‘My Stolen Planet’ Wins Top Prize At Thessaloniki Int’l Documentary Festival; Controversial ‘Stray Bodies’ Earns Festival Recognition

The Iranian TV journalist who was stabbed last weekend in London is already back live on air, saying attempts to silence him are not going to work.

The Tehran government has denied that it had any part on the attack on an Iran International TV presenter outside his London home.

The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival is coming off a successful — and at times turbulent — 26th edition, wrapping “amidst an explosive ambiance with episodes of violence and intolerance.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “Dahomey,” the Berlinale Golden Bear-winning film helmed by French-Senegalese director Mati Diop, has been sold to a raft of international territories by Les Films du Losange. Along with being acquired by Mubi in key markets, “Dahomey” has been acquired in Australia & New Zealand (Rialto), China (Hugoeast), Spain (Filmin), Portugal (Nitrato Filmes), Greece (One From the Heart), Scandinavia (NonStop Entertainement), Benelux (Cinéart), Bulgaria (Beta Films), Ex-Yugoslavia (Discovery), Hungary (Mozinet), Czech Republic (Film Europe), Romania (Voodoo), Baltic Countries (Taip Toliau), Poland (New Horizons), Ukraine (Kyivmusicfilm), Taiwan (Joint Entertainment), Indonesia (PT Falcon) and Sudu Connexion in Africa.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Macu Machín’s “La Hojarasca” (“The Undergrowth”) took home the top MiradaCanaria prize at the 17thMiradasDoc, which ran March 15-22 in Tenerife, Spain. Produced by El Viaje Films, Machin’s debut feature has been picking up accolades since its world premiere at Berlinale’s Forum, snagging Best Spanish Picture and director at the Malaga Film Festival’s Zonazine, a sidebar for edgier and sometimes smaller pics.

Holly Jones Premiering in January to a Sundance Dramatic World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, “Sujo” from “Identifying Features” filmmakers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez has expanded its global reach, closing multiple distribution deals forged by Paris-based Alpha Violet, who heads international distribution. Paris-based Damned Films has picked up the title for France while Twelve Oaks Pictures, Trigon Films, Cinobo and MCF Megacom have swooped on the film for Spain, Switzerland, Greece and Cyprus and Ex-Yugoslavia territories respectively, with Auckland’s Vendetta Films securing rights to the title for the Australia and New Zealand markets.

Callum McLennan Ancient Greek Aristotle got it right. The production whole is greater than the sum of its co-production parts. This was the sentiment at a Series Mania session titled ‘Fifty Shades of Co Pro’ on Tuesday.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor A panel moderated by the European Audiovisual Observatory at Series Mania Tuesday looked at four key trends in series production in Europe. Warning Signs?Gilles Fontaine, EAO’s head of department for market information, said there were warning signs of a downward trend in the number of seasons being produced, first in the U.S.

Lise Pedersen Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel has unveiled the program for its 55th edition, which includes 10 first films out of 15 in the main international competition, cementing its reputation as a springboard for emerging talent. The official selection includes 165 films from 50 countries, with gender parity for the second-year running, and no fewer than 88 world premieres, making VdR the place to be in April on the international non-fiction film calendar.

Christopher Vourlias Iranian filmmaker Farahnaz Sharifi‘s “My Stolen Planet,” an intimate family portrait of life during Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival on Sunday, bringing a close to an emotional and politically charged week in Greece’s second city. Using both the director’s personal archives and 8mm recordings of strangers’ lives, the film — which world premiered in the Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama strand — uses an essayistic style to present the joy and vitality of life in Tehran in the 1970s, in contrast with the oppression imposed on the Iranian people by the country’s hardline regime.

Callum McLennan “House of Gods,” a Matchbox Pictures six-part series, boasting an entirely Arab Australian cast, presents a perspective seldom seen on screen, a Muslim community in Fairfield, Australia. “You can’t manufacture authenticity. Audiences are so intuitive and adept, they can smell if something is off a mile away.

Jack Dunn “Bottoms,” “Ru Paul’s Drag Race,” “Ted Lasso,” and Reneé Rapp took home top prizes at the GLAAD Media Awards, which this year celebrates the 35th anniversary of the annual award show. Awards were handed out Thursday night at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Memento International has closed a raft of deals on “Fremont,” a critically acclaimed film starring Anaita Wali Zada, an Afghan refugee and first-time actor, and featuring “The Bear” actor Jeremy Allen White. Directed by BAFTA-nominated Iranian-born director Babak Jalali, the black-and-white movie tells the story of Donya, a young woman working at a Chinese fortune cookie factory in the San Francisco bay. Formerly a translator for the U.S.

Christopher Vourlias Palestinian director Hana Elias’ “If These Stones Could Talk,” which follows a Palestinian man’s return to his homeland to restore his family’s ancestral garden, and Argentine filmmaker María Silvia Esteve’s “Mailin,” about a woman’s painful struggle to overcome her childhood trauma, took the top prizes at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival’s industry award ceremony Wednesday night. During an emotionally charged conclusion to the festival’s Agora strand, in which several filmmakers voiced their strident support for Palestine and called for a ceasefire to the more than five-month-old Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, a tearful Elias took the stage alongside producer Asmahan Bkerat to receive the top prize in the Agora’s pitching forum, a €10,000 ($10,900) cash prize from the International Emerging Film Talents Assn. (IEFTA).

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Two-time Oscar-winning director Asghar Farhadi has been fully cleared by an Iranian court of allegations of plagiarism pertaining to his film “A Hero” that launched from the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Farhadi’s former student Azadeh Masihzadeh had accused the filmmaker of stealing the idea for “A Hero” from a documentary she made during a filmmaking workshop held by Farhadi in 2014 in Tehran.

In one of the most compelling films to hold its world premiere at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, archive footage shows an apparently amiable man dressed in black sitting for an interview with a Yugoslav journalist. The year is approximately 1977.

Greece’s Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival is reacting with shock to an incident Saturday night in which two LGBTQ people were attacked by a huge crowd in a square outside one of the festival’s main screening venues.

The Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film A New Kind of Wilderness has bowed at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece, marking its European premiere.

Alexei Navalny’s sacrifice for democracy is being recognized in the place where the concept of government by the people first flourished.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Paris-based Cat&Docs has acquired world sales rights for “Grand Me” by Iranian filmmaker Atiye Zare Arandi. The documentary, about an Iranian girl in the middle of a custody battle, is set to world premiere in the NEXT:WAVE strand at CPH:DOX on March 18. Set in Esfahan, Iran, “Grand Me” follows Melina, who has lived with her grandparents since her parents’ divorce.