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Five Polish producers will be representing six projects during DOK Industry as part of the Delegation Mix&Mingle/Round Table meetings. In addition, the project The Gap by Paweł Ferdek, will take part in co-pro meetings as part of the DOK Co-Pro Market. Additionally, eight films, five of which are docs, are selected for the festival, including three in International Doc Film Comp: Blossoming by Kamila Serwicka; I’m Painting a Self-Portrait, but All I See Is My Sister’s Face by Helena Stańczyk; and Letters from the Silenced Country by Andrei Kutsila.

One of the completed projects presented at DOK Industry in 2026 is Simone Unger’s debut feature doc Matter and Spirits, selected for DOK Preview Germany and which focusses on three precious objects in a Leipzig museum, giving them voice and tracing their histories back through a colonial past. “The film helps to understand why it is necessary to continue the debate about the colonial heritage and the question of restitution,” says German producer Alexander Tanz of Lumalenscape.

In her highly personal feature documentary, director Annina Lehmann explores the rural landscape of her childhood in Brandenburg, asking people about their fears and longings. Between ethnographic study and a search for home, the film encounters ghost stories, village parties, feelings of loss and craving for connection. “The film grows out of a specific place, and from Annina’s own childhood there,” producer Margarita Amineva-Jester tells BDE ahead of the Oct 26 presentation of the project in Leipzig, “but the emotional and political forces it explores are visible across Europe, the United States and much of the world.”

“Eastkids explores the long-term consequences of reunification through the lives of people who experienced it directly, and a younger generation who inherited its consequences without experiencing it themselves,” German producer Leon Harms tells BDE of Julius Gintaras Blum’s feature doc project, selected for Leipzig’s October 26 pitch event. The doc centres on the city of Chemnitz, once the heartbeat of East German industrialism but which has all but lost its identity post-reunification.

In the middle of Brussels, “the heart of Europe,” an Audi factory is closing. Production of the hybrid Q8, priced at 100,000 Euros, is moving to Mexico and 4,000 people are set to lose their jobs, among them Ali, Aziz, Joaquin and Mousse, who are profiled in German Mimi Zak’s feature doc, presented as a WiP in Leipzig. “The film stands with the people who carry the weight of this chaotic, hit-or-miss transformation on their shoulders,” producer Floris Steinbach underlines to Business Doc Europe. “It tells their story - and it’s a European story, not just a Belgian one.”

In International Competition, the City of Lisbon Award for Best Film went to For the Moon by Éric Baudelaire, while the Doclisboa Award for Best Portuguese Comp Film was won by Everyone’s Voice. The Doclisboa International Competition Jury Award went to Noli me tangere, by Ghassan Salhab, and the Médecins Sans Frontières – Portugal Jury Award for Best International Competition Director was presented to João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata for 13 Pins. All awards…

104 projects from 43 countries were selected to take part in the Co-Production & Gap Financing Market and Work-In-Progress sessions. The MIA Development Award for Outstanding Doc Project went to Loving Ika (Sweden) by Emilio Di Stefano and Fabian Sigurd. “We close this edition of MIA knowing that we have taken an important step in the market’s evolution,” comments Gaia Tridente, Director of MIA.

Independent documentary producers must rethink how they finance, market and distribute their work as traditional buyers commission fewer films, executives from Dogwoof, Scenery and US public television station THIRTEEN argued October 22 at MIA 2026. Moderated by Baltic Balkan Productions’ Ieva Ūbele, the panelists examined three different routes to sustaining ambitious non-fiction.

For British docmaker Kim Longinotto, the camera is far from an impartial observer. It can shift power dynamics, encourage unexpected conversations and even change the lives of those standing behind it. Speaking during a ‘fireside chat’ moderated by MIA’s Head of Doc Content Marco Spagnoli on 20 October in Rome, the director reflected on nearly five decades of filmmaking, explaining why she rejects conventional interviews, avoids imposing explanations on audiences and considers emotional involvement essential to her work.

With changing viewing habits reshaping documentary commissioning, representatives of BBC Storyville, Sweden’s SVT and Al Jazeera Documentary told producers at MIA 2026 that opportunities remain, but financing, rights and the way films reach audiences increasingly demand a different approach. The discussion was moderated by Canadian producer and broadcaster Rudy Buttignol, president of NXT.