The Docs for Sale catalogue 2023-2024 is now live

This year has seen an increase in titles coming from Africa and Latin America and a wider geographic spread than ever before, including a first-ever submission from Azerbaijan. On the other hand, the gender balance has been almost achieved with 159 films directed or co-directed by women, and the same number produced by women.

Roughly one third of the entries are IDFA-selected films, another third come from sales agents, and the rest have been carefully picked from submissions. 

The Docs for Sale catalogue can be accessed here. 

Many exciting titles — 78 in total — without a sales agent on board are still looking for their world premieres. In road documentary Denim Hunter, Emilio di Stefano searches across America's hazardous 1880s gold mines for a pair of vintage jeans. Swiss director Coline Confort's sensitive and poetic The Acrobat Life follows a former circus artist who has become paraplegic and dreams about a return at Tokyo Paralympic Games. Meanwhile, in Positive Negative, Colombian filmmaker David Aguilera Cogollo goes to the banks of the Caribbean Sinu River to explore rumors of an old man’s pact with the devil. 

Some strong short films looking for their world or European premieres also traverse the world telling wonderfully diverse stories. In the first-ever Docs for Sale submission from Azerbaijan, for example, My Grandfather's House, director Leylakhanim Gambarli embarks on an emotional journey to reconnect with her late grandfather. In Kagho Idhebor's Burkina Babes, motorbikes, bicycles, and Burkina Faso's women combine to create a unique cultural canvas, while in Dasa Raimanova's Gypsy Gadji, a woman with multiple sclerosis deals with her mixed identity by fighting to keep Roma children in the Polish school system. And in her film The Broken Goddess, Ximena Pereira intertwines her personal story with that of the statue of the Goddess of Venezuela, reflecting a deep divide in the country's society.  

Many of the Docs for Sale entries that have been selected for IDFA also deal with the intersection of the personal and the political. In their Luminous-selected title 1001 Days, Zikethiwe Ngcobo and Chloe White present a snapshot of motherhood in Alexandra, South Africa, during the crucial first three years of life. In Kyrgyzstan, in another Luminous film, Janyl Jusupjan's Atirkül in the Land of Real Men, the titular woman enters the male-dominated world of buzkashi, a game where the goal is to steal a dead goat from the other team.

Another film that deals with gender roles is the Best of Fests-selected Choose Me, in which Chadian director Allamine Kader Kora explores the tradition customs in her home village, where single women are forced into a collective wedding to ward off drought. Meanwhile, in the beautifully filmed Ozogoche by Joe Houlberg Silva, which world-premieres in Luminous, two forms of migration are subtly linked, that of the cuviví bird and indigenous inhabitants of Ecuador, moving in opposite directions.

Among world premieres in International Competition, in Sebastiàn Peña Escobar's The Last, three skeptical ecologists with a dark sense of humor debate about the future of our species in the last virgin forests of Paraguay. Meanwhile, The Burden by Elvis Ngaibino Sabin (pictured on top) follows a couple with AIDS who struggle in their relationship with their deeply religious and superstitious community in Central African Republic. And in his autobiographical, utterly humane film, Life Is Beautiful, Palestinian filmmaker Mohamed Jabaly (IDFA 2016 title Ambulance) goes through bureaucratic hell when he gets stuck in Norway after the border between Egypt and Gaza is closed.

World-premiering in Frontlight, Donga by Muhannad Lamin is a story told through the lens of the eponymous fighter who carries a camera, documenting life during the 2011 uprising in Libya and on to frontlines of the war against the regime, the war against ISIS and the war in Tripoli. In the International Competition title 1489, Armenian director Shoghakat Vardanyan films her family's search and emotional process when her brother goes missing during the conflict with Azerbaijan.

Two films world-premiering in Envision look at the ongoing war in Ukraine from opposing angles. In Mud, director Ilya Povolotsky (IDFA 2019 entry Froth), turns his camera with an unsparing poetic gaze to examine the microcosm of Russian society at a mud spa, seemingly undisturbed by the war. Meanwhile, Olga Chernykh's A Picture to Remember chronicles the search for a way to handle terrible and recurring losses experienced by three generations of Ukrainian women.

Among the increasing number of films dealing with colonialism, Selling a Colonial War by In-Soo Radstake, world-premiering in International Competition, is a revealing investigation of the cover-up of the Netherlands' war fought from 1945 to 1949 against the newly declared Republic of Indonesia. The pain of postcolonial rootlessness is palpable in the story of Loey Tamaëla, a Moluccan whose father was a Sergeant Major in the Dutch colonial army, in Anne Jan Sijbrandij's Short Competition entry Nusa Ina. World-premiering in Envision, Portuguese director Dulce Fernandes's Tales of Oblivion looks at the recent archaeological unearthing of Portugal's role in the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people. And in the Frontlight world premiere of Bila Burba, director Duiren Wagua shows a community theater re-enactment of the revolution of her indigenous nation of Gunadule who in 1925 successfully resisted the repression of their culture by the Panamanian government.

Docs for Sale’s key partners, the sales agents, are again present with their most important titles of the year, easy to filter in the catalogue. Among them, Andana Films, Autlook, Cinephil, Deckert Distribution, Dogwoof, DR Sales, Go2Films, Java Films, Lightdox, Mediawan, and Rise and Shine return with the biggest number of films.

During the festival, Docs for Sale will again be housed in Felix Meritis from November 10–15, where accredited professionals will enjoy plenty of room in the Docs for Sale lounge and shared Markets lounges to network with all Markets accredited passholders. More opportunities to network include Consultancies and Industry Talks. 

Booths are available for Acquisition passholders to preview films during the festival. The catalogue will be available for the whole year to Docs for Sale Acquisition Passholders.