News

Uruguayan Agustín Flores’ highly personal documentary interweaves the story of Jorge Firpo, a legendary horse trainer, with the director’s own journey through the pain of his father’s suicide. “Leaving the track is inevitable — it will happen to all of us,” Flores tells BDE. “The question is: how do we make life worth living before that moment arrives? Because a life without passion is a life without meaning.”

Ireland/UK’s Mike Downey and Istanbul-based Emir Kuelal Haznevi, both executive producers on Cannes competition 2026 entries Parallel Tales (Asghar Farhadi) and All of a Sudden (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), have joined forces to form the new boutique film financing outfit Saudade Ink to develop, produce and invest in quality arthouse fiction and documentary cinema from across the world.

dok.incubator is looking for film projects from Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary, as well as co-productions with these countries, to join the 2026 workshop. The renewed edition brings “an expanded two-part workshop format, more international tutors, direct feedback from decision makers, and a stronger focus on marketing, audience building, and smart distribution strategies,“ organisers underline.

More than 4500 industry professionals and creatives, among them Juliette Binoche, Joachim Trier, Ruben Östlund, Sandra Hüller and Francis Ford Coppolla, have signed an open letter calling for safeguards to film and audiovisual funding following the proposal to merge the MEDIA strand of the Creative Europe programme into the new AgoraEU mega-programme. “We, European cinema professionals and citizens – all cinema lovers – call upon the European Commission, European Parliament and Member States to future-proof the success and integrity of the vital and precious MEDIA programme and reinforce its resources,” the letter demands.

The award ceremony of the 5th MDAG Industry Awards took place May 10 in Warsaw after four pitch sessions, the presentation of 50 projects and over 350 one-on-one meetings. “This year’s edition brought forward stories that are too rarely heard, yet have the power to shift perspectives and expand our shared experience. We believe the projects presented within MDAG Industry will be bold, moving, and uncompromising, and will find their way to audiences around the world,” commented Industry Head Anna Szczypińska.

“This movie, for me, is not just a project. It has been part of my life,” said Soraya Akhalaghi at the beginning of a masterclass held at Millennium Docs Against Gravity in Warsaw, where she appeared alongside Iranian filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei to discuss the making of A Fox Under a Pink Moon. The session, held on May 9 and titled “Remote Intimacy: Building Connection in a Distant Documentary,” focused on a seven-year creative process shaped by “distance, trust, danger and improvisation.”

Belarusian filmmaker Andrei Kutsila is currently in post-production on Letters (WT), a 90-minute documentary that portrays contemporary Belarus through the correspondences of people affected by political repression, imprisonment, exile and state violence. Produced by Mirosław Dembiński for Poland’s DocEdu Foundation, the film is a Poland-Germany-Lithuania co-production with inselfilm produktion and Moonmakers. BDE reports.

During the May 7 Opening Ceremony of the 23rd Millennium Docs Against Gravity, the feature documentary Fiume o morte! by Igor Bezinović was awarded the inaugural FIPRESCI Documentary Grand Prix, following a vote by members of the International Federation of Film Critics from around the world. The film has already received the European Film Award for Best European Documentary and was recognized at the Rotterdam festival, where it won both the Tiger Award in the Main Competition and the FIPRESCI Jury Prize.

Polish filmmaker Łukasz Kowalski is developing Children of the Black Garden, a new feature documentary rooted in the toxic legacy of Silesia’s industrial past, and the hidden story of a doctor who exposed mass lead poisoning among children in the 1970s. Produced by Anna Mazerant and Kowalski himself through 4.30 Studio, the project is among the titles being presented at Millennium Docs Against Gravity’s Progress Pitching Session on May 8.

Polish filmmaker Maciej Bochniak is developing The Lawyer, a new feature documentary following the extraordinary case of Brian Mwenda, a Kenyan man who reportedly passed himself off as a lawyer, built a reputation in Nairobi’s legal circles and became a national controversy after his real credentials were called into question. “I was drawn to Brian’s story because, in a certain way, I had lived it myself — due to my own diagnosed impostor syndrome,” says Bochniak.