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At Dokumentale Good Media Pitch (June 12), Georgian director Ketevan Vashagashvili and producer Nino Chichua made their Impact presentation for 9-Month Contract, which shines the spotlight on Tbilisi’s unregulated surrogacy market. In the film, Zhana is undergoing her third surrogate pregnancy. “There is a lot of power imbalance between prospective foreign parents and surrogate mothers,” said Vashagashvili. “Because of their very different socioeconomic backgrounds, these women - Georgian surrogate mothers – often need legal protection, and they don't have access to it.”

To avoid a potential legal dispute, the Berlin-based festival Dokumentale announced during its opening that it will forthwith drop the ‘k’ and go instead by the name of Doxumentale. “Doxumentale is a declaration of love - for our former name, for documentary media, and for the power of constructive collaboration,'”explained festival directors Vivian Schröder and Anna Ramskogler-Witt.

26 projects have been selected for the 29th edition of Baltic Sea Docs, the Riga-based co-production and co-financing forum running 31 August to 5 September 2025. The selection includes 22 projects in development and at production stage, along with four projects in post-production presented in the forum’s Coming Soon section. Once again, there is a strong presence from the Baltic states, alongside projects from Ukraine, Finland, Poland, and other countries in the region.

US actress Kim Novak will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival (La Biennale di Venezia), running 27 August to 6 September 2025. The award will coincide with the Venice world premiere of ‘Kim Novak’s Vertigo’, the new feature doc by writer-director Alexandre O. Philippe. The film is sold by Dogwoof who boarded the project at Cannes 2025.

Doc Edge, New Zealand’s premier international documentary festival and an Oscar® qualifying event, announced June 9 the finalists for its Doc Edge Awards 2025. The Awards will be held on Thursday, 3 July, at the Grand Millennium Auckland, and will be handed out across four categories: New Zealand Feature Film, New Zealand Short, International Feature Film, International Short.

Kicking off at Sheffield DocFest and Sunny Side before further roll-out across Europe, the 2025 Ex Oriente Features and Series workshop programs are designed “to support daring, author-driven documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe,” write organisers. This year’s edition brings together 12 feature-length documentary projects and 5 docuseries in development or early production stage, selected for their “creative potential and international relevance.”

The festival may have already opened with Billy Joel: And So It Goes by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, but the Tribeca doc component kicks off in earnest June 6 with the 10-film Documentary Competition, running to June 11 and all world premieres. Additionally, 27 feature docs (21 of which are world prems) are selected for the festival’s Spotlight Documentary section. Richard Ladkani’s feature doc Yanuni, about the fearless female Indigenous chief Juma Xipaia (Brazil), closes the festival on June 14.

Weronika Mliczewska’s Child of Dust won the Golden Horn in International Competition and shared the Golden Hobby-Horse in National Competition (with Wojciech Staroń for The Passion of Agnieszka). Natalia Koniarz’s Silver meanwhile won a Silver Horn for artistic merit, the FIPRESCI prize, the Audience prize, and the Maciej Szumowski Award for social awareness, while its Maciej Kubicki received the award for Best Producer of a Polish documentary. All winners…

IDFA is edging closer to its old spiritual home as Forum 2025 moves into the ITA Theatre on the Leidseplein and all Industry talks and consultancy sessions relocate to the legendary de Balie. Head of Industry Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen informed BDE of further changes, notably the parallel presentation of the Forum Pitch and Producers Connection projects, and a new series of post-pitch Informative Panels. “The renewed set-up underlines a focus on supporting filmmaker teams in making valuable connections and fostering creative partnerships,” she says.

On May 30, the awards of the 20th Krakow FF Industry were handed out, with the top cash award (the Polish Film Institute Award for a project nearing completion) going to Inner Landscapes directed by Zofia Sawicka. In total, nine Polish and Ukrainian projects were pitched in the advanced Docs to Go Section, while 14 new projects were pitched in the Docs to Start. All awards…