This year the Docs Ireland International Documentary Festival will be happening between the 18th-23rd June. The annual event celebrates and showcases the best in international documentary filmmaking. Held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the festival provides a platform for both emerging and established filmmakers to present their work to a diverse audience. The festival aims to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of the documentary genre by presenting a wide array of films that explore various social, political, cultural, and environmental issues.
This year the festival will be holding an industry event spotlighting the Nordics – held on the 21st of June the event will look at how the Nordic film industry manages the production of documentaries and discuss ways in which that can help influence the concept of collaborating with
The event will feature the following speakers: Anni Asikainen – Advisor / International Promotion and Cultural Export of Documentary Film, Finnish Film Foundation, Charlotte Gry Madsen (Commissioning Editor, SVT) Anna Risgaard Dahl (PR, Marketing & Festival Manager, DR Sales), Sara Rüster (Festival Manager, Docs · Swedish Film Institute) and Lea Maria Strandbæk Sørensen (Head of Industry, Nordisk Panorama).
I caught up with Roisin Geraghty and Stuart Sloan about their experience with Nordic documentaries and how it led to this feature happening at the festival.
Nordic Watchlist: What film do you remember as your first experience with Nordic documentaries?
Stuart Sloan: I don’t think it’s a specific film. The thing I remember most is being at one of the biggest doc-fests in Europe and seeing films from all over the world. There was a Danish filmmaker, and I was astounded by how these films were happening.
Many were publicly funded so its like a really serious government-level idea of arts of funding. showing a serious commitment to arts funding at a national level. I think that is the basis for all of this – is that they genuinely believe that arts funding is important.
It’s not just about soft power; these films have interesting stories to tell about social issues.
Roisin Geraghty: I’m trying to think back to early documentaries, but I have a terrible memory. In recent years, I’ve been really impressed by the highly curated Nordic documentaries. Seeing how these are publicly funded is admirable. From where we are coming from it looks like a perfect documentary industry, with creative feature documentaries getting funding. It’s fantastic to see the prestige and platform the documentary is given is really admirable.
A few films I’ve loved recently include I Love You, I Miss You, I Hope I See You Before I Die by Eva Marie Rødbro, a Danish documentary about a young woman living below the poverty line in Colorado. Other examples are The Painter and the Thief from Norway and The Gullspång Miracle.
Nordic Watchlist: Those are some great titles there – and I believe I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die is available to watch on Netflix now and The Gullspång Miracle has become available BBC iPlayer.
Roisin Geraghty: These films are incredible and funded by Sweden and Denmark. It is wonderful to see the respect given to documentaries there is wonderful. It does feel it does feel like there’s a really great infrastructure in terms of the film foundations and the public broadcasters there, having slots for creative documentaries in a way that we don’t really have as much in Ireland in the UK.
Stuart Sloan: And the audience is there too. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Our audiences would enjoy documentaries just as much if they had the opportunity. The funding just isn’t here like it is in those countries. Documentaries need an audience, and filmmakers want their films to be seen.
Roisin Geraghty: It feels like a no-brainer to me that there would be more slots for creative documentaries because they don’t cost a fortune to acquire when you compare it to a fiction film.
Nordic Watchlist: What drove you to spotlight the Nordics at the Docs Festival, and how did you get the big names from the likes of the Swedish Institute involved?
Stuart Sloan: It is a one-word answer right – Inka.
Roisin Geraghty: It all started with Inka from Doc Point in Helsinki. She is the director of programming at Doc Point in Helsinki, which is an amazing festival that we both got to go to in January and she’s been friends of our festival for like the last few years, and we love her. And she was really amazing and put together an Irish documentary focus at Doc Point. So that was kind of the jumping-off point that we got to go over there with a bunch of Irish film-makers.
They brought us to the Finnish Film Foundation where we met their documentary department. Their documentary commissioner is the person who works for them and whose specific role is to advise and promote Finnish documentaries internationally at festivals. I was so impressed by how they have such care and attention specifically for documentaries. And they said: “Oh, we’re only small compared to Sweden, and what the Swedish Film Institute have”.
When I came back I was like, well, it needs to be about the Nordics this year, because we met so many great people. And we’re just really inspired by the work that they’re doing and the infrastructures and the kind of the industry there.
Nordic Watchlist: What do you feel, in your opinion, would help grow audiences to documentary films? There are no streamers out there, as far as I am aware, that are dedicated solely to documentaries.
Stuart Sloan: I think a streamer is a great idea because there are enough films around so we don’t need to worry about that. I don’t think I have any out-of-the-box ideas, it is so competitive. The number of films we get sent for the festival and the budgets we have just don’t correspond with each other – we would love to screen two or three times as many films as we can.
The cost of everything is going up but our funding isn’t quite yet, and I think that is the same for a load of festivals all over the UK. Roisin what do you think?
Roisin Geraghty: I think broadcast slots because the people who are going to the festivals are interested in art house and creative documentaries. They probably know where to pick up these films on MUBI or there is a platform called DAFilms which I believe is.
Broadcast slots will bring in more audiences
I’ve no doubt that if people were exposed more to these kinds of films on broadcast and terrestrial television they would be really engaged.
There is still clearly so much work to be done but, as both Roisin and Stuart point out, to do it the funding needs to increase to help support the arts. Without the festivals, the coverage for these films will diminish, and this enormous wealth of talent will slowly begin to take their career paths in other directions.
This emphasises the importance of festivals such as Docs Ireland or Sheffield Doc Fest – festivals that are supporting the documentary industry from not only their own countries but internationally aswell.
Docs Ireland will be happening between the 18th-24th June
