Business Doc Europe spoke with Francesco Virga and Anna Di Toma of Doc/it ahead of what will be a frenetic IDFA for Italian docs. The country is represented by eight titles in the festival’s official selection, nine Docs for Sale titles, and four Forum projects. Virga and Di Toma focused on the Italian presence, the state of the country’s documentary scene, and Doc/it’s main activities at the Amsterdam-based gathering, among other topics.
“At Doc/it, we’re very pleased to renew our collaboration with the ICE Agency, the Italian Trade Agency, supporting our country’s 13th participation at IDFA,” Di Toma tells BDE. “This year’s Italian delegation consists of 24 participants, including producers, distributors, sales agents, and artistic directors of festivals and training institutes.”
“As usual, the networking event Guests Meet Guests takes place on 16 November, open to all accredited attendees at IDFA. On 17 and 18 November, our delegates will have the opportunity to participate in four roundtables with industry experts, with a dedicated space for our delegates to delve deeper into the realities represented by these experts. We’ll also be present at the various Forum and Docs for Sale activities scheduled during the market’s industry days,” she adds.
The eight titles in the festival’s different strands include Massimo D’Anolfi and Martina Parenti’s Venice-premiered “encyclopaedic doc” Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries, and the two international competition entries: Camilla Iannetti’s debut The Golden Age and Anna Recalde Miranda’s Green is the New Red, co-produced with France, Paraguay, and Sweden.
Eight projects are part of the Docs for Sale initiative – the aforementioned Bestiaries, Herbaria, Lapidaries, Maurizio Sciarra’s Let Him Free, Simona Risi’s Picasso. A Rebel in Paris, and Francisco Grimaldi’s The Home of Champions, among others.
The Italian presence is rounded off by four Forum projects: Enrico Parenti’s Nanyang, Viesturs Kairišs’ Emptiness (led by Latvia and co-produced with Germany and Romania), Fabrizio Albertini’s As Red as Water, and Kamal Al Azraq and Francesca Tosarelli’s The West Bank Project, all slated for release in 2026 and 2027.
Some of the industry players in attendance include Indyca, Nanof, B&B Film, Mammut Film, Biografilm Festival, and the Zelig School for Documentary.
Francesco Virga highlights that “from a creative standpoint, Italian documentary filmmaking is in excellent health, with a wealth of new talent and fresh voices constantly emerging.”
“What is most challenging is the production context, which is suffering from a significant contraction in demand and the uncertainty surrounding the ongoing transformations of the public funding system, which, in some ways, mainly penalises small production companies—the backbone of the documentary sector,” he explains.
“Additionally, Italian documentary filmmaking continues to suffer from the lack of a clear and adequately funded policy from RAI, the Italian public broadcaster, which, in its latest programme document, the ‘service contract’ [known in Italy as contratto di servizio], barely mentions it. This affects not only the quantity of works produced but also, to some extent, their quality,” he warns, adding that the long-standing absence of public TV has also led to the weakness of ‘genre’ production. TV documentaries have been more successful in engaging a broader audience on important topics and attracting more international interest.
“The new direction of Rai Documentaries, with its insufficient resources, cannot alone make up for this historical delay, although it is very active,” he adds.
On the other hand, he argues that the Italian audience’s attention to the documentary form has been reignited. “Pay-TV platforms, first, and now streaming services, have played a crucial role in attracting large audiences who had forgotten about the existence of documentaries over the years,” he says.
“These players have also enabled greater freedom in the themes covered, with new formats like series. However, it must be said that there is currently some creative fatigue and an excessive demand from OTTs for standardised languages, which flattens many proposals, even interesting ones. The content is also becoming more polarised into a few genres, with an increasing focus on entertainment—crime, pop culture, and sports, in particular. And this is fine, but is there really no space for other topics?”
Speaking of docs aimed at the big screen, the situation is more complex, further aggravated by the tense climate between the government and filmmakers and the widely criticised new Cinema Law, he said.
“Here, production companies and authors have been able to find an exceptional partner in Rai Cinema over the years, which, starting in the early 2000s, helped the rise of at least two generations of authors and filmmakers—the female directors, in particular, are the true strength of the ‘new Italian documentary.’ Regardless of the opinions on Rai Cinema’s modus operandi, which is not without criticism, credit must be given for filling the void left by Rai TV and investing in an organic path for creative documentary, with often surprising results.”
However, theatrical distribution remains highly problematic. “While some ‘mainstream’ documentaries, such as Ennio by Giuseppe Tornatore, have performed exceptionally at the box office, average takings are still very low. However, a fairly widespread network of cinemas is now programming documentaries regularly, creating a loyal niche audience, including younger viewers. Even so, greater attention from the Ministry of Culture to the documentary distribution chain would be greatly appreciated.”
Therefore, uncertainty still prevails. “Although it’s too early to tell, we believe that [the new Cinema Law] will result in fewer works produced, especially those that are more independent and low-budget, which allow young talent and fresh topics to emerge. The reform process for the sector is very difficult, and the Ministry of Culture has taken a rather contradictory stance towards documentaries.”
“On the one hand, we must recognise a positive will to ‘safeguard’ documentaries, which has objectively led to the creation of less stringent criteria for public funding access for docs. On the other hand, the overall structure of the new rules presents a significant obstacle, particularly for small businesses—and most documentary producers are small—meaning that part of that ‘safeguard’ we mentioned earlier is undermined,” Virga further explains.
Virga states that there are more selective funds with larger allocations, including one dedicated exclusively to documentaries. However, he fears that, when comparing the old and new tax credit rules, there will be a significant reduction in public resources. This is compounded by the overall contraction of the Italian market, with broadcasters and OTT platforms cutting back on investments in documentaries.
He acknowledges that despite these challenges, the industry’s recent growth has produced high-quality creative and professional talent, benefiting the entire Italian audiovisual sector.
“Now, the challenge is to ensure that these positive forces are not wasted,” he concludes.
