News

“Kids and sweet love are the most important thing. And not all this stuff – trenches and war. But if we’re not here there won’t be any kids or sweet love,” a grizzled Ukrainian special forces commander tells one of his charges, a fellow soldier fighting alongside him on the frontline of a seemingly never-ending war. It’s a heartfelt scene made all the more poignant by the identity of the comrade with a camera he’s addressing, a mother named Alisa Kovalenko whose young son Théo has been evacuated to France (along with the filmmaker’s mother and French partner). My Dear […]

The post “Most of Us Went to the Front for the Sake of our Children’s Future”: Alisa Kovalenko on her Cph:Dox-debuting My Dear Théo first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“Kids and sweet love are the most important thing. And not all this stuff – trenches and war. But if we’re not here there won’t be any kids or sweet love,” a grizzled Ukrainian special forces commander tells one of his charges, a fellow soldier fighting alongside him on the frontline of a seemingly never-ending war. It’s a heartfelt scene made all the more poignant by the identity of the comrade with a camera he’s addressing, a mother named Alisa Kovalenko whose young son Théo has been evacuated to France (along with the filmmaker’s mother and French partner). My Dear […]

The post “Most of Us Went to the Front for the Sake of our Children’s Future”: Alisa Kovalenko on her Cph:Dox-debuting My Dear Théo first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In “My Dear Théo,” Alisa Kovalenko presents an unforgettable, searing, tender chronicle of the months she served on the frontline in Ukraine. We begin with February 2022, when she joins the volunteer army as the Russian occupation tightens its grip. Her son, Théo, goes to France where her husband has family. Kovalenko stays behind, fighting for her beleaguered country. For her, the war erupted much earlier, dating to 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. Now, she feels particularly beholden that she must do her bit, not retreat and scamper off as the aggressor would want.

Kovalenko keeps a memory diary, recording the events of the day for herself, her son as well as history’s sake. She maintains she can shoot only when circumstances are relatively less tense, seemingly less precarious and there’s some semblance of fleeting stability. It’s a one-way correspondence with her wondering if her son would like it...

Ukrainian documentary maker Alisa Kovalenko (Alisa in Warland, Home Games, We Will Not Fade Away) is a mother, filmmaker, and soldier. When Russia invaded Ukraine in the spring of 2022, she enlisted to defend her country, leaving her husband, French author and producer Stéphane Siohan, and 5-year-old son behind. Her film My Dear Théo, world premiering on March 23 at Cph:dox, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, is structured as a series of letters sent to her young son Théo from the frontline.

The letters revolve around topics such as war, love, and the most difficult choices in life. A logline describes the film as “a testament to the power of love in times of war – balancing frontline routines, the horrors of the battlefield, and tender, poetic letters” to her little son.

“Through Alisa’s camera, we experience the harsh reality of the Ukrainian frontline, from the quiet moments of reflection and camaraderie,...

Cph:dox, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, has unveiled the 12 docs screening in its main competition, all world premieres, along with the movies in its various other sections and a focus on human rights for its 2025 edition. One recurring theme is also the relationship of humans with animals, or “other animals.”

Overall, the program includes more than 200 films, 94 of them world premieres, 68 of them feature-length. The fest’s theme “Right Here, Right Now.”

Topics covered by competition films include a 12-year-old boy defying his parents’ alcohol abuse (in Monica Strømdahl’s Flophouse America), a Chinese boy discovering the power of poetry (Deming Chen’s Always), Jens Stoltenberg’s last year as Secretary General of NATO (Tommy Gulliksen‘s Facing War), and a mother, soldier and filmmaker documenting her thoughts from the Ukrainian frontline (Alisa Kovalenko’s My Dear Theo).

Out-of-competition world premieres include Ai Weiwei’s Animality, which explores “our relationship with animals,...

Animality, the latest screen work from Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, is among the titles that will world premiere at this year’s Cph:dox in Copenhagen.

The festival, which runs March 19-30, released its 2025 competition lineups this morning. Across its six categories, the festival will feature 94 world premieres. The theme of this year’s festival is “human rights and the rules-based international order.”

World premieres include films about Israel and Palestine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rise of the far-right across Europe, identity politics, art, and activism. High-profile visitors set for the festival include Ai Weiwei, Ukrainian feminist activist Inna Shevchenko, investigative journalist and whistleblower Christo Grozev, musician Warren Ellis, comedian Jerrod Carmichael, and Adam Kinzinger.

Main competition titles include Alisa Kovalenko’s My Dear Theo, Thomas Balmés’ À demain sur la Lune, Artur Franck’s The Helsinki Effect, and this year’s opening film Facing War by Tommy Gulliksen.

Shot in 2019, Alisa Kovalenko’s moving film follows the friends after they win a competition to travel to the Himalayas

Before Russia’s invasion in 2022, the eastern region of Donbas in Ukraine had already experienced some of the bloodshed that was soon to come on a much larger scale. Shot in 2019, Alisa Kovalenko’s moving documentary captures the restlessness and dread that hung over the small towns in then Ukrainian-controlled territory. At the same time, despite the misery of war, a group of friends dare to dream of faraway horizons.

All in their late teens, Andriy, Ruslan, Ilya, Lisa and Lera win a competition to travel to the Himalayas. The exciting prospect of the trek, with the promise of majestic vistas and new encounters, starkly contrasts with their everyday reality where the sounds of bombs and gunshots are so commonplace that they barely warrant a reaction. At one point, the...

When Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on this day three years ago, filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko bid farewell to her partner and four-year-old son and joined the Ukrainian Volunteer Army.

As she traded her camera for a rifle, she couldn’t leave behind her instinct to document. What emerged is “My Dear Theo,” a poignant video diary for her son, set to premiere in the main competition at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Festival (Cph:dox) in March.

Kovalenko filmed her fellow soldiers during moments of camaraderie and reprieve, including conversations with their children, offering an intimate and rarely seen portrait from the frontline. As time passed, she also filmed her own calls with her son, who had taken refuge in France with his father.

“I still believe that documentary cinema is a key to the heart,” she tells Variety in an exclusive interview. “You can feel connected and you can feel empathy.

Toronto-based genre specialist Raven Banner arrives in Berlin with a sales line-up led by the Irish-language Galway Film Fleadh and FrightFest horror An Taibhse (Ghost).

Raven Banner has boarded worldwide rights to the story set against the backdrop of the Great Famine in the mid-19th century. When a man and his daughter take up caretaker roles at an isolated mansion, their hopes of a tranquil assignment are shattered when a malevolent force awakens within the building’s walls.

John Farrelly directed and Jim Sheridan served as executive producer.Raven Banner brokered the deal with John Moss and Juan Pablo Reinoso...

Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival has selected 71 films for its competition sections, including 56 world premieres, 12 international premieres and three European premieres.

World premieres for the festival’s 22nd edition include Ukrainian director Alisa Kovalenko’s My Dear Theo. Few details have been revealed for the film yet; Theo is the name of Kovalenko’s son. The film will be produced by Kasia Kuczynska of Poland’s Haka Films, with Ukrainian production company Moonman Productions, the company behind recent festival titles Songs Of Slow Burning Earth and A House Made Of Splinters.

Scroll down for the full list of competition titles...

Documentary festival Cph:dox has unveiled the titles in its competition sections, which include 71 films. There are 56 world premieres, 12 international premieres, and three European premieres. The festival runs March 19-30.

Niklas Engstrøm, artistic director of Cph:dox, said: “The times we live in are increasingly marked by conflict, chaos, and cynicism, leaving little room for the visionary or the poetic. Against that backdrop, we are proud to present a competition program that not only reflects the world but also refracts its light like a prism. Whether set in Ukraine, Mozambique, America, or China, the nominated films in this year’s program stand as a defense of the role of poetry and art in the world.”

Mads K. Mikkelsen, head of program of Cph:dox, said the competition lineup “truly represents documentary as an art form made for the cinema.” He added: “Cph:dox is about celebrating documentaries and the people who make them, and...

Romanian director Raisa Razmerita’s Electing Miss Santa pitched in the Docu Rough Cut Boutique strand of CineLink, the industry platform of the Sarajevo Film Festival, was one of the stand-out projects of this year’s event, according to international attendees.

The film follows Elena, a struggling farmer in a Moldovan village who decides to run for mayor.

“I can’t remember the last time a marketplace presented such a compelling protagonist as Elena Santa,” said Polly Haythornthwaite, digital coordinator at the UK’s Java Films. “The film’s unique perspective comes not just from its focus on a rural village in Moldova,...

Across more than two decades as the parallel arm of the Sarajevo Film Festival, CineLink Industry Days has grown into the leading film and TV industry event in the Balkan region, an incubator of talent from Southeast Europe — and, increasingly, beyond — and a crucial stop for globetrotting industry executives looking to discover fresh cinematic voices.

The mid-summer event, which this year takes place Aug. 17 – 22, traditionally comes on the heels of the Locarno Film Festival and wraps in the run-up to Venice and Toronto, occupying a perhaps fitting slot in the calendar. “Not too big, but not small at all,” is how Maša Marković, now in her third year as the festival’s head of industry, characterizes it. As a result, Sarajevo “manages to create this sense of being the place to be.”

Marković credits the event’s “curatorial approach” for ensuring that both the selection of projects for its influential...

Nine feature-length projects in the CineLink Work in Progress selection of Sarajevo Film Festival include the new feature from Ukrainian filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko.

Kovalenko will present Frontline, a documentary filmed during her four-month stint in the Ukrainian army following the increased Russian invasion in February 2022.

Scroll down for the full list of Work in Progress projects

The project has previously participated in Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival’s Inspiration Forum, and the IDFA Forum, both in 2022.

It is produced by Kasia Kuczynska for Poland’s Haka Films, with Monica Hellstrom of Strom Pictures as co-producer.

Kovalenko has previously directed...

“Songs of Slow Burning Earth,” the sophomore feature by Ukrainian director Olha Zhurba, has been acquired by Prague-based sales outlet Filmotor ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The documentary will screen Out of Competition in the Official Selection.

The film is described as an “audiovisual diary of Ukraine’s immersion into the abyss of the first two years of Russia’s full invasion,” according to a statement. “[It] is made up of places, occasional characters, rare dialogues, intraframe sounds and silences that capture the chronology of how the war became normalized. Against the backdrop of this (meta)physical landscape of collective disaster, a new generation of Ukrainians aspires to imagine the future.”

Filmotor’s Michaela Čajková comments: “I was immediately taken with the film and with its well-built long cinematic scenes. It is a visually stunning piece of cinema that offers a sublime look at the full-scale invasion,...

Ukrainian filmmakers and producers, including Mstyslav Chernov, the Oscar-winning director of 20 Days In Mariupol, are attending Cannes in significant numbers despite the ongoing war in Ukraine following the Russian invasion.

Against heavy odds, fictional films are being made in Ukraine. Evgeniy Drachov, head of Film.UA Distribution, is in Cannes pre-selling two new genre features: supernatural horror The Witch Revenge and thriller The Dam. Despite the war, the company is still trying to make “entertaining content” that will attract international buyers.

Alisa Kovalenko is presenting footage of her documentary project Frontline, about her experiences in the armed forces after the Russian invasion,...

In parts of the Balkans, a remarkable tradition exists: women known as Burrneshas take on societal roles typically confined to men. They assume the physical appearance of men, adopt men’s names or nicknames, and operate with a freedom and power denied women in patriarchal cultures.

The documentary House with a Voice examines this exceptional cultural practice that has existed for centuries in parts of Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro. The film directed by Kristine Nrecaj and Birthe Templin holds its world premiere at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece on Friday – fittingly, International Women’s Day, a day highlighting issues of gender equality and patriarchy.

‘House with a Voice’

A synopsis of the film explains, “This unique societal phenomenon sees these women changing their gender socially by cutting their hair, donning male attire, adopting masculine names, and integrating themselves into male-dominated spaces.

“The unconventional practice of taking on male roles serves various purposes,...

As the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival embarks on its second quarter-century, with its 26th edition kicking off March 7, the event’s industry arm continues to look for ways to reinvent itself. “We are educating ourselves. We are asking the local and the regional industries and communities, ‘What do you need from us?’” says Angeliki Vergou, who heads the Agora industry program. “I believe in this open dialogue…with our colleagues about the challenges they face and we face [as we] try to figure it out together.”

A perennial highlight of the industry program is the Agora’s co-production and co-financing forum, which takes place March 11 and will present 12 projects in development by documentary filmmakers from Southeastern Europe, the Middle East and the Black Sea region. Another highlight, Agora Docs in Progress, held March 12, showcases 11 films nearing completion and ready to hit the festival circuit this year.

Recent titles to take part in the...

The nonprofit Chicken & Egg Pictures has announced the eight recipients of its Chicken & Egg Awards for 2024. From the press release: Chicken & Egg Pictures, the organization dedicated to offering support and funding for women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers, has announced more than $600,000 in new grants to eight recipients of its 2024 Chicken & Egg Award, with each receiving a $75,000 grant–a $50,000 unrestricted career grant and $25,000 to be applied to a project the filmmaker will work on during their award year. The recipients are Alisa Kovalenko, Beth Aala, Jumana Manna, Katy Lena Ndiaye, Nailah Jefferson, […]

The post Chicken & Egg Announces Eight 2024 Chicken & Egg Awards Recipients first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The nonprofit Chicken & Egg Pictures has announced the eight recipients of its Chicken & Egg Awards for 2024. From the press release: Chicken & Egg Pictures, the organization dedicated to offering support and funding for women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers, has announced more than $600,000 in new grants to eight recipients of its 2024 Chicken & Egg Award, with each receiving a $75,000 grant–a $50,000 unrestricted career grant and $25,000 to be applied to a project the filmmaker will work on during their award year. The recipients are Alisa Kovalenko, Beth Aala, Jumana Manna, Katy Lena Ndiaye, Nailah Jefferson, […]

The post Chicken & Egg Announces Eight 2024 Chicken & Egg Awards Recipients first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The letter said: “To continue providing space for representatives of the Russian cultural sector on international platforms means to normalize the unequal circumstances in which filmmakers in Russia and Ukraine live and work today.”

International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has responded to an open letter published by DocuDays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival this week, that criticised the decision by IDFA to programme films “made in Russia and by Russian authors.”

The letter refers to the selection of Russian director Ilya Povolotsky’s Mud, a world premiere in the Envision programme at this year’s festival. The synopsis...

Directed by D.W.Young, ’Uncropped’ rediscovers the work of a New York photographer billed as one of the great chroniclers of the cultural history of America

Vienna-based Autlook Filmsales has acquired world rights, excluding the US and Canada, for the feature-length documentary Uncropped, exec produced by Wes Anderson, in advance of the film receiving its world premiere as the Centerpiece presentation of the Doc NYC festival on November 11.

Directed by D.W. Young, whose credits includeThe Booksellers, the film rediscovers the work of James Hamilton, one of the great chroniclers of the cultural history of the US. Working as a...

Current ticket holders from cancelled November show are eligible to attend.

Helen Mirren will receive the 37th American Cinematheque Award at the rescheduled American Cinematheque Awards on February 15, 2024.

The awards were postponed from their original November 4 date due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

Previous American Cinematheque Award honourees include Scarlett Johannsson, Ryan Reynolds, Ridley Scott, Charlize Theron, and Bradley Cooper.

Current ticket holders are eligible to attend the American Cinematheque Awards on February 15, 2024.

American Cinematheque Awards is an annual fundraiser for its classic, international, and independent film programmes at the Los Feliz 3 Theatre in Los Angeles, the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood,...

Kyiv-based Kovalenko already has two films playing at IDFA film, ’Girl Away From Home’ and ’We Will Not Fade Away’

Ukrainian filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko, whose new film Girl Away From Home (co-directed with Oscar nominated Simon Lereng Wilmont) world premieres at IDFA this week, has revealed further details of her two new projects.

Kovalenko is already at work on what promises to be a harrowing film about Ukrainian women who survived captivity, torture and sexual violence at the hands of Russians from 2014 onward.

“It is a very heavy topic. There are six women…it’s a psychological multi-portrait. All the...

$35,000 prize for US and international winners.

The Academy has selected Erica Eng and July Jung as its 2023 Academy Gold Fellowship For Women recipients.

The fellowship is part of the Academy Gold global talent development and inclusion initiative and offers a one-year programme offering direct support, mentorship and access to top-level networking opportunities for emerging women filmmakers to further their careers.

Two fellowships are awards each year with a $35,000 prize for each category.

Eng and Jung will Fellows also get career advancement support through the Gold Alumni Program providing provides continued access, opportunity, professional development and education for alumni of Academy Gold programmes including Gold Rising,...

Selection includes Nicolas Philibert’s Golden Bear winner ‘On The Adamant’.

The 14 feature documentaries in the running for the 2023 European Film Awards (EFAs) have been announced.

Scroll down for full list of titles

They include Nicolas Philibert’s On The Adamant, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in February. The film follows the daily lives of patients and caregivers at a central Paris psychiatric centre, which has a unique structure floating in the Seine river. French filmmaker Philibert previously won the best European documentary prize at the EFAs in 2002 with To Be And To Have (Être Et Avoir...

Submissions to the competition sections up 23% for this year’s festival.

Sudabeh Mortezai’s Europa is one of 10 feature world premieres set to screen in competition at the Sarajevo Film Festival next month (August 11-18).

Europa is the fifth feature from Austrian-Iranian filmmaker Mortezai, and follows an ambitious executive working at a mysterious corporation looking to expand into the Balkans. Mortezai’s previous feature Joy debuted at Venice in 2018; while her 2014 title Macondo premiered at the Berlinale.

Five of the 10 titles in the feature film competition are directed by women. Also having its world premiere in the feature film competition...

Last year, during an online panel at Hot Docs film festival featuring Ukrainian documentary filmmakers who were staying in place, Oksana Karpovych told attendees how she’d gained knowledge working alongside foreign media crews covering the war, and was now applying that to her own creative documentary projects.

This year, at the festival’s 30th anniversary edition, Karpovych attended the in-person Forum market event to pitch “Intercepted” — her observational doc exploring the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — which ended up winning the 2023 Cmf-Hot Docs Canadian Pitch Prize.

With Ukraine in the spotlight at Hot Docs this year, both audiences and industry attendees are getting wide exposure to the films and ideas of leading Ukrainian documentary creators. The timing of this programming is perfect, said Hot Docs programmer Myrocia Watamaniuk, not only for the obvious reason.

“Ukrainian documentary cinema has grown in lockstep with the documentary community around the world,...

Following the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Cph:dox documentary film festival in Copenhagen has shown its support for and solidarity with the Ukrainian film industry via a new cash-prize and two industry events.

A special Eurimages Development Award will go to one of the Ukrainian projects selected to participate in the Cph:forum, the financing and co-production event held during Cph:dox. The selected project will come with a cash-prize of €20,000 provided by the Council of Europe’s Eurimages Fund. The new prize is an addition to the long-standing Eurimages Co-Production Development Award of €20,000 for the best pitch, that will be awarded for the tenth year running.

Of the 34 projects selected for the Cph:forum, four Ukrainian productions or co-productions are eligible for the new prize: “Bit of a Stranger,” “Cuba & Alaska,” “Memo ’94” and “Red Zone.”

Niklas Engstrøm, artistic director of Cph:dox, said: “We see our festival as an agora...

Ukrainian director Alisa Kovalenko remembers exactly where she was when the Russian invasion started.

The award-winning documentary filmmaker (“Alisa in Warland”) was on her way to Eastern Ukraine, where she had spent the previous three years filming her latest feature, “We Will Not Fade Away,” which premieres Feb. 22 in the Generation 14plus section at the Berlin Film Festival.

Fighting in the Donbas region’s long-running conflict had intensified, and she had hoped to help evacuate the protagonists of the film, which follows five teenagers in the war-torn region struggling to live normal teenage lives.

Somewhere in the pre-dawn hours, as her train trundled through Eastern Ukraine, Kovalenko got a call from Kyiv. “The Russian rockets are already falling,” her mother said to her. By the time the director reached Donbas, the full-scale war had begun.

Kovalenko, whose previous documentary features have played at IDFA and Sheffield Doc/Fest, had a hopeful...

Danger Zone

Director: Vita Maria Drygas

Producer: Vita Żelakeviciute

Production companies: Drygas Film Production

Sales: Dogwoof

Documentary is a journey to places devastated by military conflicts, seen through the eyes of thrill-seeking tourists.

Delegation

(Generation 14plus)

Director: Asaf Saban

Cast: Yoav Bavly, Neomi Harari, Leib Lev Levin, Ezra Dagan, Alma Dishy

Producers: Agnieszka Dziedzic, Yoav Roeh, Aurit Zamir, Roshanak Behesht Nedjad

Production companies: Koi Studio, Gum Films, In Good Co.

Sales: New Europe Film Sales

Three Israeli friends visit Holocaust sites in Poland before their stints in the army, and deal with love, friendship and politics.

Disco Boy

(Competition)

Director: Giacomo Abbruzzese

Cast: Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laëtitia Ky, Leon Lučev

Producers: Lionel Massol, Pauline Seigland

Production companies: Films Grand Huit, Dugong Films, Panache Productions, La Compagnie Cinématographique, Donten & Lacroix, Division

Sales: Charades

Aleksei reaches Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion, which allows any foreigner, even undocumented, to be granted a French passport.

The Polish film industry is embracing variety and high-profile international collaborations, with a slew of new co-productions already generating buzz among buyers and festival programmers. “More and more established filmmakers, who used to look for collaborators in Romania or Hungary, are now coming to Poland — mostly because we are backed by concrete institutions and because there is money,” says producer Klaudia Śmieja-Rostworowska of Madants, heading to Berlinale’s European Film Market with “Ultima Thule” and Goran Stolevski’s “Housekeeping for Beginners.”

“Our crews speak English and work abroad. We are visible internationally,” she adds.

Madants is also behind James Napier Robertson’s upcoming Polish-Kiwi title “Joika,” one of six international co-productions backed by the Polish Film Institute in 2022. The shingle’s slate includes Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s “Let Me Out” and Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s follow-up to “The Silent Twins,” “Hot Spot.”

“Foreign producers and buyers are actively looking...

There’s been no shortage of moral support for the Ukrainian cause since Russia’s unprovoked invasion last year, and the country’s beleaguered screen industry has gotten a much-needed boost from foreign buyers. Ukrainian documentaries are doing brisk business as global audiences search for broader context on the conflict, while even narrative features that hit the festival circuit last year are finding a home with specialty distributors.

As the war drags into its second year, however, the Ukrainian industry is at an inflection point. Russia’s relentless attacks on critical infrastructure continue to wreak havoc on the country’s power grid and force film crews to work under constant threat. The theatrical market has collapsed, broadcasters and streaming platforms are virtually bankrupt, and public money that might have once bolstered film and TV production is being diverted to the war effort instead.

There is an awareness, too, among Ukrainian...

The Berlin Film Festival, held every year in February, the cruelest month of the German winter, has never been able to match the Mediterranean flair of Cannes or Venice, or the laid-back indie cool of Sundance. But when it comes to serious movies, few festivals, big or small, can match the Berlinale.

In place of the big blockbuster movies, Berlin has doubled down on political dramas and documentaries that focus on the real troubles of the world. The war in Ukraine — launched by Russia’s invasion a year ago — will be on screens everywhere this Berlinale. Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufmann’s documentary Superpower, shot just before and after Russia’s invasion, and featuring several interviews with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, will have its world premiere in Berlin’s Special Screening section and there are three more Ukraine documentaries — Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies, Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko’s doc Eastern Front,...

The Berlin Film Festival’s youth-focused sidebar Generation 14plus is set to open with “When Will It Be Again Like It Never Was Before,” the anticipated next film of Sonja Heiss and und Zeevonk von Domien Huyghe.

Based on Joachim Meyerhoff’s eponymous novel, “When Will It Be Again Like It Never Was Before” tells the comedic and moving story of a childhood and youth spent on the grounds of a psychiatric clinic.

Meanwhile, Domien Huyghe’s moving film “Sea Sparkle” will kick off the Generation Kplus competition. The film follows 12-year-old Lena who relentlessly battles with the tides of her grief after the death of her father, which she blames on a sea monster.

The Generation selection pans 25 feature-length and 31 short films, including 40 world premieres. The Berlinale team said this year’s lineup will invite audiences on an “exploration of young perceptions of the world.”

“The films in this...

Heading into its 30th year, the IDFA Forum continues to be a key market for nonfiction professionals to not only gain interest for a project and raise funds, but also a space to network and get feedback.

Taking place over five days in the middle of the 35th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the Forum will include 60 titles across its four sections: IDFA Pitch, Producers Connection, DocLab and the Forum’s rough-cut section.

From intimate presentations to public pitches and cinema screenings of documentaries nearing completion – the Forum is a unique opportunity for filmmakers, producers, funders and distributors to interact and ideally form partnerships around projects in various stages of development and production.

The access to key gatekeepers in the docu arena makes admission into the Forum fiercely competitive. This year the festival looked at more than 800 submissions from across the globe. But, according to IDFA industry head Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen,...

Ukrainian director Alisa Kovalenko unveiled first-look footage of upcoming documentary “Frontline” at Ji.hlava Film Festival’s Inspiration Forum.

Filmed during her four-month stint in the Ukrainian army, it will be “slow and reflective,” focusing on brief moments of calm in-between chaos.

“I was filming only when there was nothing to do,” she said.

When the war broke out, Kovalenko didn’t have “the strength” to be a director, determined to focus on being a soldier. But she still took the camera with her, even though it literally put additional weight on her shoulders.

“I hated this camera at times. It was heavy, but it was my responsibility to carry it. I couldn’t take out my grenades,” she said.

“Frontline”

At first, she wasn’t thinking about making a film. But when her military base was bombed and a close friend died, Kovalenko came back home and took another look at the footage.

New work from filmmakers Maite Alberdi (“The Mole Agent”), Filip Remunda (“Czech Journal”) and Anette Ostrø (“Hotel Cæsar”) are among the 22 documentary projects that have been selected for the 30th edition of the IDFA Pitch Forum, which will run concurrent to the 35th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, running Nov. 9 – 20.

The doc festival’s IDFA Forum is an industry-focused co-financing and co-production market that will host 60 titles across its four sections, including the IDFA Pitch category. The Forum allows filmmakers and producers to present their projects — all at various stages of production and development — before buyers, curator and decision-makers from the worlds of public and private broadcasting, streaming, and international film festivals.

The IDFA Pitch Forum is the market’s flagship category. Alberdi’s “The Eternal Memory” is a meditation on love and memory that observes a couple dealing with Alzheimer’s over a four-year period. Remunda will be presenting “Love Exposed,...

60 projects selected for the 30th edition of the industry meet.

IDFA Forum, the co-production and co-financing market of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, has selected 60 projects for its 2022 edition, including The Eternal Memory, a new feature from The Mole Agent director Maite Alberdi.

Produced by Alberdi’s Chilean company Micromundo Producciones and Pablo Larrain’s Chilean firm Fabula, the film is described by IDFA as “an intimate meditation on love and memory that observes a couple dealing with Alzheimer’s over a four-year period”.

Scroll down for the full list of IDFA projects

It is one of 22 projects in the market’s flagship Forum Pitch category,...

Festival to close with Pjer Zalica’s ‘May Labor Day’.

New film projects from Bulgarian filmmaker Stephan Komandarev and Renen Schorr, the former head of Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel School for Film and Television, are among the 12 features selected for Sarajevo’s CineLink Work In Progress section.

The festival has also programmed the world premiere of Bosnian-Herzegovinian director Pjer Zalica’s May Labor Day as its closing film, on August 19.

Scroll down for the full list of projects

The Work In Progress strand consists of 10 fiction and two documentary projects, which will be presented to industry professionals including funders, sales agents,...

The line-up includes new films by Lech Kowalski, Lucy Walker, Mads Brügger, Jørgen Leth, Alisa Kovalenko, Sophie Fiennes, Radu Ciorniciuc, Margreth Olin and Eugene Jarecki. Cph:forum, the international financing and co-production event for creative documentaries, part of the leading Nordic documentary festival Cph:dox, has announced the 35 international projects that have been selected for this year's edition, plus another eight Nordic works in progress that will be presented in the Cph:wip section. Out of 422 submissions, Cph:forum picked projects by 43 filmmakers hailing from 27 countries. 46% of the directors are women, 43% are men, and the remaining 11% are co-directing teams of men and women. 34% of the stories are told by filmmakers of colour. The line-up includes new works from established and prominent filmmakers, such as Lech Kowalski's A Little Story About an Immeasurable Problem, Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed's Cold & Warm, Mads Brügger's Double Trouble, Alisa...

Line-up also includes the new project from two-time Oscar nominee Lucy Walker.

Danish documentary festival Cph:dox has revealed the 35 projects set to be presented at Cph:forum, its financing and co-production event that will take place online-only from April 26-30.

Scroll down for full list of titles

The selection includes new projects from two-time Oscar nominee Lucy Walker (Waste Land), Sundance winners Mads Brügger (Cold Case Hammarskjöld) and Eugene Jarecki (The House I Live In), Berlin Crystal Bear winner Geneviève Dulude-De Celle (A Colony) and Venice Horizons winner Lech Kowalski (East Of Paradise).

Further notable filmmakers include Radu Ciorniciuc, whose Acasa,...

The industry section of the Odesa International Film Festival has concluded with various winners being celebrated across its different sections. Unspooling this year in a completely different setting to its usual one, the Film Industry Office of the 11th Odesa International Film Festival (Oiff) was held online from 29 September-2 October, owing to the current restrictions, and the industry event came to a close on Friday. On the last day, the winners of all of the competitive sections, which welcomed 36 projects in total (see the news), were also announced. Starting off with the Pitching session for projects in development, Expedition-49, directed by Alisa Kovalenko and produced by Oleksiy Kobelev, Valeriy Kalmykov and Stephane Siohan, was the winning project, receiving the Uah 60,000 prize from the Oiff. Kovalenko said after the announcement: “Your support means a lot to us, especially in these difficult times. Tomorrow, I am going to...

Agora Doc Market took place entirely online for the first time due to coronavirus concerns.

A timely documentary focused on Italian nurses has won a brace of awards at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s annual Agora Doc Market.

Scroll down for full list of winners

A Steady Job, directed by Mattia Colombo and Gianluca Matarrese, picked up the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum Award of €2,000 and the Mfi Doc Lab Script2Film Workshop award with a full scholarship worth €2,500.

The film follows the journey taken by multitudes of Italian nurses every month, who journey from the south of the country to the...

Pitching forum moved online in the wake of coronavirus concerns.

Participants in the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s first live-stream pitching session have praised the initiative but said it cannot replace face-to-face events.

The Greek festival moved the one-day pitching forum of its annual Agora Doc Market to an online streaming format this week, in the wake of concerns over coronavirus and shortly after its 22nd edition was postponed.

Some 12 documentary film projects took part in Monday’s Thessaloniki Pitching Forum, which saw 40 producers, directors, commissioning editors, festival programmers and other industry professionals dial in from 16 countries. Organisers said it was...

The Ukrainian director was talking at the goEast Festival in Germany.

Prolific Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa has revealed details of his new documentary film State Funeral, about the “grandiose, terrifying and grotesque” spectacle of the funeral of Joseph Stalin.

It will be the latest of Loznitsa’s montage films based on archive footage following Blockade, Revue, The Event and The Trial. He is readying it for completion later this year.

“I have been working with footage which was shot between March 5-8, 1953 for a film called The Great Farewell by directors including Sergei Gerasimov and Ilya Kopalin,” Loznitsa explained. “But...

Crystal Swan, a Belarus/Germany/Russia/U.S. co-production directed by Darya Zhuk, was awarded the Grand Prix of Odessa International Film Festival at the closing ceremony held in the Ukrainian port city July 21.

Pity, by Greek director Babis Makridis, picked up the international competition's best film award. Makridis also collected the best director award.

The jury's special mention went to the Romania-France film Pororoca, directed by Constantin Popescu.

Victor Polster collected the best performance award for Girl by Belgian director Lukas Dhont.

Home Games by Alisa Kovalenko, co-produced by Ukraine, France and Poland, was awarded the best European documentary prize.

Delta, directed ...

Crystal Swan, a Belarus/Germany/Russia/U.S. co-production directed by Darya Zhuk, was awarded the Grand Prix of Odessa International Film Festival at the closing ceremony held in the Ukrainian port city July 21.

Pity, by Greek director Babis Makridis, picked up the international competition's best film award. Makridis also collected the best director award.

The jury's special mention went to the Romania-France film Pororoca, directed by Constantin Popescu.

Victor Polster collected the best performance award for Girl by Belgian director Lukas Dhont.

Home Games by Alisa Kovalenko, co-produced by Ukraine, France and Poland, was awarded the best European documentary prize.

Delta, directed ...

Summer 1993 and My Happy Family also take home prizes from Ukrainian festival.

Peter Brosen and Jessica Woodworth’s fourth feature King Of The Belgians received the Golden Duke Grand Prix - based on voting by festival-goers - at the eighth Odesa International Film Festival (Oiff, July 14 - 22), which came to a close on Saturday evening.

The International Competition jury, headed up by German director Christian Petzold and including actress Sibel Kekilli and Romanian producer-director-festival organiser Tudor Giurgiu, awarded the prize for best international feature film to Catalan director Carla Simón’s autobiographical film Summer 1993.

Handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales, Simón’s film had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus sidebar where it won the international jury’s grand prix and the Gwff best first feature award.

Meanwhile, My Happy Family by the directorial duo Nana & Simon continued its successful international festival career by picking up the jury’s awards for best director...

Directors Chanya Button, Adrian Sitaru, Xavier Seron scoop prizes; festival reveals works in progress winners.

UK filmmaker Chanya Button’s debut feature as director and producer, Burn Burn Burn, was voted by the audience at the Odessa International Film Festival (Oiff) as the winner of this year’s Grand Prix.

Producer Daniel-Konrad Cooper accepted the Golden Duke statuette on behalf of the production team from Oiff’s festival president Victoria Tigipko during the gala closing ceremony in the Black Sea city’s historic National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet.

Button’s melancholic comedy had premiered at last year’s London Film Festival and is being handled internationally by Urban Distribution International.

International Competition

Meanwhile, the International Competition jury - headed by the UK writer Christopher Hampton and also including Oiff 2015 winner Eva Neymann, Us writer-director-actor Alex Ross Perry, producer Rebecca O’Brien and producer-director Uberto Pasolini - gave the Golden Duke statuette for Best Film to...