On 24 May, the Doc Alliance has announced the winners of its annual awards during the Doc Day at the Festival de Cannes. With these prizes, the European festival network honours emerging talents in documentary film.

And the winners are:

Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing (France / India) has received the Doc Alliance Award – Best Feature. The filmpremiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight 2021, where it won the L'Œil d'Or award for Best Documentary. A Night of Knowing Nothing centres on L., a university student in India, who writes letters to her estranged lover while he is away. The jury called the film “an intimate yet political portrayal of modern Indian youth, all the while observing the alteration of the Indian scapes, its modifications, its need for change, but also its nostalgia.”

The Doc Alliance Award for the Best Short Film 2022 went to In the Billowing Night (France) by Erika Etangsalé. Retracing the footsteps of her ancestors, questioning her identity through the story of her father, first-time director Erika Etangsalé weaves a story of silence, dark dreams, mysterious pain and muted violence. Shot between Reunion Island and Mâcon, Erika Etangsalé elicits a voice that recalls, in halftones and whispers, the memory of slavery and the whiff of colonialism from a not so distant policy, which remains a blind spot in the history of France.

In the feature-length category, the jury also extended a Special Mention to The Eclipse by Nataša Urban.

Congratulations to the film teams! For interviews with the winning directors, please have a look at the Doc Alliance website.

About the Doc Alliance Awards

For the Doc Alliance Awards, each festival of the network nominates one feature-length film and one short by an emerging filmmaker from their most recent lineup. The winners are chosen by a jury of seven international film critics, also selected by the festivals. The award for the Best Feature is endowed with 5,000 € and the prize for the Best Short comes with 3,000 € for the directors, to be spent on their next film project.

Both winning films of this year had been nominated by FIDMarseille. Our team had selected the films Nasim and Light Years to compete for the 2022 Doc Alliance Awards. See all nominees here.

Good to know: A selection of the nominated films is currently available on the Doc Alliance streaming platform dafilms.com.

We are excited to launch the Call for Projects for the 18th DOK Co-Pro Market! While age is just a number, we feel as curious, adventurous and energetic as any 18-year-old and are looking forward to seeing which projects you are bringing forth this year.

What’s the Co-Pro Market?

The Co-Pro Market is a co-financing and networking event, connecting producers with colleagues to finance new creative documentary projects and granting exclusive access to the multifaceted German and international non-fiction markets. The 18th edition of DOK Co-Pro Market takes place 17–18 October 2022, within the framework of our festival week in Leipzig.

What kind of projects are we looking for?

• ambitious, creative, author-driven documentary and animated documentary projects from all over the world
• projects in development or early stages of production
• feature-length documentaries suitable for theatrical release
• one-offs and series are also welcome to apply
• documentaries with an international audience in mind

How to submit?

You can submit your project via our website until 21 July 2022. Read the Co-Pro Market guidelines and start the submission process here.

We can’t wait to discover your new projects!

On 24 May, the Doc Alliance Awards will be presented in Cannes, as part of the Marché du Film industry programme. The awards support emerging talents in European documentary film, honouring one short and one feature documentary film. Both prizes are endowed with 8,000 Euro.

The films competing for this year's Doc Alliance Awards are chosen by the seven European documentary film festivals that make up the Doc Alliance network. Each festival has nominated one short and one feature-length documentary film from its past programme.

Our DOK Leipzig nominees are the feature-length film Nasim and the short film Light Years. In Nasim, filmmakers Ole Jacobs and Arne Büttner follow the Afghan Nasim and her family in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. The film was part of our German Competition in 2021 and was honoured with the DEFA Sponsoring Prize, ver.di Prize for Solidarity, Humanity and Fairness. Light Years by Monika Proba was shown in the International Competition Short Film last year. The film follows the two men as they try to face their situation between religious obligations, family expectations and their tender friendship.

Nominated for Best Feature Film:

• 5 Dreamers and a Horse (AM, DE, CH, DK, GE), by Aren Malakyan and Vahagn Khachatryan, nominated by Visions du Réel
• A Night of Knowing Nothing (FR, IN), by Payal Kapadia, nominated by FIDMarseille
• The Eclipse (NO), by Nataša Urban, nominated by CPH:DOX
• Kapr (Kapr Code) (CZ, SK), by Lucie Králová, nominated by Ji.hlava IDFF
• Nasim (DE), by Ole Jacobs and Arne Büttner, nominated by DOK Leipzig
• The Pawnshop (PL), by Łukasz Kowalski, nominated by Millenium Docs Against Gravity
• Yoon (PT), by Pedro Figueiredo Neto and Ricardo Falcão, nominated by Doclisboa

Nominated for Best Short Film:

• Abyss (DK), by Jeppe Lange, nominated by CPH:DOX
• Aralkum (UZ, DE), by Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko, nominated by Visions du Réel
• Beautiful Solution (CZ), by Eliška Cílková, nominated by Ji.hlava IDFF
• Joanna d'Arc (PL), by Aleksander Szamałek, nominated by Millenium Docs Against Gravity
• Light Years (PL), by Monika Proba, nominated by DOK Leipzig
• In the Billowing Night (FR), by Erika Etangsalé, nominated by FIDMarseille
• Peace (PT), by José Oliveira and Marta Ramos, nominated by Doclisboa

Who decides about the winners?

The winning films will be decided by a jury of seven international film critics and film professionals, also selected by network’s festivals. This year’s jury members are Esther Buss (Spiegel, Jungle World), Frederik Bojer Bové (POV.International), Teresa Vieira (Antena 3, Cineuropa), Nepheli Gambade (Critikat), Leila Basma (DOK.REVUE), Nicolas Wadimoff (filmmaker, producer) and Michał Walkiewicz (Filmweb).

We keep our fingers crossed for all nominees, and we are looking forward to celebrating the winners in May!

On Friday, 1 April at 7 pm, we present a fundraiser screening at Leipzig’s Kinobar Prager Frühling. We will show the animated short Deep Love followed by the feature documentary No Obvious Signs.

Ticket proceeds will go to our colleagues at the Docudays UA film festival, who are collecting donations for filmmakers documenting current events in Ukraine. More details about the fund initiated by Docudays UA can be found on their website: https://docudays.ua/.

Tickets for the fundraiser screening (8 €/ reduced 7 €) are available online via the Prager Frühling web shop or at the evening box office.

We look forward to seeing you there and wish to say thank you in advance for your support.

More about the films

Both films have been awarded at previous DOK Leipzig editions: Deep Love won the Golden Dove in our Next Masters Competition Short in 2019, and No Obvious Signs received the MDR Film Prize for an outstanding East European documentary in 2018.

Deep Love has no dialogue, No Obvious Signs will be screened in its original version with English subtitles.

Discover more about Deep Love and No Obvious Signs in our Film Archive.