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The Party Film Sales also announced March 9 international sales on Orlando, My Political Biography to UK & Ireland, Spain, Italy, Poland and Portugal. The film premiered in the Berlinale Encounters Section and won 4 awards including: Teddy Award for Best Documentary, Special Jury Mention in Encounters, Special Jury Mention for Best Documentary and the independent award, Tagspiegel Readers Award.

The Swiss fest has unveiled the project selections for VdR-Industry, namely VdR-Pitching, VdR-Work in Progress and VdR-Rough Cut Lab. Aimed at filmmakers and producers, the VdR-Industry platform is “a springboard for audiovisual creation, offering support at every stage of production, concrete financing and distribution opportunities, as well as an inspiring and productive networking hub for the industry.”

The Agora market of the 25th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival handed out its professional awards March 9. This year’s attracted more than 400 international visitors. The top Greek award (the Onassis Film Award) went to Angeliki Aristomenopoulou for her project Holy Human Angel. The Forum Pitch Award was won by Alaa Dajani’s The Native Dance. Top Doc in Progress prize went to Post Love by Alexis Taillant.

In Leon, world-premiering at Thessaloniki, Wojciech Gostomczyk manages wonderfully to balance gentle but keen insight into a sometimes tormented and fragile artist with the life-affirming love story of two men whose lives defy both convention and compartmentalisation. The other man in question is none than the late fashion icon, designer Manfred Thierry Mugler.

The feature doc The Ghost of Richard Harris, directed by Adrian Sibley, has garnered multiple award noms across the UK and Ireland following its New York Craicfest Premiere. The film focuses on the Irish actor, poet and singer whose prodigious career was overshadowed by a reputation for drinking and riotous behaviour, earning him the epithet ‘hell raiser.’

Austrian film director Nikolaus Geyrhalter was awarded an honorary Golden Alexander by the 25th Thessaloniki Doc Fest before the March 7 screening of his new film Matter Out of Place. “I accept this award on behalf of all the people who have accompanied me during these years of my career, all those who have worked with me, and for all the people who have agreed to share their stories with me,” Geyrhalter said.

New York’s Museum of the Moving Image has announced the complete line-up for the 12th edition of First Look, MoMI’s festival of new and innovative international cinema which will take place March 15–19, 2023. The festival “introduces New York audiences to formally inventive works that seek to redefine the art form while engaging in a wide range of subjects and styles.”

Family histories can be strange and unbelievable, but the life story of New York legend Chelly Wilson is stranger and more unbelievable than most. A Greek Jew who raised her children as Christian, a lesbian who loved her husband and a woman who escaped Athens on the eve of World War II only to end up running a series of porn cinemas in Manhattan, Chelly was the very definition of ‘larger than life.’

The recent EFM Baltic Doc Rough Cut Showcase promoted new non-fiction feature projects nearing completion. Lithuanian Arturas Jevdokimovas’ new doc project promises to portray the full life cycle of a Christmas tree, beginning with the picking of a pine cone in the Georgian mountains and planting in Denmark, until its inevitable death in a waste container. BDE reports.

Doc industry vet, and former IDA Board member, Louise Rosen is stepping down from her role as IDA Interim Managing Director in early March to return to her production roots with the Ford Foundation-funded Gender Project, as well as several other soon-to-be-announced book-based projects. “As a former IDA Board Member, it has been deeply satisfying to be of service during this period of transition,” Rosen says of her departure.