News

Of the 433 submitted films, 64 have this year been selected to compete for the awards in the festival’s five competition categories, including Best Nordic Documentary with an award valued at €11,000. The festival runs 22–27 September Malmö, Sweden. “This year’s documentary programme tackles some of the most urgent topics of our time – climate crisis, corruption, war, violation of human rights and women’s rights,” say programmers.

A compassionate yet deeply harrowing delve into the important work done by the Croatian empowerment programme ‘I Am Much More Than My Trauma’ which helps women who were raped and traumatised during the Croatian War of Independence. Vedrana Pribacic’s film focusses on a handful of women taking part throughout the programme’s two-year duration.

The fest presents 22 films in Doc Competition (eight world, three international premieres) and myriad doc projects across the professional CineLink programme. “Our program celebrates the richness of documentary forms: from the exciting cinéma-vérité styles where the camera is a ‘fly on the wall’ to the poetic, intimate diary documentaries and complex narratives that celebrate the creative use of archival footage,” says Sarajevo’s doc programmer Rada Šešić.

The annual presentation of docs-in-post from Central and Eastern Europe will take place August 15 during Sarajevo FF. This year nine docs covering a range of geographically diverse topics are up for grabs. “It is surprising that a region often associated primarily with rural films from poor regions can geographically encompass literally the entire world: from Tokyo and Iran to Europe, New York and Salvador,” says Ji.hlava director Marek Hovorka.

In the film, written and directed by Italian docmaker Susanna della Sala and which world premieres August 9 in Locarno Semaine de la Critique, a forlorn community flourishes thanks to the healing power of art. Producers are Marco Visalberghi and Sherin Salvetti for DocLab.

Fledglings is a warm and engaging look at the lives of a handful of young and blind (or partially sighted) Polish children as they leave the care of their parents and head to a boarding school to learn the skills necessary to navigate the challenges to come. In this new world they have to develop new friendships and find ways to deal with the sad and worrying moments that they will naturally, at times, encounter.

The publication follows both the recent surge in the programming of Ukrainian content at international film festivals and the July 1 IDF online panel on the ‘decolonization of old ideological constructs and film industry practices,’ which identified the need for Ukrainian programmers and curators to be active within the decision-making processes. “We have a unique (like never before) chance to become visible, [but] we are still pushed by the fear of being invisible,” says Victoria Leshchenko, Docudays UA Program Director.

The Iceland festival’s two-day impact workshop will run 6 and 7 October and is designed to support documentary film projects in (further) developing their impact goals and strategies. Organisers are inviting documentary film projects in production on environmental issues and climate injustice for participation. Deadline for submission: August 15.

Five films are announced for From the Earth to the Moon section, each of which look to “build bridges between history and the future.” So far, five films are additionally selected for the Heart Beat section that “brings a diversity of representations of the art world.” Filmmakers given the Lisbon nod include Werner Herzog and Maria Augusta Ramos. The 20th anniversary edition of the festival runs October 6 to 16.

CineLink Talks, the conference arm of CineLink Industry Days (Sarajevo FF), offers a rich programme of masterclasses, debates and seminars, open for all festival and industry guests. Five panels organized in partnership with Documentary Campus will touch upon distribution challenges, new funding strategies for social impact films, middle players in film industry and the responsibility of documentary filmmakers in fake-news era. For all doc-related panels, read on.