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“In Your Shadow is vital because it makes visible something that exists in so many families and societies: the silence that grows around trauma,” Dutch producer Renko Douze (Een van de jongens) tells BDE of Thabi Mooi & Tom Fassaert’s work-in-progress In Your Shadow, presented at NLWave26. In the feature doc, after thirty years of silence, filmmaker Thabi takes her father on a journey to confront his past as a soldier in the South African liberation struggle.

“Paradise Morbid is a horror-hybrid documentary that focuses on what happens when you get lost in drug use,” director David-Jan Bronsgeest tells BDE of his NLWave feature doc presentation. The film centres on Frank van der Meer (63), once a king of Amsterdam’s Red Light district, “who has died many times, yet refuses to stay buried.” Bronsgeest further underlines his intentions: “With Paradise Morbid, I want to use the language of horror to explore reality.”

“We see this film as a love story set against the backdrop of an unequal and absurd world,” producer Ilja Roomans (Docmakers) tells BDE of director Suzanne Raes’s new feature doc project, presented this week in Utrecht. The film follows a couple, Paul and Daniel, working as cleaners in the Netherlands, who must return to Manila. The film describes “a world in which one country’s largest export may be its labour force, and in which the other country increasingly treats these people as second-class citizens,” Roomans adds.

“This film could have been my life,” says Sakir Khader of his feature debut, produced by mint film office, which follows three men as they fight Assad’s occupation of Syria, and then afterwards during the country’s uneasy peace. “Many war films focus on the moment of battle, placing the viewer at the heart of the fighting. Few films show the everyday reality of life on the front lines or the ruins that remain after liberation, as mine does.”

“pink & green is difficult to put into one box, and I think that is one of its main strengths,” producer Danielle Guirguis tells Business Doc Europe of Turner Prize nominee Rory Pilgrim’s hybrid doc project, set on the windswept British island of Portland. In the film, two mysterious orbs, one pink, the other green, emerge from the bowels of the earth to instil a greater sense of hope and optimism, both in the film’s troubled protagonists and in the wider community who step forward to offer their support.

IDFA 2026 has announced the titles selected for its Short Documentary Competition, alongside new selections for Signed, Best of Fests, and Paradocs. IDFA DocLab has also unveiled first projects for its 20th anniversary, as well as the winners of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant 2026. The final competition titles and full selection will be announced on October 13. The 39th edition of IDFA runs from November 12 to 22 in Amsterdam.

Irish-UK producer and former European Film Academy Chairman Mike Downey was honoured September 26 with the Batumi International Art-House Film Festival (BIAFF) in Georgia. The Award acknowledged his contribution to World Cinema as a producer and European Cinema as former chair of EFA and current President of the LUX Prize of the European Parliament.

Lightdox has swept up world sales rights to Patrick Wally’s ‘My Home of Wind and Sand’, a decade-long portrait of Sahrawi activist Najla Mohamed Lamin, ahead of its world premiere at the 22nd Zurich Film Festival on September 29, where it screens in Documentary Competition. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg will attend the premiere and join Lamin, the film’s protagonist, for a post-screening discussion.

Leading film and executive producer Michael Ryan and BAFTA-nominated producer Farah Abushwesha join Irish Film & TV UK as the organisation celebrates 15 years of championing Irish screen talent in the UK. “IFTUK is dedicated to developing and encouraging new talent, as well as promoting established Irish talent, and having such eminent experts as patrons from all areas of the global film & tv business will help us to achieve this,” comments IFTUK Chair, Carey Fitzgerald.

The €3000 prize went to director Anna Antsalo and producer Venla Hellstedt for their feature project about a man (Olli) who, in the borderlands of Finland, attempts to preserve the natural dark nights, as light pollution an severely affect our physical and mental wellbeing. “The filmmaker's connection to her character and his passion shows us a world that is very unique and at the same time universal,” the jury commented.