News

Netflix announced January 16 the return of the Documentary Talent Fund, to support emerging filmmakers. This year sees the programme extend to include the Republic of Ireland as well as the UK. “Building on the success of year one, the fund will continue to inspire and discover a new generation of documentary storytellers,” says Netflix. The theme for the next round of fully funded short docs is Connection.

IDFA chief Orwa Nyrabia discusses the Oscar shortlisted Descendant with director Margaret Brown. The films tells the story of the descendants of the last known enslaved Africans who were brought to the United States aboard the ship Clotilda. “How can there be people in my family that I love but who are also racist?” asks Brown, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama. “That's a paradox to me…How do I reckon with that? How do I make art about that?”

The online DocCelerator programme, which organizes workshops to help filmmakers sharpen the focus of their documentaries, has restructured for its Spring 2023 edition. The programme will now run two strands - DocCeleratorStory and DocCeleratorWorkInProgress - to provide structured story input to docmakers at all stages of development and production.

Four new German docs will be presented in the Berlinale section dedicated to screening the best of local output and which is this year characterised by “conflicts and collisions.” Section opener Seven Winters in Tehran, about a dreadful travesty of justice, and Lonely Oaks, about the death of a protester, reveal a “concern for the future [that] comes naturally to up-and-coming German filmmakers,” the festival writes.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia talks to Indian director Shaunak Sen about the Sundance-winning All That Breathes, one of the front-runners in the race for this year’s Feature Doc Oscar. The film follows two brothers in a polluted Delhi who dedicate their lives to protecting the abundant but magnificent black kites that circle the skies above the city. “I would say it began with a vague interest in a kind of abstract triangulation of air, birds, humans,” Sen tells Kapadia.

MeetMarket, Sheffield’s flagship industry event for new documentary features and series, is open for projects. Now in its 18th year, the MeetMarket is one of the world’s most important markets and pitching forums for documentary and factual programming, and looks to connect docmakers from across the world with UK and international industry experts. Submissions deadline: February 17 2023.

Fifteen doc features advance to the next round of nomination voting, and include A House Made of Splinters by Simon Lereng Wilmont, Hidden Letters by Violet Du Feng and Qing Zhao, and Alex Pritz’s The Territory. Fifteen short docs also advance to the next round of voting, which will run January 12-17 before the nominations are announced January 24 2023. The 95th Academy Awards will be presented March 12 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Alex Gibney’s Untitled Boris Becker Documentary (UK/USA) is one of the first docs selected for Berlinale Special section while three non-fiction works are announced for Forum: El juicio (The Trial) by Ulises de la Orden (Argentina/Italy/France/Norway), Llamadas desde Moscú (Calls from Moscow) by Luís Alejandro Yero (Cuba/Germany/Norway) and This Is the End by Vincent Dieutre (France).

Visions du Réel will celebrate Argentinian filmmaker and screenwriter Lucrecia Martel by presenting her an Honorary Award during its 54th edition (April 21–30, 2023). A major figure in contemporary film and a leading name in the New Argentine Cinema, Lucrecia Martel will give a masterclass during the event, which will "explore her body of work and her relationship with reality."

The Library of Congress in the United States has added the short film 'Mardi Gras Carnival' (US, 1898) to the country’s National Film Registry. The Dutch Eye Filmmuseum discovered this year that it had the oldest surviving set of moving images of the Mardi Gras parade within its collection, after an enquiry from the Louisiana State Museum. “The entire team at the Eye deserves the recognition and gratitude of every lover of cinema,” says Martin Scorsese.