On May 11 DocsBarcelona presented the awards of its 27th edition. Organisers point out that this year the festival attracted a provisional balance of 7,000 spectators at its venues (the CCCB and the Renoir Floridablanca Cinemas), a near 60% hike on the 4,400 figure of 2023, and an increase in the daily average from 360 to 600 spectators. Filmin, the festivalonline window, will remain open for the next two weeks.
“Offering looks at colonial pasts, women fighters, the dangers of the digital world or affective networks beyond romantic love, the festival has sold out ten sessions of its programme. It has also brought some fifty filmmakers to the Catalan capital, including John Wilson, Viktor Kossakovsky, Raymond Depardon, Claudine Nougaret and Albert Serra. The festival has counted on the point of view, often silenced, of twenty-three women directors, thirty-eight racialised filmmakers and nine filmmakers who are part of the LGBTIQ+ community,” DocsBarcelona writes.
Artistic Director Anna Petrus comments: “In this 27th edition, we increased by 60% the number of spectators in the cinemas, which reinforces not only the interest of Barcelona’s audiences in documentaries but also the local and international creative effervescence of filmmakers who work with reality. The success of this year’s edition is also to be found in the renewal of the festival’s structure, which has managed to bring together the major issues of concern to creators all over the world. The juries have captured this sensitivity by awarding films with a clear commitment to a decolonial perspective and the empowerment of women.”
Likewise, the professional market has also grown, organisers add, with the presentation of fifty-two projects, 65% of them directed or co-directed by women, and the registration of more than seven hundred professionals from sixty countries, 20% more than 2023.
Èric Motjer, Director of DocsBarcelona Industry, comments: “We close a 27th edition of the DocsBarcelona professional market with record figures in attendance, international representation and impact on the industry, but above all convinced that we are already a point of reference in the professional world of non-fiction in southern Europe. We are not only a meeting place for the local and international industry, but also a market with a forward-looking perspective and critical analysis, covering the multiple forms that the documentary genre is taking.”
“In this way, DocsBarcelona reaches 10,000 attendees in 2024: 7,000 spectators in the cinemas, 700 professionals at its market and 2,300 attendees at its parallel activities,” the festival writes.
THE DOCS&PEARLS AND DOCS&CAT SECTION AWARDS
The international jury of the Docs&Pearls Official Selection, made up of Elvira Dyangani Ose, Silvia Albert Sopale, Hugo Jinseok Kang, Efthymia Zymvragaki and Petrula Veljanovska, awarded the Docs Award toLaura Plancarte for Mexican Dream. Citation: “Hybridising fiction and documentary, the Mexican filmmaker revisits the stereotype of the self-sacrificing Latin American woman, a traditional sufferer of macho violence, through the life of Male, a woman who, like so many in Mexico, leaves her place of origin after leaving a violent relationship to work in other people’s houses and to build, in dribs and drabs, a heritage to offer her children and in which to shelter herself. The result is an ode to new principles, support networks and self-respect that crowns the DocsBarcelona 2024 list of winners.”
Our Land, Our Freedom by Meena Nanji and Zippy Kimundu received a Docs&Pearls Special Mention from the jury and also the Amnistía International Catalunya Award, dedicated to documentaries in the Official Selection that, due to their subject matter, are involved in the defence of human rights. Citation: “With this portrait of Wanjugu Kimathi, daughter of Dedan Kimathi, legendary leader of the Mau Mau revolts executed by the British in 1957, the directors fuel the debate on the British colonial past, the ownership of land never returned to its owners after Kenyan independence and the genocide of the Mau Mau people.”
The jury of the new Docs&Cat section, made up of Chiara Boschiero, Pau Faus and Sarah Lauzemis, awarded the prize for Best Catalan Film, sponsored by La Xarxa Audiovisual Local (XAL), to the documentary Casa Reynal, by Laia Manresa (Morir de dia), about family transition and the legacy of its memory.
Una estrella fugaz, by Arturo Méndiz and Ignasi Guerrero, which focuses on perinatal grief from the father’s point of view, received a Docs&Cat Special Mention from the jury, as well as the Audience Award, sponsored by Moritz.
The New Talent Docs – Filmin, for debut directors in the Official Panorama Section, went to Daughter of Genghis by Danish filmmakers and photojournalists Kristoffer Juel Poulsen and Christian Als. The documentary’s protagonist, Gerel Byamba, leads a violent feminist gang fighting against Chinese colonialism and foreign exploitation in Ulaanbaatar.
The Antaviana Jury Docs, sponsored by Antaviana Films, awarded the Catalan production Hágase tu voluntad, in which the filmmaker Adrián Silvestre becomes the protagonist, explaining his reunion, after more than twenty years without speaking, with his father, a man who demands the right to die with dignity.
YOUNG JURIES
DocsBarcelona dedicates its Doc-U section to the work of higher education centres from all over Spain. Its official jury, made up of Mariona Borrull, Moha Amazian and Claudia Solano, awarded the Doc-U 16nou to the short film Still, Life, by Priya Woods. The Doc Around Europe Award, for international short documentaries participating in this university section, went to Nos Îles, by Aliha Thalien.
Pelikan Blue by László Csáki, won the DocsBarcelona – Reteena Youth Jury Prize, awarded by young people aged 16 to 21, and Artificial Immortality by Ann Shin won the Docs&Teens Prize, awarded by the students of ESO and Bachillerato of DocsBarcelona.
The 27th edition of DocsBarcelona also paid tribute to the revered pair of French filmmakers Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret, who received this year’s Docs d’Honor Award at the opening ceremony of the event.
