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Founded in 2008, Doc Alliance is a collaborative network of seven key European documentary festivals—CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, FIDMarseille, Ji.hlava, Vision du Réel, Dok Leipzig, Millennium Docs Against Gravity—dedicated to promoting arthouse non-fiction cinema and supporting emerging filmmakers. For over 15 years, the initiative has played a pivotal role in strengthening the continent’s documentary scene by fostering inter-festival collaboration and increasing exposure for independent work. Spearheading many of its recent efforts is Galya Stepanova, the network’s coordinator and one of the driving forces behind its growing industry profile. Ahead of this year’s Cannes Film Festival and its Marché du Film (May 13–24), Documentary magazine sat down with her to discuss the Doc Alliance Award, long-term strategic goals, and how the network is adapting to better serve new voices and cross-border exchange.

Twelve days before Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse (2024) was set to broadcast on April 15 across PBS stations nationwide as part of its strand American Masters, the filmmakers were told that a 90-second sequence—which shows the famous artist discussing an anti-Trump cartoon he created for the 2017 Women’s March newspaper—would be cut from the documentary.

Alina Gorlova, Yelizaveta Smith, and Simon Mozgovyi’s riveting Militantropos , its title a mashup of “milit" (soldier in Latin) and “antropos” (human in Greek), is a striking verité look at how people don’t just fight wars but become “absorbed into war.” Indeed, through a series of meticulously framed images, along with a visceral sound design, we’re taken on a swift-moving trip through the surreality of today’s Ukraine—from the training of everyday citizens in lethal weaponry, to wandering cows on a decimated farm. But also children picnicking in a field, and farmers meticulously tending to

When does childhood end? This slippery question becomes the crux of Chinese filmmaker Deming Chen’s second feature documentary, Always. The film, which won the top prizes at CPH:DOX and Jeonju over the past two months, centers on an 8-year-old boy, Gong Youbin, and his family in a small village in southern China’s Hunan province. Before the film’s North American premiere at Hot Docs, Chen and Producer Hansen Lin shared with Documentary the feedback they received at different labs and forums, the selection of poems for their film, and the approach of prioritizing emotions, rather than logic, in crafting the story.

On October 8, 1968, a .22 caliber Rohm RG-10 handgun––colloquially known as a “Roscoe”––was stolen from a U.S. Naval Base in Yokosuka. Over the course of the next month, four shootings took place in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hokkaido, and Nagoya. The perpetrator, Norio Nagayama, was arrested and imprisoned the following April, two months shy of his 20th birthday. The cold, hard facts of this teenage murderer’s case served as the basis for Masao Adachi’s pioneering, hauntological landscape documentary A.K.A. Serial Killer, completed in 1969 but not shown publicly until 1975.

On April 27th, Pope Francis was scheduled to officially canonize the first saint from the Millennial generation. Before his untimely death from leukemia at age 15, Carlo Acutis (born 1991), had combined his enthusiasm for computers and his fervent Catholic faith by creating websites to document miracles. The film was produced by Castletown Media, which has in recent years found box office success in partnering with Fathom Events to release films touching on Catholic themes. Jesus Thirsts, for instance, was one of last year’s biggest nonfiction hits. We spoke with Castletown executive director Tim Moriarty, who co-directed and produced Roadmap to Reality, about the film, its funding, its release strategy, and how the Pope’s death has impacted the company’s plans.

For three decades, Chris Smith has profiled oddballs, eccentrics, and mavericks. Smith’s first documentary, American Movie— a darkly funny but profoundly human portrait of an aspiring filmmaker struggling to complete his low-budget horror film in small-town Wisconsin—won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1999. Ten years later, in a four-out-of-four stars review, Roger Ebert called Collapse, Smith’s portrait of Michael Ruppert—a former LAPD officer turned controversial thinker warning of global societal collapse—the most frightening thriller he had ever seen. Fuelled by several hit streaming

Qumra, the Doha-based industry event, named after the Arabic word believedto be the origin of “camera” and taking place from April 3–9, aims “to provide mentorship, nurture talent, and foster hands-on development for filmmakers from Qatar, the region, and beyond.” Out of the 49 selected projects, 12 feature-length documentary projects were presented in Doha: four in development, two in production, two Works-in-Progress, and four picture-locked. The line-up was rounded off by four short documentaries, all with Qatari involvement. Qumra is rooted in a fairly freewheeling format: at times, press and industry attendees mingle over lunches, mocktails, and networking events; at others, they follow separate paths. Nonetheless, the gathering unfolds across a limited number of venues, including the iconic Museum of Islamic Art and two luxury hotels in the brand-new district of Msheireb.

In a recent joint submission to a call for contributions on AI and Creativity at the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, WITNESS, the Co-Creation Studio at MIT, and the Archival Producers Alliance (APA) outlined these pressing dangers. Drawing from years of frontline research, workshops, and advocacy with creative communities and human rights defenders around the world, we identified seven core threats AI poses to human creativity.

The Asian American Documentary Network, colloquially known as A-Doc, announces four AAPI Futures Impact Producer Fellows in advance of a cohort retreat at this weekend’s CAAMfest. This is the second year of the fellowship, after an inaugural cohort in 2024. A joint initiative between A-Doc and Asian American Futures, the fellowship supports impact producers of new documentaries with a $17,000 grant toward their film’s impact campaign and a holistic training program from April–December 2025. The application theme was “AAPI Legacy.” Projects were selected for their potential to “center AAPI