The 28th edition of the Baltic Sea Docs forum wrapped up in Riga last week, bringing to a close another collection of documentaries from the Baltic Sea region, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus. Held from 1-8 September 2024, this year’s programme featured 26 projects. Of the 26, 22 are at various stages of development and production, while four are returning in the post-production phase. Notably, this year’s selections feature a strong showing from Baltic filmmakers, with half of the projects backed by companies from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, while others originate from Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, and beyond.
The forum began with a presentation of the participants and tutors, followed by a masterclass by Kumjana Novakova, who shared the making of “Silence of Reason.” On 3 September, the public film programme began with Maka Gogaladze’s Ever Since I Knew Myself, originally pitched at the 2019 edition of Baltic Sea Docs. Other notable titles in the programme include Intercepted by Oksana Karpovych, Life is Beautiful by Mohamed Jabaly, Hollywoodgate by Ibrahim Nash’at, and Balomania by Sissel Morell Dargis.
Across the next seven days, filmmakers engaged in group workshops, one-on-one consultations, and pitch rehearsals. This culminated in two days of pitching sessions from 5 – 6 September, during which the documentary projects were unveiled to this year’s international panel of decision-makers, which included representatives from NHK, YLE, Sheffield DocFest, and more. The sessions were moderated by documentary industry veterans Mikael Opstrup and Tue Steen Müller.
The selected documentaries were as diverse in thematic scope as the regions they represented, yet several recurring themes were evident. Political conflict, the fallout of war, personal identity, and modernisation’s environmental and societal consequences were central to many projects.
One of the forum’s highlights was 80 Angry Journalists (Hungary/Germany). Directors András Földes and Anna Kis tell the story of a conflict-zone reporter who watches 80 of his colleagues walk out in protest of a government takeover of their newspaper. The film follows the group’s struggle to establish an independent online news platform in an increasingly hostile environment. Similarly, Between Borders (Estonia) follows a volunteer in Ukraine, a country torn apart by Russia’s invasion, as he grapples with the conflict’s toll on his family and personal life. As many others presented, these two films were examples of the abundance of personal stories caught in the complexities of larger societal shifts.
In No Death (Ukraine/Latvia), modern warfare is taken into the digital realm, as the film delves into the psychological effects of being part of a Ukrainian elite drone unit. The detachment brought on by fighting a war through a screen is symbolic of the broader dehumanizing effects of modern warfare, where violence is often mediated by technology, making the emotional and moral impacts harder to process.
More along this theme was Making Friends with the Idea of a Father (Bulgaria), awarded the East Doc Platform Award. Director Nikolay Stefanov reopens the cold case of his father’s killing 30 years ago, leading to broader themes of familial legacy and the shifting definitions of what it means to be a man. Personal reckoning was echoed in Serozhik (Armenia), which focuses on a 14-year-old boy who assumes the role of head of his family after his father becomes disabled. Furthermore, there was The Baltic Sea Docs Consultancy Award winner Acting Classes (Kazakhstan), a documentary about an 87-year-old woman who joins a theatre club at her nursing home while awaiting her son’s return.
The films presented also reflected on the concept of place and space, often contrasting forgotten landscapes with the pressures of modern life. In Baltic (Poland), the focus is on a woman nearing the end of her life who has spent forty years running a smokehouse in a seaside town. As she grapples with ageing and illness, the film becomes an elegy for a vanishing way of life. Similarly, Emptiness (Latvia/Romania) explores how and why certain regions in Europe are becoming depopulated, reflecting on the economic, environmental, and political processes leading to the hollowing out of communities.
The forum also showcased more abstract, even allegorical themes. El Dorado (Georgia) is a poetic meditation on civilisation’s destructive forces, told through the stories of matriarchs in a mining town and a lone seeker of ancient treasures. This film and Odyssey MD (Moldova/Lithuania)—a cinematic essay on Moldovan emigration akin to Odysseus’ long journey—were less concerned with linear narratives and more with imagery and metaphor to explore displacement, memory, and the erosion of tradition.
A further standout was Sacred Songs (Georgia), which took home the BBposthouse Post-Production Award. Directed by Nona Giunashvili, the documentary follows four female singers from a Georgian village whose lives are dictated by religious dogma. Their experiences take a transformative turn as they perform on international stages, only to have their unity disrupted when the youngest singer decides to don a hijab and leave the group.
Seminars also played a crucial role in the event, with notable sessions including a presentation by Paul Rieth on using AI and other tools to expand documentary audience reach and a conversation between Sundance’s Basil Tsiokos and Latvian producer Uldis Cekulis on documentary strategies in both the creative and distribution phases.
By the time the forum wrapped up, it was clear that the 2024 edition of Baltic Sea Docs had once again succeeded in cultivating and supporting documentary talent from the region. The films presented reflect the current state of the world and provide a glimpse into the coming years of European documentaries.
