Docs for Sale kicks off the season with a showcase of 25 exciting titles

As this year’s festival edition is fast approaching, Docs for Sale presents a fall showcase of 25 films that encompass a bold mix of themes, forms, and inventive approaches. All the titles in this year’s showcase previously took part in IDFA Forum and/or were supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund. The crop of films features titles that have been boarded by leading sales agents and those that are yet to secure sales representation. Many celebrated their world premieres this year at major film festivals from across the world, including Sundance, the Berlinale, CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, Tribeca, and Sheffield DocFest.

Cutting Through Rocks

We dive into the preview with the Sundance-premiered title Cutting Through Rocks, co-helmed by US-based Mohammad Reza Eyni and Sara Khaki. A debut feature documentary by the director duo keeps a tight focus on Sara Shahverdi, a former midwife, recent divorcée, and the first elected councilwoman in a remote Iranian village who sets out to uplift her community and challenge its entrenched conservative mores. Adopting a keen observational approach, the film follows Sara as she teaches teenage girls to ride motorcycles, campaigns to end child marriage, and stands firm when her own identity and motives come under attack. The result is a poignant vérité account of one woman’s indomitable spirit and her necessary fight in the face of patriarchy. The film nabbed the Grand Jury Prize of the Sundance World Cinema Documentary Competition. It is a production of Gandom Films (USA), with Autlook Filmsales handling its world sales.

Letters from the Wolf Street

A tonally different offering comes from Indian-bred filmmaker Arjun Talwar who debuted his film Letters from the Wolf Street across the world at the Berlinale. Zeroing in on a single street in central Warsaw and its eclectic cast of residents, Talwar takes an immigrant lens to a country he moved to over a decade ago out of self-proclaimed love of its cinema. Coupled with wry humor and unassuming undertones, he unfurls a study of contemporary life in Poland against a backdrop of rising anti-immigrant sentiment. This portrait is layered with the filmmaker’s reflections on belonging and the tension of living in-between. It is a production of UNI-SOLO Studio (Poland), in co-production with inselfilm produktion (Germany). Filmotor represents the documentary.

Copan

Personal and political collide in several titles that premiered at CPH:DOX. Eponymous to its setting, Carine Wallauer’s Copan takes place in São Paulo’s emblematic residential mega-building that covers over 120,000 square meters and is home to more than 5,000 residents, of whom she is one. Gliding through various apartments, her camera glimpses the lives of its inhabitants. All the while, electoral battles are waged both inside the building, with the current administrator refusing to let go of the reins of 30 years, and beyond its walls, as Lula da Silva and Bolsonaro vie for the presidential office. The film unfolds through the gritty lens of urban social realism, edged with elements of sci-fi. It is a production of Les Valseurs (France). Mediawan Rights is in charge of its world sales.

Matabeleland

An equally compelling film that debuted in Copenhagen comes from Zimbabwe-born Shona filmmaker Nyasha Kadandara. Her film, Matabeleland, centers on a 60-year-old Zimbabwean immigrant in Botswana, Chris Nyathi. Filmed over the course of seven years across Zimbabwe and Botswana, this sprawling documentary peels back the layers of Chris’ anguish as he seeks a proper burial for his father’s remains decades after the 1983 massacre, following the historic coup that deposed longtime dictator Robert Mugabe in 2017. Ultimately, it reveals a story of one man’s reckoning with historical trauma and personal wounds, set against the broader canvas of African resilience and notions of masculinity. The film is a co-production between LBx Africa (Kenya), EyeSteelFilm (Canada), and Zimbabwe.

9-Month Contract

A further CPH:DOX title in the line-up comes from Georgian filmmaker Ketevan Vashagashvili, who helmed 9-Month Contract. A soul-stirring portrait of maternal love and sacrifice, it traces the trials of a homeless single mother in Tbilisi, Zhana, who works odd jobs before renting her womb to foreign couples to earn some cash (14,000 dollars per pregnancy) in the hope of giving her teenage daughter a more dignified life. As her ordeals continue, the physical burden of poverty grows ever more tangible, with a string of surrogate births stretching her body to its limit. This viscerally intimate film was born out of the director’s enduring friendship with the protagonist. It is a production of 1991 Productions (Georgia), in co-production with AGITPROP (Bulgaria). World sales are handled by CAT&Docs.

The Mountain Won’t Move

Several titles in this year’s selection premiered at Visions du Réel in Nyon. Set in the verdant pastures of North Macedonia’s Šar Mountains, Petra Seliškar’s The Mountain Won’t Move lends a tender eye to young shepherds, brothers aged between eight and twenty. The coming-of-age documentary gently draws us into their daily routines, observing the unvarnished bits of their lives as they tend to their herds, totaling some 600 sheep, helped by a devoted pack of dogs. A timeworn tension between tradition and change slowly comes to the fore as the brothers ponder their future on the mountain, reflecting on shepherding as a way of life. The film is a production of PPFP MACEDONIA, in co-production with Cinéphage (France). Open Kitchen Films handles its world sales.

Niñxs

Another coming-of-age story transpires in Kani Lapuerta’s Niñxs, which also debuted at Visions du Réel. Lapuerta trains his lens on fifteen-year-old Karla, who navigates the joys and tensions of trans adolescence in the small Mexican town of Tepoztlán. Shaping eight years of footage into a film that brims with heart and buoyancy, Lapuerta chronicles Karla’s journey as a young trans woman coming into her own. Yet this proves no small feat in a world run by cisgender norms, even with accepting parents. Slowly, beyond one transition emerges another one, that consisting of universal complexities of coming of age and self-discovery and the tenacity needed to venture into adulthood. The film is co-authored with the protagonist, its cinematic language shaped by her input as well as Lapuerta’s perspective as a trans filmmaker. It is a production of La Sandía Digital (Mexico), in co-production with Sparrows on Rooftops (Germany) and Martfilms (Mexico). Utopia Docs represents the film.

To Use a Mountain

Contrasting in tone, Casey Carters’ To Use a Mountain delivers a narrative that is just as incisive. Traversing America’s vast rural landscapes and its storied past, Carters’ Visions du Réel-premiered title delves into the events of 1982 when six communities in Nevada, Utah, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Washington State were pinned as candidate sites for nuclear disposal, as the US searched for a potential dumping ground for its most dangerous waste. A fierce local resistance ensued, with the government ultimately opting for Yucca Mountain on Western Shoshone land. Four decades later, the film probes the legacy of nuclear waste in the US through present-day vignettes, calling into question the unsettling visions of past and future in which geology and democracy continue to entwine. The documentary is independently produced by Colleen Cassingham and Jonna McKone. Impronta Films is in charge of its international sales.

Runa Simi

Having premiered across the world at Tribeca, Augusto Zegarra’s heartfelt debut feature Runa Simi (“language of the people” in Quechua) presents a nuanced character-driven story, deeply anchored in themes of fatherhood, identity, and ancestral legacy. At its center is Fernando Valencia, a voice actor from Peru’s Cusco and a single father to an 8-year-old boy, Dylan. Fernando dubs film clips into his Indigenous language, Quechua (spoken by 8-10 million people but is endangered due to the dominance of Spanish), in a bid to preserve it from extinction. He also sets out to fully dub Disney’s animated classic The Lion King, a labor of love that comes with its hurdles: from requiring a proper recording studio to obtaining permission from the rights holders. This saga is threaded with tender father-son moments, such as those in a makeshift recording studio where the pair dubs scenes into Quechua. The documentary is a production of Estudio Alaska 88 (Peru).

The Broken R

A hauntingly personal testimony is at the heart of Ricardo Ruales Eguiguren’s The Broken R, which world-premiered at Sheffield DocFest. Through achingly intimate storytelling, the documentary essay chronicles the story of Ricardo (the filmmaker turned protagonist), who was born with Treacher Collins Syndrome that has affected his ability to pronounce the letter R, and consequently and tragically his own name. Having inherited the condition from his father, with whom he shares the name, Ricardo undergoes multiple surgeries and speech therapy, all the while documenting this process with his camera. The cinematographic device thus acts as a witness to his journey and, perhaps more importantly, a vehicle for his self-acceptance. The film is a production of Incubadora (Ecuador) and Small Boss Production (Italy).

Shards of Light

Following their notable 2022 documentary When Spring Came to Bucha, the Ukrainian-German director pair Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz return with Shards of Light, which was presented earlier this year at Sheffield DocFest. Thoughtfully lensed in Bucha over the span of three years following the city’s liberation from Russian occupation, Teshaieva and Lenz’s film remains unflinching in its focus on the residents still reeling from the ravages of war. At its core is a chorus of “ordinary” characters, the protagonists from the first documentary, who attempt to piece their lives together amid the ongoing full-scale invasion of their homeland. The question looms of what life remains in a society shaped by war, even when houses are rebuilt and a fragile sense of normalcy teeters into place. The film is a production of Wildfilms (Germany), in co-production with The Why Foundation (Denmark) and Quiet Talks (Georgia).

Redlight to Limelight

Rounding off the highlights is Bipuljit Basu’s Redlight to Limelight, which was first unveiled at Sheffield DocFest. Shot over four years, Basu’s engrossing debut feature expands the space of co-creation to a group of sex workers and their children in Kalighat, Kolkata’s stigmatized red-light district, as they engage in the communal activity of filmmaking through a self-taught production collective, Cam-On (12 members worked for Redlight to Limelight behind the camera in various production roles, while 18 were in the frame). The documentary trails the group through the creation of a new short fiction film, Nupur (helmed by Rabin, Cam-On's founder-secretary and the son of a sex worker), which blends dramatizations with their memories and lived experiences. This journey culminates in the short film’s public screening. Redlight to Limelight is a production of Bindubot Communication (India) and Touch Narrative (India), in co-production with JW Documentaries (Finland) and VFS Film (Latvia). Taskovski Films handles its world sales.

Entries for the 2025-2026 Docs for Sale catalogue are now open and will close on September 8. The 2024-2025 catalogue will remain available until October 31, 2025. The 2025-2026 catalogue will be released during the Docs for Sale market in November, comprising roughly 300 titles, which include IDFA-selected films, sales agent offers, and market-ready titles handpicked by the Docs for Sale team. The catalogue will remain available year-round through an online viewing subscription, allowing buyers and festival programmers to pursue exploring sales and distribution opportunities during the physical Docs for Sale market as well as beyond the event. The catalogue will be live until October 31, 2026.

A great number of vital and urgent films are supported by IDFA’s various programs, funding schemes, and markets, as IDFA fiercely advocates for the creative work of filmmakers, ensuring that diverse voices continue to shape the international film ecosystem. This commitment is advanced by the IDFA Bertha Fund, Forum, and Docs for Sale, along with its year-round training programs for up-and-coming filmmakers such as IDFAcademy, IDFA Project Space/IDFA Project Space NL, and Young Producers.