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With 200 new films, 100+ world premieres. 61 titles across five international competitions, “CPH:DOX is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a powerful film programme full of artistic quality and contemporary relevance,” write organisers. An impressive roster of international guests includes Joan Baez, Oliver Stone, Nathan Fielder, Wim Wenders, Susan Matthews, José Gonzales and Jeremy Deller among many others.

Dearest Fiona, an art film by Fiona Tan having its world premiere in Berlinale’s Forum section, consists of two very different elements. We see scenes from silent Dutch documentaries, showing life at the beginning of the 20th century. And we hear an actor reading letters her father wrote to her around 1988/89. I went looking for a way to connect the two. The production company behind the film is called Antithesis Films. That’s an interesting name. Let’s use that as a starting point…

The seventeen up-and-coming European documentary film producers were introduced to the Berlin Film Festival guests at an event hosted 17 February by the Ji.hlava IDFF, together with the European Film Market. The educational, promotional and networking EMERGING PRODUCERS programme is curated by Ji.hlava IDFF and includes workshops in Jihlava (October 2023) and Berlin (February 2024).

The stunning scenery of the Austrian Alps acts as the perfect backdrop for Bernhard Braunstein’s absorbing doc about acclaimed ski boarding school Stams, where top young skiing talent chase their dreams. For these fresh-faced youngsters it is all about the possibility of making the Olympics, but their journey also includes strict exercise, academic lessons as well as battles with the dangerously icy slopes.

Some perspectives can only be revealed by insiders. That can provide unexpected insights, present unknowable facts and deliver very uncomfortable truths, as in this unvarnished portrait of a gold mining village in Burkina Faso, in which the prospect of redemptive wealth holds the inhabitants in an iron stranglehold.

Daniel Roher’s feature documentary, about the investigation into the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, headed off strong competition from Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, Laura Poitras’ All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love and Brett Morgen’s Bowie doc, Moonage Daydream.

In his highly engaging feature debut, Guinean director Thierno Souleymane Diallo sets out to find the lost first film by a Black filmmaker from francophone Africa, 1953’s Mouramani by compatriot Mamadou Touré. The quest seems at times both disheartening and optimistic, but watching Diallo’s efforts is as easy as taking a walk in the park. Although a lot happens, the film just glides through it all, propelled by the director’s winning personality and his unwavering optimism about his craft and his art.

Was there really a historical and cultural bond between Iran and Romania? Until watching Between Revolutions that possibility never even crossed my mind. But this personal and visualised exchange of letters between two friends sketches, both organically and lyrically, the connections and parallels between the dark histories of these two countries.

Five new doc projects have been selected for the 13th edition of Docu Rough Cut Boutique. Created by the Sarajevo Film Festival and Balkan Doc Center, the programme is organized in three working modules: Sofia (first week of April 2023), Budapest (June 2023) and Sarajevo (August 2023). “The selection process was one of the hardest in these last thirteen years of the program,” write organisers.

Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski’s distanced approach to everyday life in war-torn Ukraine may make for uncomfortable tension as its impersonal concept seems to prevent real human connection, but this more measured and sociological take gives the viewer time to reflect on the daily realities of war away from the frontlines. And there is much to be said for this approach.