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France-based filmmaker Nolwenn Hervé arrives at IDFA Forum 2025 with The Cord, a rough-cut project produced by Estelle Robin You for Grande Ourse Films. The documentary follows Carolina, a fearless activist operating in the crumbling health system of Maracaibo, Venezuela—an environment where, as the director notes, “life hangs by a thread,” and where women are forced to fight daily for their own survival and that of their babies.

Iranian helmer Marjan Khosravi brings Dreams of the Wild Oaks to IDFA Forum 2025 as a rough-cut project, now in post-production and produced by Milad Khosravi for Seven Springs Pictures, with French and Spanish co-production partners on board in the form of Avant la Nuit and Lukimedia. Set within a Bakhtiari community in southwest Iran, the film follows Samaneh, a young girl racing against time to save her freedom. Caught between a forced marriage and the ancestral ritual of Cease Blood Sacrifice, she embarks on a quest to find rare and endangered birds—a path that challenges her beliefs and tests the limits of her father’s love.

IDFA’s focus programme Dead Angle returns this year with a far-reaching thematic deep dive into the structures that shape civic life. This year, programmer Joost Daamen turns the spotlight on institutions — democratic, administrative, medical, colonial — and on the frictions, contradictions and aspirations that define them. The focus is also placed squarely on archives. “Archives tell us a lot about how a society sees itself… how it shapes a narrative,” Daamen tells BDE.

Emmy-winning docmaker Carla Gutierrez (Frida) talks to Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni about their acclaimed feature doc about Iranian Sara Shahverdi, who, as the first elected councilwoman of her remote Iranian village, fearlessly breaks patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and by stopping child marriages. “We wanted to see this conflict. And also we wanted to experience how the society was reflecting on Sara's offer to bring the change in the society,” says co-director Eyni.

The goal of the pitch event, organised by Polish docfest Millennium Docs Against Gravity, is to “promote international co-productions, leverage the expertise of festival guests, and create a space where globally impactful films can emerge.” write organisers. Up to 12 projects will be selected for presentation at session, and guests will include producers, world sales agents, festival programmers, and commissioning editors from European broadcasters. Deadline for submissions: February 1, 2026.

Submissions for the 41st DOK.fest München are now open, with organisers looking for “stirring, moving, curious, impressive and relevant documentary films,“ both international and national. From 6 to 17 May 2026, the selected documentary films will be presented in Munich cinemas and special venues, and from 11 to 24 May 2026, they will be shown exclusively @home on the festival‘s digital screen throughout Germany.

LDNDOCS has published the programme for its inaugural Documentary Showcase, running November 21-23 at the Curzon Bloomsbury Cinema in London. Ten new, acclaimed documentary features and one short film programme will be presented, with the majority of screenings followed by a post-screening Q&A with attending directors, producers, and special guests.

The 29th edition of DocsBarcelona will be held May 7 to 17 2026, comprising six competitive sections and offering €20,000 in prizes. “As usual, DocsBarcelona will bring audiences the best of the world's documentary production through a committed and stimulating program focused on contemporary challenges, debates, and conflicts,” write organisers. The final deadline for film submissions is November 15.

The Irish Film Festival, organised by Irish Film & Television UK (IFTUK), returns to London 12–16 November for “five days of cinematic discovery,” organisers write. Documentary highlights include Aoife Kelleher’s Testimony, about an extraordinary group of women who take their battle to hold the Irish government accountable for the abuses of the Magdalene Laundries all the way to the UN; and Andrew Gallimore’s In the Opinion of the Censor, about the wholesale massacre of classic films over the past century by the Irish censor.

The 2025 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF), which runs November 7 to 23, will showcase docs in both International and Baltic Competitions. For the first time, Baltic documentaries and feature films will compete in separate programmes. “The films in Doc@PÖFF programme open a restless world where bold, author-driven works captivate with their search for balance and understanding — and demonstrate that documentaries can be even more engaging than fiction,” says doc curator Marianna Kaat.