An overview of the doc projects from South and Central Eastern Europe presented at this year’s 22nd CineLink featured strong titles in which political events interlaced with personal lives. The major themes detailed, among others, the groundbreaking nature of the recent government change in Hungary (Orban and Me, Kind of Adults), the echoes of the current Palestinian-Israeli war in Bulgaria (Where Shall We Go?), the Nepalese migration to Croatia and how it affects existing social tensions between the Roma community and Croatians (No Offence), and the vindictive takeover of Slovakian public media (TV and radio) by Robert Fico’s government (Retuning).

Docu Rough Cut Boutique and Docu Talents from the East are Sarajevo Film Festival’s two strands for docs in late phases of production. They differ in terms of regional coverage (Docu Rough Cut Boutique includes South Eastern European projects, while Docu Talents from the East, co-curated with the Jihlava IDFF, encompasses the whole of Central and Eastern Europe), but both focus on finding stories that are unique and specific, and potentially appealing to wide international audiences. The crowded presentations and meetings with industry insiders gave filmmakers a platform to find co-producers or launch a film outside their markets.

Docu Rough Cut Boutique Winners

The Docu Rough Cut prizes went to three titles that paired intimate, urgent footage with social and political weight. Where Shall We Go? (winner of the HBO and Avanpost Awards) tells the story of a friendship between a Jewish and a Palestinian woman, beginning in Jerusalem and moving to Bulgaria, where it takes on another dimension through an East European perspective on the current conflict. The footage goes deep into the reality of a war-torn Gaza and captures how a distant world perceives the evolving disaster from the outside. Another winning project (Doc Leipzig and East Doc Caravan Awards), Kind of Adults, comes from Hungary as a personal, tender generational narrative about growing up in a country run by Viktor Orbán’s government. Shot over several years, the project blends the filmmakers’ perspective with the young characters’ self-recordings, creating an affectionate atmosphere of adolescence and the hardships of moving to the next stage in their lives and society. Produced in Turkey, the last winning project, Women of Akbelen Forest (Movies That Matter Award), presents a deeply emotional, long fight by village women to protect their forest against a coal mine factory and government forces. Through years of protest, they must reshape their prescribed social roles and ways of acting, reviving the long tradition of women’s movements like India’s Chipko Movement.

Docu Talents from the East Winners

Docu Talents from the East strand, whose Main Prize went to Ora et Labora, an intimate picture of life in a Benedictine cloister in South Germany, varied in terms of themes and styles. Current politics mingled with efforts to gain a distanced, artistically composed view of reality. A clear portrait of Viktor Orbán’s career and policies, Orban and Me, uses the director’s personal, insightful experiences to observe almost four decades of political events in Hungary. It mixes a broad social canvas with individual decisions and approaches that, over time, create divisions across families and communities. Awarded the DA Films Prize, the Slovakian project Retuning examines the rapid changes inflicted by Robert Fico’s government on Slovakian public media and follows journalists protesting against overwhelming political influence. Slovakian public media seem to be the next unfortunate example of the destruction of public media in Central and Eastern Europe after Hungary and Poland.

The Ukrainian project, Bernadsky Garden, combines current affairs with poetic metaphors by focusing on a beautiful garden near the front line. Alluring, carefully nurtured greenery is framed by the distant sounds of explosions and drones, creating a strong emotional effect. The Polish project Hotspot. A Docutherapy examines, with cinematographic sophistication and emotional engagement, the psychotherapeutic ways people cope with rising climate anxiety.

All the Docu Talents from the East and Docu Rough Cut Boutique projects aim for release at the beginning of 2027.