The 19th edition of Docu Talents from the East, a presentation of top new documentary projects from Central and Eastern Europe, will take place August 13 during the Cinelink Industry Days at Sarajevo FF. The call for submissions is open until May 31.
Eight mid-length or feature-length documentary projects at post-production stage, and with an expected premiere between September 2023 and August 2024, are eligible for submission. Presentations by director/producer teams will be followed by one-to-one meetings with sales agents, festival representatives and other decision-makers accredited at Sarajevo FF.
“For the last 19 years, Docu Talents has served as a launch pad for many documentaries by both renowned and emerging directors from the region. And each year, we discover more and more exceptional documentary projects and daring authors coming from Eastern Europe. We really look forward to this year’s crop,” says Marek Hovorka, director of Ji.hlava IDFF which has curated the programme since 2005.
Countries that are invited to submit projects are: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia (only for projects not supported by the Russian state institutions), Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
One of the selected projects will pick up the DAFilms.com Distribution Award, valued at €3,000 in kind and which entails VOD release on DAFilms.com (including Americas, Europe, Asia) for two years. In 2022 the award was given to Between Revolutions (directed by Romanian director Vlad Petri and produced by Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan) which went on to world-premiere at Berlin Forum 2023.
