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The award honours German and international documentary film productions in which filmmakers with disabilities play a leading role. The prize is sponsored by the Werksviertel-Mitte Stiftung and comes with a cash endowment of 5,000 euros. The closing date for entries is 3 February 2025. The 40th edition of DOK.fest Munich runs May 7-18 2025.

Oscar-nominated Indian director Shaunak Sen discusses Nocturnes with filmmakers Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan. It is a film that “sidesteps a lot of the usual pitfalls of the regular environmental or ecological film. It is not proscriptive, it is not pedantic and aesthetically unfolds an argument [using] the composite of sound and images that works on very many subliminal levels.”

FIFDH Impact Days 2025 kicks off January 16 with the festival’s annual webinar on Impact Filmmaking for Social Justice. The event will explore the power and the challenges of promoting hopeful human rights narratives in documentaries and impact campaigns, via a case study of Mayye Zayed’s Lift Like a Girl and a panel discussion on “communicating hope in human rights.” The FIFDH Human Rights FF runs March 7-16 2025 in Geneva.

Organisers of Sundance FF (Jan 23 – Feb 2) announced December 11 the 93 feature and episodic programme titles that will make up its 2025 programme. These include 10 films in World Cinema Doc Comp, ten films in US Documentary Comp, and a further 11 documentary titles in Premieres. “The Sundance Film Festival remains steadfast in its commitment to elevating unique and urgent voices in independent storytelling,” commented Robert Redford, Sundance Institute Founder and President.

Running 12-16 May 2025, DocsBarcelona Industry is one of the core professional meeting points for the non-fiction sector in Europe, and will award prizes valued at 15,000 euros. The deadline for project submission is January 27, 2025, with an early bird deadline of December 31. DocsBarcelona will celebrate its 28th edition from May 8-18 2025.

Egyptian journalist and filmmaker Ibrahim Nash’at discusses his multi award-winning feature debut Hollywoodgate with Danish Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Simon Lereng Wilmont (A House Made of Splinters, 2022). With unprecedented access to one of the most secretive cabals in the world - the Taliban - the film begins on the day after the last US soldier left Afghanistan in 2021 and follows a group of Taliban leaders in their first year back in power.

As doors closed on the festival's 49th roll-out, The Cats of Gokogu Shrine by Japanese director Kazuhiro Soda was handed the “Laceno d’Oro 49” Award. Portuguese filmmaker Frederico Lobo received the “Gli occhi sulla città” Award for Quando a Terra Foge, while Si dice di me by Isabella Mari picked up the “Laceno d’Oro Spazio Campania ‘Chiara Rigione’ Award.” All awards...

Hot on the heels of its IDA Awards success, No Other Land (Palestine/Norway/US) by Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Basel Adra & Hamdan Ballal, was named winner in the European Documentary category of the 37th European Film Awards. The European Young Audience Award went to The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Norway) by Benjamin Ree, produced by Ingvil Giske.

The Palestine/Norway/US film bagged the Best Feature Documentary and Best Director Awards December 5 during the International Documentary Association Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles. The Best Cinematography gong went to Ruslan Fedotov for Queendom, while Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat picked up two prizes; for Best Editing and Best Writing. All awards…

Brazilian Petra Costa’s film investigates the increasingly powerful grip that evangelical Christian leaders hold over politics in her home country. “In our story, we look at what happens in Brazil as a fable of our times,” says Costa, who was nominated for an Academy Award® in 2020 for The Edge of Democracy. The film was an Official Selection at the Venice, Telluride, New York Film, Camden International, IDFA, Chicago International, and Montclair Festivals.