News

The Berlinale Documentary Award went to Holding Liat by Brandon Kramer, produced by Darren Aronofsky, Lance Kramer, Yoni Brook, Ari Handel, Justin A. Gonçalves. The Panorama Audience Award was won by The Moelln Letters by Martina Priessner, while in the Teddys, the Best Documentary/Essay Film Award was won by Satanische Sau (Satanic Sow) by Rosa von Praunheim. The Golden Bear for Best Short Film went to Lesley Loksi Chan for Lloyd Wong, Unfinished.

The renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei will present his latest doc ‘Animality’ and will engage in a discussion on the intersection of art and activism. Israeli architect Eyal Weizman will speak after the screening of 'Rule of Stone' which reveals how architecture has been used as a tool of control and displacement since Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967. The INTER:ACTIVE line-up is presented under the theme of Untamed: Humanity Rewilded, and promises a “provocative and immersive experience that urges audiences to reimagine humanity’s role within the natural world.”

Launched in 2019, First Window is dedicated to documentary debuts of features and short films by young creators enrolled in art schools, university film programmes, filmmaking courses of any kind, or creating outside of any specific training environment. From 22 to 29 March, the thirteen films will be screened at Paris’s Reflet Médicis, and will be available online on a dedicated section of the Mediapart website, where visitors can vote for their favourite film.

Presented in partnership with Documentary Campus, CPH:CONFERENCE will take place this year from March 24-28, bringing together a “stellar” line-up of filmmakers, industry leaders, and visionaries, including Christo Grozev, James Jones, Alexis Bloom, Kate Townsend, Sam Soko, Mstyslav Chernov, Nathan Grossman and many more.

On Feb 17, EFM hosted the Inventive Ambitions – Financing Non-Fiction panel, which saw the participation of Melanie Adernach (producer, Made in Germany), Emanuel Rotstein (Head of Docs, Icon Docs), Mascha Wilke (Head of EVZ Academy and EVZ Foundation), and Sylvia Grass (Senior Commissioning Editor, ARTE/Bayerischer Rundfunk). Together, they explored the challenges and opportunities of financing non-fiction projects in the current media landscape, which has been heavily shaken by geopolitical turmoil and economic hardship.

At Berlinale 2025 Ji.hlava IDFF presented the current cohort of professionals partaking in its Emerging Producers programme, and put out the call for the next programme that will run 2025 through 2026. Every year the festival selects 18 talented producers (17 European and one representing a guest country), to whom it provides educational, networking and promotional support. The applications deadline for the next programme is March 31.

A total of 71 full-length and short documentaries from Greece will be screened in the festival’s International, Newcomers and >>Film Forward Competition sections, as well as in the Open Horizons, Platform+ and Special Screenings sections. “Vibrant and fascinating, unraveling heart-wrenching human stories and burning up-to-the-minute issues, the Greek documentaries take centre stage,” write festival organisers.

On 16 February, EFM hosted an intimate roundtable discussion titled "Non-Fiction Awards Campaigns," moderated by Matt Carey, Deadline’s Documentary Editor. Carey interviewed Salma Abdalla, recently appointed Head of Communications at the Austrian Film Institute and a seasoned sales professional, having formerly headed up Autlook. The core topic of the talk was award campaign strategies for documentaries.

On 15 February, the EFM hosted a panel titled “Encouraging Growth: The Journeys of Highly Acclaimed Documentaries,” moderated by Deadline’s Matt Carey. The event featured Mediawan’s Head of Doc Sales, Arianna Castoldi, and Les Films du Losange’s Head of Int’l Sales, Alice Lesort, who discussed the remarkable trajectories of Johan Grimonprez’s Oscar-nominated Soundtrack to a Coup d’État and Mati Diop’s Golden Bear winner Dahomey, two films that have resonated strongly with both audiences and critics worldwide.

Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s feature doc tells the story of American actor Christopher Reeve after a horse-riding accident left him paralyzed, and his subsequent work as an activist for disability rights. The film pipped two Oscar-nominated films to the Bafta post – Black Box Diaries by Shiori Ito and No Other Land by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal.