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Berlin-based producer Loránd Balázs Imre and Hungarian director András Földes (also a conflict zone reporter whose work has garnered him a Pulitzer Memorial Prize) pitched their new doc, which addresses the dire threat to press freedom in contemporary Hungary. “I aim to create a powerful and emotionally resonant film about the struggle between autocratic forces and human groups committed to freedom,” Földes explains.

The $5000 Docu Talent Award was split between the Ukrainian A Picture to Remember and the Czech-Slovak co-production Chronicle. The DAFilms.com Distribution Award was awarded to An Almost Perfect Family by Romanian director Tudor Platon. During the August 13 pitch event, Ji.hlava IDFF also announced the participants within the Emerging Producers 2024 programme and unveiled its East West Index 2023.

The winners of the Doc Alliances Award 2023 were announced August 12 during the award ceremony of DokuFest in Prizren. The Doc Alliance Award for Best Feature Film, valued at with €5000, went to Death of a City by João Rosas. The Doc Alliance Award for Best Short Film, valued at €3,000, was awarded to The Cervix Pass by Marie Bottois.

Two days after receiving the Heart of Sarajevo Award, the prolific Northern Irish/Scottish director gave a masterclass August 13 during which he addressed a panoply of subjects, among them his upbringing in Belfast during the Troubles, working from the margins, his filming method, the poetry of cinema and turning shyness into a superpower. He was in conversation with Bulgarian academic Dina Iordanova.

Previously called the Factual Showcase, the International Factual Forum is designed to enable television or digital content producers to present their ideas for factual formats and programs to potential buyers, executive producers, television networks, streaming platforms, and other key figures in the entertainment industry attending MIA 2023. Deadline for submissions: September 8. The MIA market runs October 9-13 in Rome.

20 films feature in the festival’s designated Doc Competition, while non-fiction is also prominent within the Dealing With The Past and Kinoscope programmes. The 29th edition opens August 11 with Nenad Čičin-Šain’s U2 doc Kiss The Future. Additionally, the festival’s professional arm Cinelink Industry Days presents a slew of dynamic new doc projects from the region, plus talks and debates.

Open Doors, Locarno Pro’s talent development program for artists from under-represented communities around the world, handed 3 awards August 8 to the Dominican Republic project Tres Balas (Three Bullets), directed by Génesis Valenzuela, produced by Wendy Espinal. The prizes include a CHF 20,000 Open Doors cash grant alongside a €8,000 development grant offered by CNC (France).

Eight new creative documentary projects from Central and Eastern Europe will be presented at Sarajevo’s CineLink Industry Days on August 13. The most promising project will receive the Docu Talent Award, accompanied by a cash prize of $5,000 USD, in co-operation with Current Time TV. The DAFilms.com Distribution Award will cover services valued at €3000 and includes international VOD release on DAFilms.com for two years.

UK docs-in-progress Mother Vera by Cécile Embleton and Alys Tomlinson, and No Ifs Or Buts by Sarah Lewis, were lauded August 6 by the First Look jury, while Pas Ta Maman by Michèle Flury and produced by Felix Schreiber of Sommerhaus Filmproduktion won the Alphapanda Market Breakout Award of Locarno’s Alliance 4 Development platform.

Dutch documentary luminary and ‘master of the impossible shot’ Leonard Retel Helmrich passed away last month. He was the author of one of the great projects in the longitudinal tradition, his Indonesian trilogy The Eye of the Day, Shape of the Moon and Position Among the Stars. Indeed, Retel Helmrich’s 3-part masterpiece deserves a ‘position among the stars’ within the documentary canon, writes Dutch critic Kees Driessen.