industry even more to the international spotlight,” she says.

Designed to create a challenging and creative framework for new European talent working on their first or second documentary films, five new projects were pitched January 23 to the professional audience of FIPADOC International Documentary Festival, Biarritz. FIPADOC Pro runs to January 25.

Five feature docs and five short docs have advanced to the final round of Oscar voting. The winners will be announced March 10 during the 96th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood. Within the feature doc category, nominee originating countries are diverse: Bobi Wine: The People’s President (UK/Uganda/US), The Eternal Memory (Chile), Four Daughters (France/Tunisia/Germany/Saudi Arabia/Cyprus), To Kill a Tiger (Canada), 20 Days in Mariupol (Ukraine).