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This year, Berlin-based sales agency Magnet Film brings seven new documentaries to IDFA’s Docs for Sale. Business Doc Europe talked to the German firm’s CEO, Georg Gruber, to find out more about the company’s rich non-fiction slate. “We are always looking for films with strong narratives, compelling subjects and characters, and with a clear appeal to a worldwide audience,” he says.

How do you depict the impact of colonisation, decolonisation, a civil war and a destructed economy in one film? Director Alain Kassandra decided to portray his grandparents, who were both born in what was then called Zaire, and lived through all of these traumatising times. The result is a deeply personal, sometimes poetic, sometimes harrowing (hi)story of oppression, revolution, betrayal, disillusionment and love.

Czech sales company Filmotor arrives at IDFA with a slate of award-winning festival films and the international premiere of the home-grown Art Talent Show (A. Komrzy & T. Bojar, Luminous), which picked up the Fipresci prize at Karlovy Vary and sales to Slovakia and the US (Film Movement). The Peruvan title Steel Life is selected for Best of Fests. Both titles join Laura Sistero’s Tolyatti Adrift in Docs for Sale.

With a large Italian contingent of docmakers and professionals taking part at IDFA 2022, BDE sat down with two reps of DocIt, Italy’s national association of documentarians, to discuss how the country’s doc scene is developing, their agenda for the fest and the Italian titles and projects set to be showcased or screened this year. DocIt president Francesco Virga, and Lucia Pornaro, in charge of DocIt’s internationalisation processes, filled us in.

IDFA 2022 opened November 9 with Niki Padidar’s All You See at Amsterdam's prestigious Royal Carré Theater. The film was simultaneously screened at 35 theaters throughout the Netherlands. During the opening ceremony, the €50,000 Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Documentary Stipend was awarded to media artist and filmmaker Pim Zwier.

Stylistically bold and as timeless as it is topical, All You See explores the alienation migrants experience coming to the Netherlands. It’s a strong opening film for IDFA, as its main question concerns every documentary in the programme: we look at people, but do we see them?

The 35th IDFA kicks off today, 9 November, running through to November 20, presenting an official selection of 277 films from all corners of the globe, and most places in-between. “If I am to summarize what I hope our impact would be like, that would probably be to evoke self-reflection and openness towards the Other,” Creative Director Orwa Nyrabia tells BDE. “In daily arguments we’re always defensive, but in the dark room, with a good film, we can actually lose our defenses, and be honest with ourselves.”

The European Film Academy announced November 8 the five documentary nominees in the European Documentary category of the 35th European Film Awards. The award ceremony takes place on 10 December in Reykjavík and will “celebrate the best of European Film culture.”

The Australian International Documentary Conference has announced its the first confirmed guests - including Sara Dosa, Shaunak Sen and Rita Baghdadi – as well as the theme for its 2023 conference: Agents of Change. AIDC 2023 will take place in-person from 5-8 March at ACMI, Melbourne, followed by an online international marketplace, running 9-11 March.

The late Roger Graef OBE, will be posthumously honoured with the prestigious BBC Grierson Trustees' Award during the 2022 British Documentary Awards. Graef’s illustrious filmmaking career spanned six decades and much of his work shone a light on the inner workings of the police and criminal justice system.