News

World Cinema Jury Prize to ‘Flee’, Directing Award to Hogir Hirori for ‘Sabaya’, Documentary Special Jury Award in Impact for Change to ‘Writing With Fire’, while Special Jury Award in Verite Filmmaking to ‘President’, directed by Camilla Nielsson

Everything you see in this beautiful, painful but ultimately uplifting film is, indeed, a landscape: the fields of flowers, the green meadows, the forests… and the wrinkled skin of the protagonist, covered with lines and bumps, liver spots and a fading tattoo, representing a number.

The DocCelerator programme is expanding its online remit with three further mentored workshops covering pitch, enhanced visuals and rough cut. “Filmmakers are looking for [further] ways of strengthening the dramatic elements of their story and optimize their filmic expression,” says Paradiddle Pictures’ Ove Rishøj Jensen.

Greek doc fest sets application deadline of Feb 12 for podcast workshops, with global experts focussing on the basic principles of the form and content creation (plus secrets and know-how). Podcasts then given centre stage during Thessaloniki June/July 2021.

An often tense, genuinely moving, fly-on-the-wall doc about a small group of determined people risking their lives to rescue Yazidi women and girls held as sex slaves by ISIS in the packed and dangerous al-Hol Camp in northwestern Syria.

Doc/Fest announces the curatorial teams behind its 2021 Film, Arts and Exchange programmes for the upcoming 28th edition (4-13 June), which will be delivered as a hybrid event, in Sheffield and online.

A new report has called for root and branch transformation of the UK documentary film industry, setting out detailed plans to reverse its funding crisis, address structural inequality and re-balance the relationship between production, distribution and exhibition.

In this absorbing and compassionate documentary the hybrid animation technique works perfectly while archive footage of real-life historical events help reinforce a sense of time and place.

An enthralling and often incredible documentary in which the line between victim and perpetrator is blurred, prompting a series of questions that are, at heart, difficult to answer.

It may come in at 140 minutes but Edgar Wright’s doc is snappy and well-paced, revelling in the memorable music and delicious sense of humour that very much define the work of the brothers Mael, aka Sparks.