This year, some things will be different, however, as Black Nights, in league with other festivals feels that festivals need to do more in the context of the looming climate crisis.

The winners of the first session of production and development grants contest in 2020 were announced by the Lithuanian Film Centre in the first week of March 2020.

The Lithuanian Film Centre has announced the results of the first financing session of the year: 2 681 096 EUR was distributed among 48 film projects in production and development.

After the postponement of the 22nd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, a significant part of the initiatives and projects hosted by Agora Doc Market, the development branch of the Festival, will be carried out online during the next week, with the support of the European program Creative Europe MEDIA.

Specifically, three main initiatives of the Agora Doc Market will take place in the next few days.

1. The Thessaloniki Pitching Forum, a co-production and co-financing platform for creative, television and new media documentaries. Twelve projects are presented. This new initiative by TDF aims to boost production in Southeast Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle Eastern regions. The awards of the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum are: The Thessaloniki Pitching Forum Award (2,000 euro), the ERT – Thessaloniki Pitching Forum Award (2,000 euro) to a Greek project, the Mediterranean Film Institute Award (MFI Script2Film Workshop), that offers a DocLab scholarship worth 2,500 euro, as well as accommodation in Nisyros and Rhodes islands where the MFI takes place). Further awards are: the DAE - Documentary Association of Europe Award (Consultation and free membership), the Aylon Productions Digital Services Award (Digitization by Aylon Productions) and the Beldocs Award (Accommodation and Accreditation for the next International Documentary Festival Beldocs).
2. The Agora Doc Market presents the Agora Docs in Progress: 11 projects from South-eastern Europe and the Mediterranean region participate in closed sessions exclusively for Thessaloniki’s accredited industry professionals, sales agents, distributors, producers and festival programmers. The post production company Two Thirty Five offers the main DiP award (post-production services), which is accompanied by a free accreditation and accommodation for the Visions du Réel festival in April. The MuSou company offers an award for music and sound services and the Greek Film Centre offers an award of 3,000 euro in cash. For the first time, Neaniko Plano will present an award for Subtitling.
   
3. In collaboration with Cinando, the Agora presents its digital video library, giving the opportunity to accredited industry professionals, sales agents, distributors, producers and festival programmers from all over the world to watch and evaluate documentaries from Greece and abroad, in order to include them in their festival programs.

We want to thank the participants of the Agora Doc Market, the filmmakers, the jury members and the award sponsors, who, after the announcement that the TDF is postponed, agreed to continue their work via the Internet.

Ten documentary experts (TV commissioners, festival representatives and sales agents) from all over the world, defying the challenges of time zones, will take part in the online pitching session of the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum.

The Agora awards will be announced on Thursday, March 12, 2020. Good luck to all the projects! 

The Festival continues to consider the prospect of hosting the 22nd Thessaloniki Documentary Festival at the end of May/beginning of June. We monitor the situation with the coronavirus in Greece and abroad, we are in coordination with the competent authorities and we examine every possible solution.

Emerging Producers introduced at Berlinale, new call open!

Eighteen up-and-coming documentary film producers from Europe were introduced to film professionals and journalists present at the 70th Berlinale (see photo gallery). The call for applications for the next edition of EMERGING PRODUCERS was also announced in Berlin, with a deadline on March 15, 2020. The programme will include two sessions – in Jihlava (October 2020) and Berlin (February 2021). You can now submit your applications or share the news with talented producers around you. The 17 Emerging Producers from Europe will be accompanied by a participant from Israel, which is the guest country of the 2021 edition.

Ji.hlava Film Fund offers 20,000 EUR in post-production services

Have your film supported from the Ji.hlava Film Fund! The Ji.hlava Film Fund provides in-kind grants totaling 20,000 EUR for visual and sound post-production of documentaries originating in Central and Eastern Europe. We are primarily looking for projects with unique authorial style and focus on contemporary and thought-provoking themes. Ji.hlava Film Fund's partners are UPP, Soundsquare and the Center for Documentary Film, and the deadline for submissions is March 15.

Submit your documentary to Ji.hlava IDFF

Film submissions to the 24th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival are now open. We accept feature-length and short films, animated and interactive documentaries. The films premiered in Jihlava have a chance to be nominated for the European Film Academy Awards and the winners at the Ji.hlava IDFF are also eligible also for Oscar® consideration in the Documentary Short Subject and Documentary Feature Subject categories. Check the deadlines now.

Echoes of Ji.hlava in Belgium

The 8th Echoes of Ji.hlava IDFF are underway in Belgium and the programme continues until March 9 in Brussels and Antwerp. The Echoes include a number of public screenings followed by debates with the filmmakers and protagonists, as well as offering two masterclasses with progressive female directors for the students of the University of Antwerp and RITCS School of Arts.

Dok.Revue brings again a pile of good documentary read

In the new issue of Dok.Revue you can enjoy an interview with the legend of Czech documentary, Karel Vachek, watch a masterclass by Sergey Dvortsevoy about boundaries between documentary and fiction, learn about emerging Czech female documentarians, and read Viera Čákanyová’s text about her film FREM, which premiered in Ji.hlava, opened Berlinale’s Forum section and continues its journey on the festival circuit.

Czech Docs… Coming Soon

Five upcoming documentaries will be presented at East Doc Platform in Prague during Czech Docs… Coming Soon on March 10: A New Shift (dir. Jindřich Andrš / CZ), Brotherhood (dir. Francesco Montagner, / CZ, IT), Every Single Minute (dir. Erika Hníková / CZ, SK), At Full Throttle (dir. Miro Remo, / CZ, SK) and Wolves on the Borders (dir. Martin Páv / CZ). The presentation is organized by the Institute of Documentary Film in cooperation with the Audiovisual Producers' Association (APA) and will be moderated by Diana Tabakov (DocAlliance Films). Find out more here and join the event on Facebook.

From this year the event will be held under a new name – CEDOC MARKET (Central European Documentary Market). The submissions will be open until March 31. The market will be held on June 4-5th in Krakow.

CEDOC MARKET (so far organized under the name DOC LAB POLAND Co-Production Market) is the only co-production platform in Poland addressed to documentary film producers looking for Polish and foreign partners. Organized since 2015, the event focuses primarily on building creative cooperation between producers and filmmakers from across Europe.

ph. Kamila Szatan

CEDOC MARKET  is dedicated to the producers with projects in development or early stage of production. Producers without a project can also apply on the condition that they are expirienced in the international co-productions. 

Application form
Information about requirements

Participation in CEDOC Market is free of charge.  We offer all participating producers a 2-night-accommodation in the city of Kraków, and a KFF Industry accreditation (entitling the holder to access all Industry events and Official Festival Screening programme). In selected cases the organizers can also cover one additional night and travel costs. If you wish to attend with the director of the film, please contact us.

The 60th Krakow Film Festival will take place on May 31 – June 7, 2020

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More information on our website krakowfilmfestival.pl