In a few short years, Docs Ireland (running 20-25 June) has established itself as a showcase for Irish and international documentary and as an important pitching hub for new projects and forum for debate.
“We have a great history of documentary in Northern Ireland…For a place that is quite small, we obviously have a lot of stories to tell directly related to our modern history,” Stuart Sloan, Docs Ireland programmer reflects to Business Doc Europe on why the event has grown so quickly. “I think the non-fiction sector is much more mature and sophisticated than other areas of similar sizes. We have a great history of making films that have made it out into the world at the international level.”
Docs Ireland sprang out of the Belfast Film Festival which has been running since late 1990s. The festival had a strong tradition of showing documentary, for example setting up its Maysles Brothers Documentary Competition in 2006. Since 2019, that competition has been part of Docs Ireland. After a pilot programme in 2018, the stand-alone event Docs Ireland split off from the Belfast Festival and launched in earnest in 2019.
Today (23 June) Docs Ireland is hosting a marketplace intended to bring filmmakers and potential funders together. “Just like the MeetMarket in Sheffield or IDFA and Hot Docs, we bring broadcasters, commissioners, distributors and sales agents from all over the world [to Belfast]. They have mostly Irish projects pitched to them.”
Plenty of big names from the European doc world are in town, among them prominent sales agents like Cinephil, Autlook and Met Film Sales, and big-name festival programmers like Mads Mikkelsen – Head of Programme, CPH:DOX and Heather Haynes – Associate Director of Programming (Hot Docs), as well as top broadcasters like BBC and ARTE.
“We are still a young festival running with limited means…we are not trying to be Sheffield. I think Sheffield is brilliant at what they do but we try to make it [the festival] a bit smaller and more intimate and to give people a bit more time,” Sloan explains the informal, relaxed atmosphere of an event at which delegates are encouraged to take longer, more relaxed meetings. “I think people just have really good fun here. That’s my impression talking to industry guests…and we love having them.”
Projects selected for the Northern Ireland Screen Pitch are: And Then We Were directed by Christina Bennett, produced by Bonnie Boyle; Behind The Green Curtain directed by Neasa Ní Chianáin, produced by David Rane; The Sperm King by directors Daire Collins & Mark Napier, produced by Michael Mallie; The Unrest Collective directed by Lia Campbell, produced by Anna Callan; With Their Backs To The Sky directed by Erik Nuding, produced by Kendall Fitzgerald, Angelo Andrianiaina and Keith Wilson.
Certain films that have passed through previous editions of the pitching event have gone on to achieve significant success, for example Simon Chambers’ IDFA winner Much Ado About Dying featured in 2021 (and is screening this year).
Over the weekend, Docs Ireland will be showing the final episode of James Bluemel’s new BBC doc series Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland which has been receiving rave reviews for its nuanced and very moving account of the ‘Troubles’. The filmmakers will also be in town for a Q&A.
As Sloan points out, the team behind the hit series is English. “Sometimes, it takes an outsider to come in…To be honest, I think the best film about Northern Ireland [and the Troubles] is Hunger by Steve McQueen. That’s an insight about what Northern Ireland is like on a human level that perhaps someone from Northern Ireland wouldn’t be able to say or do. I think that maybe it’s the same with this [Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland].”
There will also be a preview of The Secret Army, an extraordinary new documentary made by BBC investigative journalist Darragh MacIntyre which tells the story of a film from the early 1970s that was effectively commissioned in the early 1970s by the IRA. MacIntyre has tracked down the footage from this film.
“It had a composer, so there was a budget. These filmmakers were related to the CIA and Mossad and the story gets more complicated from there,” Sloan notes but won’t divulge more details as the film isn’t yet completed. “We’re showing a few excerpts and the filmmakers Darragh and the director John O’Kane are coming to talk about it. It is dealing with very, very sensitive issues. I think that what is taking them so long is that they are trying to be really careful. Obviously, there are victims associated with the activities of the IRA. It’s important to consider that when we are screening these things. But I think it is really, really important to reassess these stories and process them properly…stories of shared trauma and pain.”
Although Belfast-based, the festival is called Docs Ireland. Sloan makes it clear that the intention is to celebrate documentary across all of Ireland. “We don’t consider there to be a border…we treat filmmakers exactly the same. I think a lot of filmmakers from north and south and funders from north and south love that about us.”
The festival ends on Sunday evening with an encounter between former world boxing champ Carl Frampton and comedian and documentarian Patrick Kielty, who is one of the interviewees in Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland.
“Carl is just an incredibly sharp, smart and clever guy. I think he fits very naturally in the world of documentary. The other things about Carl is that he has a passion for positive change. And Patrick Kielty is exactly the same. They’re both brilliant interviewers. They challenge people in away more mainstream journalists don’t or maybe aren’t able to because of the way our political systems are set up,” Sloan says of the double-act taking centre stage on closing night.
“They’re completely non-sectarian, very positive and progressive people…when you see people like that who are at that top level of fame in Northern Ireland, you have to grab them and celebrate them,’ Sloan ends.
