Docs in Orbit

Hi everyone, Aylin Gökmen here, with a new episode featuring a conversation with Pablo Álvarez-Mesa about his film, The Soldier’s Lagoon (2024), which received the Docs in Orbit Invitation Award at Cannes Doc-Marché du Film last year.The Soldier’s Lagoon is a strikingly beautiful and multi-layered piece centered on the Colombian páramo region. The film explores the land’s history, encompassing Bolívar's political legacy, colonialism, and the presence of armed groups, shedding light on h...

We are releasing a conversation recorded on Tuesday, November 14th, 2023, at IDFA, where I met with Julian Ross and Farah Hasanbegović to recap Corresponding Cinemas. Corresponding Cinemas was a new series at IDFA this year, and in many ways, it was an experiment to see what invisible connections surface when an institution decides to transfer over its curatorial control to filmmakers. The idea is simple and compelling. It would be a series of films and conversations with filmmakers who have ...

An abandoned house opens the door to revisit the past by bringing to life a unique, nearly destroyed image archive from the unrecognized territory on the border of the Black Sea: Abkhazia. A place normally inaccessible for Georgians because of the ethnic conflict that happened between Georgia and Abkhazia back in 1993. Combining voice, archive, and recent footage, the film examines a lost and split identity stuck between the margins. The audio-visual fragments of this archive are intricately ...

Twenty-six years ago, for the 35th New York Film Festival, curators Gavin Smith and Mark McElhatten introduced the festival's experimental sidebar, Views from the Avant-Garde.While their inaugural program featured names like Stan Brakhage, Gregory Markopoulos, and Nathaniel Dorsky, it also opened a space where voices experimenting with cinema's language might meet new audiences. In the festival's intervening years, the vocabulary around this type of cinema evolved and Views from the Avant-Gar...

The 76th edition of the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland has come to a close, but we are still thinking about many of the films we encountered there. For our recap, we invited a cross-section of attendees to share their favorite film discoveries. Included in this episode are films from nearly every section of the festival - the Concorso Internazionale (International Competition), the Concorso Cineasti del presente section (Filmmakers of the Present), the Pardi di domani (Leopards of ...

A conversation with Karen Avetisyan, the Artistic Director and CEO of the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Yerevan, Armenia, which took place from the 9 - 16th of July.This year it marked a double milestone for the festival, celebrating both its 20th anniversary as well as the 100th anniversary of Armenian Cinema. Eka Tsotsoria traveled to Yerevan for the occasion, and before making her way there, she sat with Karen to learn more about the programming. In this conversation, Karen shares the or...

Director & DOP Kirsten Johnson, President of the 2023 Œil d’or Jury, and writer, director, and producer Guetty Felin in conversation about the many ways filmmaking creates possibilities to search for the invisible, to bring life to the dead and to time travel in our own lives.This discussion was organized by Cannes Docs - Marché du Film with the support of Doc Alliance, Participant, LaScam in association with L'oeul d'or, Année du Documentaire, DAE, CNC, & ACID. Distributed by Do...

Panel discussion presented at Cannes Docs 2023 at the Marché du Film, Festival de Cannes and curated in partnership with the DAE - Documentary Association of Europe The documentary industry, like the rest of the audiovisual chain, has been in a radical period of transformation in the last 10 years. We hear more and more often about content and format, rather than film and language. Where is the place for the creative documentary in this value chain? This panel discussion explores this topic w...

To kick off our collaboration with Cannes Docs this year, we sat with Pierre-Alexis Chevit, the head of Cannes Docs, and Babette Dieu, the coordinator for the event, to hear about this year’s thoughtfully designed program. They also share their personal experiences that shaped their interest in documentaries and the importance of creating physical and symbolic spaces in the industry for the independent filmmaking community to feel supported. Each year, during the Marché du Film at the Ca...

[April 20, 2023] Docs in Orbit Podcast - Episode #55 - Visions du Réel 2023 with Emilie Bujès (moderated by Christina Zachariades)In preparation for the 54th Edition of Visions du Réel, we sat (virtually) with Emilie Bujès, the festival's artistic director, to hear about how this year’s program came together. Visions du Réel has a strong reputation for championing creative, contemporary non-fiction cinema and has played a vital role for independent documentary filmmakers for decades. The...

Featuring a conversation with Alexander Abaturov about his film Paradise (2022), which premiered at IDFA in the International Competition section.The film is set in the small village of Shologon in Northern Siberia, documenting the local inhabitants battling severe and extreme wildfires during the summer months.Alexander Abaturov is a filmmaker based in Paris. He was born in Siberia. Paradise (2022) is his second feature documentary film. His first film, The Son (2018), premiered at the Berli...

We are joined by Cristina Nord, the Artistic Director of the Berlinale Forum, an independently curated section of the Berlinale with a focus on diverse cinematic forms and narrative approaches. I invited Cristina to speak about the rich history of the Forum and what has shaped her curatorial eye. We also discuss some of the non-fiction films included in this years collection, which will be the 53rd edition of the program. Moderated by Christina ZachariadesFor show notes, visit docsinorbi...

Nnenna Onuoha speaks with Alain Gomis about his latest film REWIND & PLAY (2022), which she encountered last month at the New York Film Festival. REWIND & PLAY follows American jazz pianist Thelonius Monk on a 1969 trip to Paris. Monk is in town to perform at the Salle Pleyel, and along the way becomes the subject of a French television program. Rewind & Play unfolds exclusively from the recovered rushes of this recording. And from this single event the film unravels complex ...