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Producer Bjarte Mørner Tveit (The Mole) and director Tonje Hessen Schei (iHuman) have joined director/producer Tommy Gulliksen at Oslo Pictures to spearhead ‘major investment’ in the company’s non-fiction slate. “These are two people I have admired and respected for years. They have world-class ideas, experience and skills that I am really looking forward to experiencing up close,” says Gulliksen.

In International Competition A House Made of Splinters by Simon Lereng Wilmont picks up The Golden Alexander Award (plus €12,000 cash prize) while The Special Jury Award (€5,000 cash prize) was awarded to Young Plato by Declan McGrath & Neasa Ní Chianáin. In Newcomers Competition, The Golden Alexander “Dimitri Eipides” Award (€10,000 cash prize) was given to Golden Land by Inka Achté. All winners…

Filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa has been “excluded” from the Ukrainian Film Academy, as revealed in a statement published March 18. “We appeal to the world community with a request not to position Serhiy Loznytsa [Loznitsa] as a representative of the Ukrainian cultural sphere,” the Academy wrote. Loznitsa replied in a Facebook post March 19, “I am and will always be a Ukrainian filmmaker.” Full statements follow.

Pitching Forum and Work-in-Progress prizes were handed out during the Agora Docs award ceremony March 17. “We had more than 350 film professionals attending the Agora, both physically and online. I think this is the best proof that the industry is ready to be back in business, if it ever stopped,” said Elise Jalladeau, general director of the festival.

In solidarity with the country and its filmmakers, CPH:DOX has added 3 further Ukrainian films to this year’s programme, which now numbers seven films in total. “We have chosen to expand our programme and give more space to some of the many brave Ukrainian filmmakers who in recent years have created strong and important films with the conflict as a backdrop,” says Artistic Director Niklas Engstrøm.

The 27th edition of Brazil’s leading doc fest will be presented in hybrid format March 31 to April 10, screening 77 titles from 34 countries free of charge. Mark Cousins’ The Story of Looking and The Story of Film: A New Generation will open the festival, while Alex Pritz’s The Territory will close. Winning films in Brazilian, International Feature/Medium-length and Short Film Competitions will automatically qualify for next year’s Oscar® long-list.

€5000 award given to Alva Noto (aka Carsten Nicolai) for the original score written for Marc Wiese’s This Stolen Country of Mine. In 2022 the festival will also shine the spotlight on the ‘diverse realities of Spain’ across six films in its Sol Y Sombra programme, as well as address both trauma and notions of identity in the ‘Franco’s Long Shadow’ retrospective.

In a statement dated March 15, Vilnius International Film Festival (Lithuania, March 24 - April 3) says that it is “refusing all Russian films” in line with the petition initiated by the Ukrainian Film Academy. “We have eliminated all Russian films and co-productions from the programme of our festival as this is not the best time to nourish Russian culture,” the festival reaffirms on its website. Vilnius claims to be the first film festival to do so.

The leading Swiss doc fest will present 160 films from 58 countries. The official selection includes 124 films, including 84 world premieres and 15 international premieres and 26 Swiss (co)productions. 43% of the filmmakers are women, while 57% are men. Out of the 65 feature-length films, 35 are debuts. The opening film is Sara Dosa’s epic tale of volcanology, Fire of Love, which opens the festival April 7.

Wake Up Punk may constitute, in broadest terms, a debate about whether the legacy of punk has been commodified. But at its sensitive core (and despite much righteous anger and frustration) it is about how Joe Corré, son of punk visionaries Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, deals with his father’s memory and legacy as he plans to burn an estimated £5 million worth of punk memorabilia as an anarchist protest.