Sheffield 25

An affectionate and gently insightful examination of an immigrant story, Karla Murthy’s respectful and thoughtful film charts her father’s journey from India to America, mainly based on a series of recorded interviews with him while he was working the night shift at a Texas gas station. What the doc does quite wonderfully is act as a warm-hearted tribute to an immigrant life and a reflection on the importance of family kindness.

The principles of journalistic integrity and freedom of the press are placed squarely in the frame in Hungarian András Földes and Anna Kis’ urgent new documentary, selected as a Sheffield DocFest Rough Cut. “80 Angry Journalists explores whether a small community with democratic values can survive in an autocratic system, revealing the human cost of defending independent journalism,” producer Loránd Balázs Imre tells Business Doc Europe.

Produced by Elijah Stevens, Humboldt USA interweaves the stories of people in three ‘Humboldt’ place names (in Nevada, Chicago, and California) who are taking unique steps toward tackling environmental concerns in their communities. “These oft-disparate narratives raise the question: in the face of ecological collapse and increasing virtualization of nature, what does it mean to be an environmentalist in America today?” Stevens posits to BDE.

“I think these are good times for documentaries as a genre, I'm very optimistic,” DocFest’s Raul Niño Zambrano tells BDE on the eve of the festival’s 32nd roll-out. “Yes, there is something specific in the current climate - with misinformation, with artificial intelligence, with fake news - but I think we are really playing a key role in shaping the landscape of what the discussions can be about. We are giving something necessary, but also something different.”

In Carina NicHaouchine’s feature work-in-progress, she documents her younger brothers’ coming-of-age over their weekly Dungeons and Dragons sessions. “Watching these kids grow into fully fledged adults over the course of 90 minutes—witnessing all the highs and lows that come with that journey—makes for a really compelling narrative,” UK producer Steven Lake tells BDE.

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.”

Still Pushing Pineapples is described as “a melancholy yet heartfelt look” into the story of Dene Michael, the former singer of UK pop outfit Black Lace. The festival also announced Professor Brian Cox as Guest Speaker. Additionally, award-winning producers Norma Percy & Lucy Hetherington will talk with UK journalist Nina Hossain. The 32nd Sheffield DocFest will run June 18-23.

Directed by Olaide Sadiq and produced by Ahmed Peerbux, Anna Prichard and James Saville, the film world-premiered at the 32nd Sheffield DocFest. Festival Creative Director Raul Niño Zambrano and Managing Director Mimi Poskitt commented: “Grenfell: Uncovered is one of those documentaries that stays with you, it’s courageous, meticulous, and absolutely necessary.”

The song Agadoo was just about as bad as it gets, an opinion that many people also formed about Black Lace, the band that sang it. Frontman Dene Michael Betteridge has probably sung it more than 20,000 times, director Kim Hopkins tells BDE of the group’s willing subject of her touching new doc Still Pushing Pineapples, which opens the 32nd Sheffield DocFest. Would he appear in a warts-and-all account of his life, she asked him at the beginning of the process. Absolutely, was the answer. “I think he has the philosophy that all publicity is good publicity,” Hopkins says.

When he read a newspaper article in 2018 about matchmaking between North Korean refugee women and South Korean men, Norwegian Morten Traavik was immediately fascinated. “[But] being very much of an outsider linguistically, culturally, I needed somebody who could be the bridge to the subject of the film; someone not only bilingual but with a built-in cultural understanding of both worlds,” he explains to BDE as to why he turned to his eventual co-director Sun Kim.