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The 2024 L’Œil d’or jury comprising Nicolas Philibert, Dyana Gaye, Elise Jalladeau, Francis Legault and Mina Kavani decided to award two films ex aequo. These were Ernest Cole: Lost and Found by Raoul Peck in Special Screenings and Les Filles du Nil by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir in Critics Week.

On May 21, Cannes’ Marché du Film hosted a talk titled “Fighting for the Commons in a Time of Critical Destabilisation.” The event saw the participation of director-producer Raoul Peck and Dominic Asmall Willsdon, IDA’s Executive Director. In particular, Peck zoomed in on his Ernest Cole: Lost and Found (showcased in the Special Screenings strand), and on advocacy, capitalism and how doc production has changed over the last 30 years, among other topics.

The fifteen jury members will assess new works across the International Competition, First Feature Competition, Short Film Competition, The Tim Hetherington Award and International Alternate Realities Competition sections. The festival also announced details of masterclasses and a conversation with revered sound editor Walter Murch. The 31st Sheffield DocFest runs from Wednesday 12 – Monday 17 June.

The family of maverick award-winning documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock announced May 24 the director’s death in New York resulting from cancer complications. Spurlock, who passed away May 23, achieved worldwide recognition following his groundbreaking 2004 documentary Super Size Me, for which he received an Oscar® nomination.

Film students around the world will have the opportunity to use images from the work of French filmmaker Agnes Varda (1928-2019) thanks to an extraordinary new project that will make Varda’s rushes available on an online platform. They can then be downloaded and edited in any way the students see fit. “The platform is going to be online in June,” explains Varda’s daughter Rosalie Varda whose family production company Ciné-Tamaris has been shepherding the project.

The 2024 Beldocs program hosts 103 films, among which are 13 world, one European, 59 regional and 24 Serbian premieres. Ten films screen in International Competition while a dozen are selected for Serbian Comp. Twenty-three developing projects at different phases of production are selected for Beldocs Industry. The 17th edition of Beldocs opened May 22 with Dragan Jovićević’s Warm Film.

The Christchurch-based Oscar-qualifying docfest announces a “stunning and provocative” line-up of 43 features, 23 shorts and 28 immersive projects. The festival runs 19-30 June before decamping to Wellington and Auckland 3-14 July. The programme will then be shared virtually across New Zealand 15-31 July.

“I found her life interesting as a Hollywood story because she was really one of the first modern celebrities. She was probably comparable to Taylor Swift,” US director Nanette Burstein tells BDE of her documentary about the Hollywood icon. “It [Taylor’s life] is a very compelling Hollywood story. It’s a story about feminism. It is a story about agency and it is a story about philanthropy.”

The winners of the Docs-in-Progress Awards were unveiled during a ceremony at the end of this year's Doc Day (May 21). Top cash prizes went to Only on Earth by Robin Petré (IEFTA Doc-in-Progress Award, €10,000), to Aliyá, Yeridá by Rafael Guendelman (Al Jazeera Documentary Award, Co-pro deal with minimum €15,000 contribution), and to Chilean The Stationary Traveller (Rise and Shine Award, €3,000).

Four new projects developed at the CIRCLE Women Doc Accelerator were pitched May 20 at Cannes Docs. CIRCLE is described as “a unique training initiative designed for women and non-binary writers, directors, and producers from all-over the world, offering a safe space for consultation, collaboration, sharing ideas and improving skills.” Opening the sessions producer and Programme Director Biljana Tutorov described the workshop as “a work of solidarity,” and a “circle of trust.”