We returned to Sarajevo this August, where many of the industry events covered below took place, from CineLink’s rough cuts to the Docu Talents from the East winner. This time, the Talent Press reports came from the Durban International Film Festival. In September, we head to Riga for the 30th edition of Baltic Sea Docs.
News
Ji.hlava’s Docu Talents from the East returned to Sarajevo for its 22nd edition, presenting seven post-production documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe during the CineLink Industry Days. Bernadsky Garden looks at a public garden near the Kramatorsk frontline. Retuning tells the story of a strike committee fighting against political control of Slovak public media. Two other projects focus on family history, one about an unfinished film rehearsed in a Sofia apartment, and another about a daughter’s effort to reconnect with her photographer father. A few days later, the winners were announced. The Docu Talent Award went to Ora et Labora, Dzhovani Gospodinov’s film about a Benedictine abbey in southern Germany, which the jury praised for its access and irreverence. Retuning won the DAFilms.com Distribution Award, earning a two-year VOD release on several continents.
Sarajevo’s CineLink Talks, called Recognition, Responsibility and Impact, featured five panels in two main areas. One looked at how major festivals support filmmakers with labs and residencies before their films premiere. The other focused on documentaries and discussed what producers and broadcasters should do for a film after it is selected. Doc Alliance data showed that European feature documentary production rose from an average of 827 films per year between 2017 and 2019 to a projected 1,018 in 2025.
Elsewhere, dok.incubator selected eight documentary projects for its 2026 rough-cut workshop, focusing this year on artists whose creative work is closely linked to survival or protest. One of these, Generation Nika: Young and Restless, follows Ukrainian teenagers as they document their lives during wartime. The film was made after one of the founding workshop participants was killed in a missile strike.
Verzió has opened applications for the fifth Young Critics Workshop, which will take place from 16 to 20 November in Budapest during the festival. Managing editor Steve Rickinson will be the tutor again this year. The application deadline is 31 August.
The Institute of Documentary Film launched Docs Beyond, Audience, Impact & AI, a new programme for Czech filmmakers building audience and impact strategies, running from October through December. Stories at Risk, a European consultation on creative freedom in series production developed by Seriesly Berlin, closed its survey window this month, with findings due at Seriesly Berlin in September.
Films
Sarajevo’s competition brought us two reviews. Electing Ms Santa tells the story of Elena, a Moldovan social activist known as Santa, who goes from solving problems in her village to challenging the male-dominated local politics. Only 8 percent of Moldovans surveyed think a mayor should be a woman. Good People focuses on survivors of the Kočani nightclub fire that killed 63 people in North Macedonia last year. This self-funded film by director Milcho Manchevski was made after he lost his approved grants for speaking out against corruption in the country’s film funding system.
The Durban Talent Press program provided four more reviews. From Dust We Spin is about a young street racer from Cape Flats who tries to regain control of her life after a suicide attempt. After Oil looks at the uneven costs of Africa’s green energy transition, starting with a government minister in Cape Town and ending in an unmetered settlement in Nairobi. Dear Ancestor, set partly in 2067 but rooted in ancestral memory, shows Malagasy fishermen and farmers defending sacred land from rare-earth mining. Who Is Still Alive brings together nine Palestinian refugees on a bare South African stage to remember the homes they have lost.
Two more reviews came in from outside the festivals. How to Feed a Dictator explores the private kitchens of five twentieth-century dictators by following the chefs who worked for Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Kim Jong-il, Augusto Pinochet, and Saddam Hussein. The Siege of Paradise looks at the residents of Cinque Terre, a town of fewer than 4,000 people, as they face about four million visitors each year. Gar O’Rourke tells the story of a place changed by its own popularity. Earth’s Greatest Enemy examines the U.S. military’s global impact. The film, made over five years by Abby Martin and Mike Prysner, was released the same month Washington requested $1.5 trillion for security spending and renamed the Pentagon the Department of War.
Books
Francesca Borri reviewed Peter Oborne’s Complicit, the first book to focus specifically on how Britain’s politicians and media responded to the war in Gaza. Oborne describes what he sees as a cross-party cartel stretching from Rishi Sunak’s government to Keir Starmer’s.
Stefano di Lorenzo reviewed Oliver Moody’s Baltic, a book that aims to put the Baltic states at the heart of Europe’s chronicle of resilience. Moody draws on three years of reporting from Berlin and interviews in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Commentary
Sarajevo’s rough-cut and pitching events led to two more of our pieces. CineLink awarded its top documentary prizes to projects that explore the nexus of politics and private life. Where Shall We Go? follows a Jewish-Palestinian friendship from Jerusalem to Bulgaria, framed against the backdrop of current events in Gaza. Kind of Adults follows a graduating class in Budapest through sixteen years of Viktor Orbán’s government, ending as his rule comes to a close.
This year’s five Docu Rough Cut Boutique selections had something in common: every director became part of the story they were meant to observe. In Lucija Marčec’s film about a Croatian border region, her grandmother appears on camera. In Montenegro, Altinaï Petrovitch Njegosh publicly denied being the subject of her own film.
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