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The 21st Verzió program, running November 6-13, will dedicate special sections to the themes of decolonization and disinformation, and will also showcase Armenian, Ukrainian, and British selections. The festival's opening film will be the Hungarian-French-Croatian co-production Kix, a film about skateboarder kids, making its Hungarian debut. “Verzió helps us uncover the problems that are often hidden behind false surfaces, bringing us closer to reality,” the festival writes.

Running October 29 to November 1, Industry Days highlights include the New Visions Forum and Market, the Emerging Producers presentation of 18 up-and-coming European film producers, the Festival Identity workshop and creative hub for film festival representatives, and the Matchmaking Accelerator during which 500+ one-on-one meetings will take place. And more…

The inaugural Dokumentale International Documentary and Media Festival Berlin (10-20 October) has announced the ten films selected for its Competition programme. The documentaries, which include 8 German premieres and two international premieres, will compete for the main prize of €20,000, of €10,000 will go directly to the filmmakers while the remainder will support marketing efforts around the film's release.

Short and Youth Competition titles have been announced alongside Signed, Best of Fests and Paradocs selections. Over 100 films have now been added to the IDFA 2024 program, “showcasing a wide selection of works by both critically acclaimed filmmakers and exceptional newcomers,” organisers write. The 37th edition of IDFA runs from November 14 to 24 in Amsterdam.

She works behind the counter at a food market in Connecticut, but nobody knows that single mother Lhakpa Sherpa from Nepal has reached the summit of Mount Everest ten times. Nor that she has been the victim of domestic abuse. In the Netflix doc Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated director Lucy Walker tells the eponymous heroine’s story of perseverance, not only as a climber but as an immigrant and survivor. Walker discusses her film with Academy Award-winning James Marsh.

Directed by Marek Šulík, Ms. President is described as “time-lapse portrait of Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová.” The festival programme, extended this year from six to ten days (October 25 – November 3), will offer up new documentaries from across the world, retrospectives, the best of experimental filmmaking and a number of non-competitive programme sections. Industry runs October 29-November 1 2024.

The annual celebration of Nordic doc kicks off September 19 in Malmö (Sweden) with Zara Zerny’s Echo of You, one of 15 films selected for the event’s Best Nordic Documentary competition. Other key features of the packed event include the Nordisk Panorama Forum for new projects. “The strength of the Nordic documentary industry is no accident. It’s the product of a stable support system, good film schools, and a culture of creative producers willing to take risks on emerging talent,” Executive Director Heidi Christensen tells BDE.

Co-produced by ZDF/3sat, the documentary looks at the phenomenon of light from both scientific and artistic perspectives. “Thomas Riedelsheimer’s documentaries are a delightful celebration of light and sound,” says festival director Christoph Terhechte. “They sharpen our senses. Twenty years after opening our festival with ‘Touch the Sound’, we’re proud to be doing it again with Tracing Light.”

Organisers announced 18 September the documentary programme of the tenth (Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo) which runs October 14-18 in Rome. The MIA market was launched in 2015, organized by ANICA (Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive e Digitali) and APA (Associazione Produttori Audiovisivi).

The award for the best film (AJB DOC Main Award) went to Smiling Georgia by Luka Beradze, about the “false promises politicians make to retain power“ (in this case the promise of dentures). The Al Jazeera Balkans Program Jury Award went to José Carlos Soares, Tanju Şahin and Aslıhan Eker Çakmak for their film Holy Redemption, which “uncovers Israel's strategies to systematically steal or 'seize' private Palestinian land and displace Palestinians."