For Marco Spagnoli, Head of Doc & Factual/Deputy Director at MIA, the one sector that has gone stratospheric in terms of public appeal since the pandemic is documentary. Even on the morning we spoke he had seen evidence of this first-hand at the school gate.
“I was taking my daughter to the primary school and there were two fathers that were animatedly discussing a documentary,” he says. “They were talking about Maradona by Asif Kapadia. This was impossible 10 years ago, for a documentary to be so popular to be a discussion at the school gate. What has changed is that now documentaries are everywhere.”
The tenth MIA (Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo, 14-18 October) offers up 14 new international projects (Doc Co-Production Pitching Forum) to the professionals in attendance as well as ten ‘Italians Doc it Better’ projects which are either complete or in post-production.
In the Co-Production Pitching Forum the doc projects hail from 13 countries: Belgium, China, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the USA. Nine of the projects are directed or produced by women, and the majority are premiere pitches. 2024 saw an 8% increase in the number of submissions from 2023.
The themes are diverse, ranging from climate change with films such as Black Carbon – Native Science(Denmark/Germany/Norway/Canada) which tells the story of the work and discoveries of an Inuit scientist on microplastics in the ice of Greenland and other oceans, to social change, as evidenced in The Siege of Paradise (Ireland/Italy/Switzerland), which deals with massive over-tourism. The theme of family is explored in Homesick (Denmark/South Korea), which tells the story of adoption seen through the eyes of those who have been adopted, while the themes of truth and counterfeiting, creations and fakes are reflected in The Naked Reality (Italy/USA), a biopic on Ruggero Deodato, director of extreme and controversial films, and in the series The Discreet Charm of the Forgery. Click here to see the full Documentary Co-Production Pitching Forum selection.
“I believe that if you go to a market, you have to find everything,” Spagnoli says of his selection. “That’s also what I was told by commissioning editors. They love MIA because they can find anything…The pitching forum offers a wide variety of projects, of social and political and cultural stories.”
Likewise, the Italians Doc It Better section offers 10 projects which are either complete or in post-production. These include Michael Braha’s To The End, about the fight for legalised euthanasia in Italy; Achille Lauro: The Terror Cruise, about the 1985 hijack of the Italian cruise ship, and Francesca Mannocchi’s Ukrainian Whispersin which the top war correspondent Mannocchi, with her ability to gain the trust of the local population, seeks to collect and narrate the small stories of survivors. Click here to see the full Italians Doc It Better selection.
Spagnoli stresses that the dimension of Impact is essential, not only when compiling his selection but also as he assesses how the sector has evolved in recent years. “Documentaries change our perception, not only from a world perspective, but also on a personal level – actually I actually became a vegetarian watching documentaries. But my feeling is that somehow documentaries are changing our attitude toward the world since their [increased] popularity, since there are so many documentaries that have an international platform.”
The topic of Impact will be therefore addressed during an October 16 debate during which leading filmmakers, producers, and broadcasters “will share insights into crafting powerful stories that not only inform but inspire action.” Attendees are invited to, “discover the strategies behind creating documentaries with a lasting impact on society, culture, and beyond, from advocacy campaigns to policy shifts.”
Other events include conversations with Manuel Catteau, President and Producer of the French production/distribution company ZED (Oct 14), who will explore the evolution of documentary storytelling, ZED’s award-winning projects, and “the future of factual content in a rapidly changing media landscape”; and with Oscar-winning producer Odessa Rae who, on October 16, will “delve into the transformative power of documentary filmmaking,” drawing from her own experiences in producing Navalny and Hollywoodgate.
Other Talks at MIA will breach the factual/fiction divide, such as the 16 October debate on the current and future impact of Artificial Intelligence on the audiovisual sector, and the October 18 ‘Diverse Talents Wanted’ debate that “aims to identify tools and strategies to broaden access to training and employment opportunities for talents from underrepresented groups, thus ensuring qualified resources that allow for a more authentic and diverse representation of contemporary society.”
Spagnoli stresses that MIA is first and foremost an “audiovisual” market and refuses to draw strict lines of demarcation between the doc and fiction components. In fact, many companies will be in attendance wearing both sector hats, he underlines.
“I prefer to mix up things because I believe in this, and also this is the key of MIA. Companies nowadays, maybe they have two documentaries and two dramas at MIA, or one drama and three documentaries,” he says of the multifaceted presence of some attendees and the need to trim the programme so as to enable full attendance across all pitch and talk events. “Who knows, maybe they won’t be finding money for their [fiction] film, but they finance two of their documentaries or vice versa. They will find money for drama, but not for their documentaries, but still it’s a meeting point.”
What’s more it is a place where new projects start their journey, Spagnoli stresses. “This is why last year we had so many people coming to MIA. It’s different and it’s [particular] because we are more focused on ideas than on finished products.”
MIA | Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo is promoted by ANICA (Italian Association of Film, Audiovisual and Digital Industries) chaired by Francesco Rutelli, and APA (Italian Audiovisual Producers Association) chaired by Chiara Sbarigia, and directed for the third year by Gaia Tridente.
