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Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams brings Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s New York Times bestseller to the screen with Stamped from the Beginning. Published in 2016, Dr. Kendi’s National Book Award winner chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. The director discusses his film with British producer/director Joanna Natasegara.

Twenty docs are selected for Sundance’s World Cinema and US Documentary Competitions, while non-fiction features prominently in Next, Premieres and Episodic. “Curation is Sundance’s secret sauce and we’re energized by the range of films, stories and artists we’ve watched and selected from around the world,” comments Eugene Hernandez, Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programming.

The prolific US director discusses his new documentary with Oscar-winning James Marsh (2008, Man On Fire). American Symphony explores a year in the life of musician Jon Batiste, chronicling his career in music (including his 11 nominations at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards) and the struggles that his wife, best-selling author Suleika Jaouad, faces with cancer. “To see these two amazing individuals navigate these highs and lows of life was incredible,” says Heineman.

Dogwoof announced Nov 29 that it will release The Disappearance of Shere Hite, directed by Oscar-nominated Nicole Newnham, in cinemas across the UK and Ireland on 12 January 2024. Narrated by Dakota Johnson, the film remembers the 1970s feminist sex researcher Shere Hite, whose groundbreaking study of the intimate experiences of women ( The Hite Report), remains one of the bestselling books of all time since its publication in 1976.

A few days ahead of Italy’s Laceno d’oro, Business Doc Europe caught up with Aldo Spiniello, the Avellino-based festival’s Head of Programming. The event, running this year from December 3-10, is one of Italy’s main winter festivals and has emerged over the years as an unmissable cinematic gathering screening fiction and non-fiction works tackling urgent socio-political themes.

Eight new feature-length documentaries coming out of the dok.incubator 2023 programme will be pitched online November 28. “These films represent themes often missing in the public debate, show unique insights into stories and enlighten many important messages of the world we live in,” says Andrea Prenghyová, the dok.incubator CEO. The deadline for submissions for 2024 opens Nov 30 with a deadline of January 25.

Ahead of this year’s Torino Film Festival (November 24-December 2), one of Italy’s largest cinematic gatherings, BDE caught up with festival programmer Giulio Sangiorgio to talk through the event’s raison d’être, this year’s rich selection of documentary features and the current state of non-fiction production in Italy. “We aimed to include films exploring boundaries with fiction, video art and experimental cinema. In other words, we pick films able to come up with new modes of filmmaking.”

Luke Lorentzen won the Best Director prize at Sundance 2023 for his documentary A Still Small Voice, which follows Mati, a chaplain completing a year-long hospital residency as she learns to provide spiritual care to people confronting profound life changes. He speaks about his film with Alexander Nanau, director of Collective which, in 2021, was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film categories.

Reservoir Docs is looking forward to 2024 with renewed optimism. Anaïs Clanet, head of sales and acquisitions at the French doc outfit, acknowledges to Business Doc Europe that “our numbers are still half of what they used to be” in the pre-pandemic era. Nevertheless, she has been ramping up the Reservoir Docs slate with half a dozen eye-catching new titles.

The Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Industry hub, Agora, which next runs March 8-16 2024, has announced a partnership with IEFTA Foundation which will see the presentation of a new €10,000 award to a project participating in Thessaloniki Pitching Forum. Deadlines of 5 and 12 January respectively for submissions for Thessaloniki Pitching Forum and Agora Docs in Progress.