Get the latest gossip
Sheffield DocFest Confronts Challenges Facing Nonfiction Film Industry, In Midst Of Turbulent Political, Economic Environment
Sheffield DocFest is confronting challenges facing the nonfiction film industry, in the context of geopolitical and economic stress.
Films that attracted support in recent years include many that went on to earn Oscar recognition: All That Breathes, The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence, Searching for Sugarman, 5 Broken Cameras, The Square, The Edge of Democracy, and the 2021 winner of the L’Oeil d’or prize at Cannes, A Night of Knowing Nothing. Oscar winner Roger Ross Williams, the festival’s guest of honor this year, held two public discussions, one of them focused on how to support documentaries that don’t fall within the obvious categories of true crime, celebrity bios, and music docs. Part of DocFest’s role, at least implicitly, is to point distributors toward material that goes beyond the bounds of narrowly-defined genres – to, as Mancini puts it, “give the audience not only what they expect, but also make them curious about things that they don’t know about.”
Or read this on Deadline