Beldocs Industry events will begin with public seminar of Beldocs Documentaries for Kids & Youth organised in collaboration with M:Brane Forum (Sweden) and Paraddidle Pictures (Denmark). Documentary filmmakers, representatives of TV channels, representatives of film centres and festivals will engage in discussions on how to reach younger audience, including, use of humour as a tool, and will listen to opinions of Beldocs Teen jury members who will join the seminar with their contributions. The public seminar day will be followed by a workshop during which workshop tutors will work with a number of selected projects dealing with young audiences.
Beldocs Academy, a 3-day training session for the second year in the row will focus on VR/AR. Participants form Croatia, Latvia, Moldova and Serbia will work on development of their immersive content projects, attend lectures and masterclasses by industry professionals and pitch their projects to an international jury. Beldocs Academy is organised in collaboration with Film Centre of Montenegro that will be sponsoring the main award for the best project.
Industry panels organised in collaboration with Institute of Documentary Film and Documentary Association of Europe will focus on changes in audience behaviour and new ways of watching films and sales and distribution strategies to address those changes. A special event will be organized with two esteemed guests of the festival – the Russian director and Artdocfest founder Vitaly Mansky and Serbian director and Golden Bear winner Želimir Žilnik, entitled “A conversation between Vitaly Mansky and Želimir Žilnik: Documentary Cinema - A Mirror or A Magnifying Glass?” The two great authors will look at reality and fact in documentary cinema - what is the difference and what do they have in common? How does reality impact freedom of expression in cinema and does it actually exist in the audio-visual realm?
Young and experienced documentary filmmakers coming from Western Balkan countries and a wider geographical region from Baltic States to Ukraine and Georgia will participate in Beldocs in Progress and Serbian Docs in Progress pitching sessions. The participants of Beldocs in Progress (10 projects) and Serbian Docs in Progress (5 projects) will present their projects in various stages, from development to post-production, to an international audience and compete for numerous prizes, including monetary awards granted by Beldocs IDFF and awards presented by the festival’s partners. Association of Documentary Filmmakers of Serbia - DokSrbija will for the first year introduce DokSrbija Encouragement Award, while Institute of Documentary Film (Czech Republic) will traditionally grant its East Silver Caravan Award. Beldocs will also continue collaboration with Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (Greece) that will grant Doc Agora award. This year also marks the start of closer collaboration between Beldocs IDFF and Documentary Association of Europe (Germany) and Pitch the Doc (Poland) that will provide two more mentorship and membership awards.
Beldocs Industry activities are supported by Creative Europe MEDIA programme, Film Centre of Serbia, DOK Serbia and Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia.
