The Institute of Documentary Film has announced the launch of the 2025 edition of Ex Oriente Film, a leading international training program for the development of creative documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe. This year’s cohort includes 17 projects—12 feature-length documentaries and 5 docuseries—spanning a wide range of urgent themes including social justice, historical memory, identity, and resistance.

The program, structured into two tracks—Ex Oriente Features and Ex Oriente Series—offers three intensive residential workshops across Europe. The first sessions will take place in June in Sheffield Doc/Fest, UK, and La Rochelle, France, in collaboration with Sheffield DocFest and Sunny Side of the Doc, respectively. Later sessions are scheduled in Sibiu, Brno, and Prague, culminating in a final pitching forum at the East Doc Platform 2026.

Selected Feature-Length Documentaries

• Not so far away places (dir. Renato Borrayo Serrano, Yulia Vishnevets)
• My Dear Vira (dir. Olga Chernykh, Maryna Brodovska)
• House in a Bottle (dir. Anna Morawiec)
• +7: Scamming for Revenge (working title) (dir. Oleksandra Horiienko)
• Shape of Silence (dir. Varun Trikha)
• Children of the Moon Land (dir. Roman Ďuriš)
• Dance with Me (dir. Leila Basma)
• I had a Dream about an Elephant (dir. Štefan Straka)
• Symphony of Seasons (dir. Sami Mustafa)
• Dekonstrukt (dir. Mateusz Góra, Kamil Wilk)
• VESNA FOREVER VESNA (dir. Hana Piscevic, Nebojsa Resanovic)
• At Home (dir. Tamara Todorović)

Selected Documentary Series

• Hijacked Life (dir. Andrius Lekavičius)
• Grandpa was a genius (dir. Kalina Nikolova)
• World Divided (dir. Soňa Nôtová, Štefan Straka)
• Justice as Legalised Terror (dir. Zora Cejnková)
• When The Wind Blows (dir. Anna Savchenko)

Renowned international tutors will guide participants, including producers Gitte Hansen and Christian Popp, filmmaker Filip Remunda, Czech Television’s Head of Documentaries Ivana Pauerová Miloševičová, and Syrian-German director Diana El Jeiroudi. The Ex Oriente Series program will be led by Ruth Reid, known for her work with HBO and Netflix.

For more information, visit dokweb.net.