A Word from our Selectors:


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A Word from our Selectors: Competition Documentary Film

From year to year, documentary production in the region tends to get a bit more organized and more carefully planned. That is clearly noticeable in this year's harvest, in which several remarkable documentaries stick out for being produced, budgeted and executed in a very professional manner. Some of these films were commissioned by important West European broadcasters, some even got flattering reviews in the world's leading special film magazines. A few already won awards at major festivals and they have certainly set the standards for others to keep up with in the future.

However, the biggest novelty of our program is that we have embraced five more countries into our competition, following the example of the SFF feature competition selection that did so already some years ago. From now on we will also have a closer look at the documentary world of Austria, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and Malta. The latter two, Cyprus and Malta, have yet to develop their documentary production further, although Cyprus already has an interesting documentary festival and started workshops in collaboration with EDN. The other three newcomers on the list are very well organized and are big players in the international documentary landscape. For example, Austrian documentaries are prize winners at major festivals like IDFA, Sundance, Leipzig and Marseille. Greece has a fantastic documentary festival in Thessaloniki where, in collaboration with the European Documentary Network, they have already mastered an amazingly successful workshop and pitching forum that is of great significance for the region as a whole and Greece's national production in particular. Turkey has a production of outstanding quality, done with tremendous enthusiasm, private investments and a lot of creative energy. It has managed to reach international funds and to start several smaller and bigger festivals, some specialized only for Docs, like 1000 Docs, a well known festival in Istanbul or the new festival Dokumentarist taking place in the same city annually, next to known festivals in Bursa and Eskisehir that is organized by film students.

What does that mean for films from the region as a whole, for our festival and our program? It means that directors from the rest of the region are faced with tougher competitors! Unfortunately, countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina or Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro or Kosovo and even Slovenia and Bulgaria still have a very small documentary production and maybe just one or two production companies that are entirely devoted to documentaries. At the same time, Europe is getting more and more dense with pitching forums, workshops, talent campuses and summer schools, where documentary ideas are being picked up, developed, helped, supported, discussed and financed. Some of the films that participate in our competition this year are proof of the fact that systematic work pays off and often does deliver good results. Our opening film SEVDAH that will have its world premiere here at SFF, was developed at the Ex Oriente workshop throughout one whole year, as well as the projects CASH & MERRY that already won prestigious prize at Vision du Reel festival. THE CAVIAR CONNECTION, got two prestigious funds – ITVS from San Francisco and the Dutch Jan Vrijman from IDFA. Another film , GOOD BYE, HOW ARE YOU? that travels successfully to many festivals was also taking part at several workshops, and pitching sessions and it took several years to the director to pre-and post-produce the project before it turned out into successful docs.

Of course, there are many ways to raise money for your film and many paths to take to improve your script or shooting plan, but to work with almost no or very little money, with no support, with limited equipment and editing facilities, with no future plan where to show or broadcast your film is the toughest path to take. It's almost like Don Quixote fighting windmills.

That is why we organise this year, as an organic part of our regional documentary program, several lectures addressing the most important topics that many of our filmmakers don't know how to approach. Experienced documentary experts will explain, discuss and answer your questions on the subject that you didn’t maybe encounter or elaborate yet. Charming darling of the documentary European scene – Leena Pasanen, former commissioning editor of the Finish YLE, who headed successfully EDN till the last year, known lecturer and tutor at many docs. schools and workshops, currently working as a head of the all media department at YLE will focus on – what is a good trailer and where to go with it in order to intrigue the curiosity of the broadcasters and funds. Diane Weyermann, our close friend, former head of the Soros and Sundance fund, nowadays producer of very successful docs from USA, will tackle the very sensitive issue concerning the difference between documentary reportage and creative docs. This topic is still an enigma to many filmmakers and when doing the selection, I encounter every year at least sixty percent of entries that are typical television items and reportages with too little author 's input to even try to become artistic documentary films. So, often the intriguing subjects don’t develop further from the superficial coverage for news’ item or journalistic investigation. Our third special guest, the Italian producer Stefano Tealdi, who also heads the exciting event Documentary in Europe (every July in Bardonecchia), is a real “doctor” for budgeting . He worked with big money but also manages to produce with lesser funds if he finds the subject trilling and promising. His company Stefilm recently produced the film MOSTAR UNITED, directed by Claudia Tosi, that will close our program (out of competition).

It is estimated that there are some 10,000 documentary films made annually in the world and about 3,600 film festivals. So, one could say that there is a film for every festival and a festival for every film. We are trying to help you match these two in the best way and to put on the world 's documentary map all the good, inspiring and creative films from our region. There is an interest to show the best films from our program at several important festivals, the selectors already announced their presence, (some are in our jury) we welcome them all as well as our talented directors who made these twenty documentary gems that we are showing this year in our competition.

Good luck!
We wish you very warm welcome and pleasent time at SFF!

Rada Šešić, programmer

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