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Submissions for this year’s Radio & Audio Funding Award (RAFA) close Wednesday 30th November 2022. The award is made to an emerging audio creative based anywhere in the world for an original audio documentary for radio or podcast. Applications are also invited for the annual Film & TV Funding Award, valued at £100,000, with a deadline of January 21 2022.

The Museum of the Moving Image in New York will host a retrospective of eight documentaries by Polish filmmaker Łoziński, whose The Balcony Movie is in the running for a European Film Award and has been entered into the Oscar 2023 race for top Feature Doc. The MOMI programme runs December 2-4.

At its yearly general assembly, Documentary Association of Europe (DAE) elected two new executive board members, Gugi Gumilang and Natalia Imaz, while Marion Schmidt was re-elected for another term of three years. This brings DAE’s executive board to five people: Chairperson Julianna Ugrin and Brigid O’Shea, as founding board members will continue for another year.

‘I want to reclaim my body,’ says director Mania Akbari at the start of the film, as we watch her in a bathtub filled with black water - an octopus clung to her chest. And reclaim it she does in this documentary that both re-examines the male gaze in Iranian cinema and sets out to demythologize the so called era of female liberation in pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema.

Submerged hints of suffering slowly surface in Faustine Cros’ absorbing and gently moving, and deftly insightful, A Life Like Any Other (Une vie comme une autre) as she uses archival material shot by her filmmaker father, as well as her own intimate interviews, to delve into her mother’s barely noticed depression that ultimately led to a suicide attempt that traumatised the entire family.

Thelma and Sahlina are just your typical teenage Swedish girls. Chatting, giggling, comparing photographs on their mobile phone…and practising their hunting and shooting skills and refining their ability to skin a wild boar. Charming, intimate and nicely non-judgemental, the film is at heart the simple story of two best friends as they come of age.

Apolonia, Apolonia wins Best Film in Int’l Comp, Manifesto wins Best Film in Envision Comp. Both awards are valued at €15,000. The IDFA Award for Best Directing (worth €5,000) in Int’l Competition goes to Simon Chambers for Much Ado About Dying (Ireland, United Kingdom) while the Best Editing nod in Int’l Comp Mario Steenbergen went to Journey Through Our World (The Netherlands). All awards…

A beautiful portrait of aging and loneliness, Simon Chambers’ Much Ado About Dying dwells on an often-tragicomic but warm relationship as filmmaker Chambers returns to London to grudgingly look after his Shakespeare-loving uncle, a former actor who has grown old and infirm but who still yearns for a diet of attention and applause that clearly he feels his nephew can provide.

Heroic Bodies may not be the most skillfully made of documentaries, but its stories and images show a formerly unseen side of women's oppression in an impactful way, and also indicate how slowly but surely the balance is swinging in the other direction. The film provides an important contribution to the liberation and self-determination of women in Sudan - and around the world.

A remarkably immersive and at times terrifying examination of the impact of climate change as it has started to impact the remote region of Siberia, director Alexander Abuturov’s Paradise follows villagers as they battle devastating forest fires without any prospect of assistance from the authorities. It is striking, mermerising and visceral, all the time driven by strong visuals and a perfect soundtrack.