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Prague-based doc specialist Filmotor has picked up the rights for Julien Elie’s “Shifting Baselines,” set to have its world premiere in the international feature competition at leading doc festival Visions du Réel.

“I first encountered the project at VdR-Work in Progress last year and immediately felt the strong urgency to distribute this poetic and creative documentary about the space race and Space X. After the American elections, we felt it even more… It’s crucial that we pay attention not only to the events on our planet but also to what’s happening in space and our orbit,” Filmotor CEO, Michaela Čajková, tells Variety.

Set in the Texan border town of Boca Chica, “Shifting Baselines” examines the transformation of the area due to SpaceX’s Starbase, the rocket launch facility that serves as a primary testing and production ground for Elon Musk’s Starship launch vehicles, which he hopes will take Man to Mars.

Switzerland’s Visions du Réel documentary festival will screen 14 films, 13 of which will be world premieres, as part of its official competition strand at this year’s festival, which runs from April 4-13.

The festival launched its full lineup this morning. The official competition jury will feature Hama Haruka, director of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, American filmmaker Eliza Hittman, and Greek filmmaker Athiná-Rachél Tsangári (Harvest).

Competition titles include Anamocot by French artist Marie Voignier (Na China), Julien Elie (Shifting Baselines), and Little, Big and Far by Jem Cohen (Museum Hours). Scroll down for the full lineup.

As previously announced, Raoul Peck will be the festival’s guest of honor and will receive the Prix d’Honneur on Monday 7 April, with a tribute by IDFA festival director and producer Orwa Nyrabia, before a screening of his latest film Ernest Cole: Lost and Found. He will...

Visions du Réel, one of Europe’s foremost documentary festivals, returns for a 56th edition with its most diverse lineup to date, featuring some 154 films from a record 57 countries.

Spanning the globe, from Mongolia to Australia, Cameroon to Lebanon, the selection underscores the festival’s rising stature as a truly international platform for documentary cinema and a key meeting point for industry professionals.

It features an impressive 88 world premieres by both newcomers and veterans, highlighting the festival’s commitment to discovery and diversity. First-time filmmakers also hold a strong presence, with 58 debut films.

Nearly half of the films are directed by men, with women helming 39%, and the rest credited to non-binary or collective efforts.

“Little, Big and Far”

“We are proud that our selection once again reflects an openness to the world,” said artistic director Emilie Bujès, adding that she was impressed by the record-breaking 3,437 entries.

The International Feature Film Competition will see 14 films,...

The Portuguese festival showcases documentaries from around the world.

The 21st edition of DocLisboa will open with Wang Bing’s Man In Black, and will close with Baan from Portuguese director Leonor Teles.

Man In Black premiered at Cannes and Baan made its debut at Locarno earlier this year.

The festival will take place in Lisbon from October 19-29.

Wang Bing, via videoconference, and Telles both participated in the festival press conference on September 28 at which festival director Miguel Ribeiro revealed this year’s programme in full.

Bing explained his film profiles 86-year-old Wang Xilin, one of China’s most important contemporary classical composers,...

Documentary group Cinema Eye on Thursday unveiled nominations for the 2020 Cinema Eye Honors, with Netflix’s American Factory and Neon’s Apollo 11 leading the way with five nominations each. Netflix tops all distributors with 17 noms, the most ever in a single year.

Winners will be revealed at a ceremony January 6 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.

American Factory, which counts Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground among its executive producers, and Todd Douglas Miller’s deep dive into the 1969 moon mission Apollo 11 were nominated in the marquee Outstanding Nonfiction Feature category. They are joined there by For Sama, the PBS/Frontline Syrian drama from Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watt; Neon’s Honeyland, the Sundance-winning Macedonian beekeeper tale from Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevsk; 1901 Media’s Mexico City ambulance industry pic Midnight Family; and Amazon Studios’ Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize-winning One Child Nation.

Last year,...

The International Documentary Association has announced its shortlist for best feature, a category that includes “Apollo 11,” “American Factory,” “Diego Maradona,” “The Biggest Little Farm,” and the Aretha Franklin concert film “Amazing Grace.”

The 2019 awards will be presented during a ceremony at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Dec. 7. Up to 10 nominees in each of the categories will be selected from the shortlist and announced on Oct. 23, when nominees in all categories are announced. Ida members will have access to nominated films to vote for Best Feature and Best Short starting Nov. 4.

For the first time, the Ida will present an award for best director. Awards will be presented in the following categories: best feature, best short, best curated series, best episodic series, best multi-part documentary, best short form series, best audio documentary, David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award, best music documentary, best director, best cinematography, best editing, best writing,...

The International Documentary Association (Ida) has revealed the 35th Annual Ida Documentary Awards shortlists for the Best Feature and Best Short categories, culled from 785 submissions: 375 documentary features, 153 documentary shorts, 124 documentary series, 89 student films, 44 podcasts, and 48 music documentaries. After winnowing down each list to up to ten nominees to be announced on Wednesday, October 23, online screeners will be accessible for viewing as of November 4, followed by the Ida membership voting.

The 2019 Awards will be presented at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Saturday, December 7. The Ida will bestow awards in 16 categories. This year, the Ida has changed how craft awards are selected: cinematographers, editors, writers and composers will do the honors. And for the first time, the Ida will present an award for Best Director.

The awards categories include Best Feature, Best Short, Best Curated Series, Best Episodic Series, Best Multi-Part Documentary, Best Short Form Series, Best Audio Documentary, David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award,...

The International Documentary Association (Ida) has revealed the 35th Annual Ida Documentary Awards shortlists for the Best Feature and Best Short categories, culled from 785 submissions: 375 documentary features, 153 documentary shorts, 124 documentary series, 89 student films, 44 podcasts, and 48 music documentaries. After winnowing down each list to up to ten nominees to be announced on Wednesday, October 23, online screeners will be accessible for viewing as of November 4, followed by the Ida membership voting.

The 2019 Awards will be presented at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles on Saturday, December 7. The Ida will bestow awards in 16 categories. This year, the Ida has changed how craft awards are selected: cinematographers, editors, writers and composers will do the honors. And for the first time, the Ida will present an award for Best Director.

The awards categories include Best Feature, Best Short, Best Curated Series, Best Episodic Series, Best Multi-Part Documentary, Best Short Form Series, Best Audio Documentary, David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award,...

The Aretha Franklin documentary “Amazing Grace,” the moon-mission chronicle “Apollo 11” and the first film from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company, “American Factory,” have made the short list for the International Documentary Association’s 2019 Ida Documentary Awards, the Ida announced on Thursday.

The announcement narrows the field to 30 feature films and 21 shorts that will move on to a second round of voting.

The IDA’s short list of 30 feature films contains 10 films that were on Doc NYC’s recent 15-film list of the year’s likeliest nonfiction awards contenders: “American Factory,” “The Apollo,” “Apollo 11,” “The Biggest Little Farm,” “The Cave,” “Diego Maradona,” “The Edge of Democracy,” “For Sama,” “Honeyland” and “One Child Nation.”

Additional films on the Ida’s list include “Amazing Grace,...

A Moon For My Father, Dark Suns also among winners.

This year’s Cph:dox festival in Copenhagen has handed out its main prize, the Dox:Award, to John Skoog’s Ridge. The film is an artistic hybrid documentary portrait of the Swedish summer, featuring visual art, abstract fiction and documentary material from Skåne, the country’s southernmost county.

The jury, consisting of producer Katrin Pors, critic and curator Eric Hynes, filmmaker Soudade Kaadan, filmmaker Frederic Tcheng, and Berlinale Panorama programme director Paz Lazaro, also gave a special mention to Pia Hellenthal’s feminist doc Searching Eva about a young woman living in Berlin.

Ai Weiwei film is a companion piece to Human Flow.

Copenhagen-based documentary festival Cph:dox (March 20-31) has revealed its line-up of competition titles for 2019.

Notable world premieres include The Rest, the latest feature from Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. His previous feature, refugee crisis doc Human Flow, premiered at Venice in 2017 and won multiple awards.

The Rest is a parallel work to Human Flow, again focusing on the refugee crisis, but this time in line with the voice and experience of an individual refugee. Edited down from 900 hours of footage, the film depicts those living in political limbo in Europe,...

The organizers of the True/False Film Fest, taking place in Columbia, Missouri, on February 28 to March 3, are announcing their lineup exclusively to IndieWire. The 36 feature films and 18 short films (full list below) were culled from “roughly” 1,100 submissions.

Among the 36 new features, four of the films announced are world premieres. “The Hottest August,” is from director Brett Story and explores the anxieties of a “sweltering” New York City. “Midnight in Paris,” the directorial feature debut from Roni Moore and James Blagden, follows the Flint Northern High School’s senior class of 2012 as the Michigan students prepare for prom. Brazil-based filmmaker Maíra Bühler will screen “Let it Burn,” described as a tender portrait of addicts housed in a converted hotel in São Paulo’s notorious Cracolândia neighborhood. And the fourth T/F world premiere is director Jeffrey Peixoto’s exploration into what attracts members to the Church of Scientology in “Over the Rainbow.