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MIRADASDOC 2021

MiradasDoc gives non-fiction cinema a helping hand from the Canary Islands

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- The gathering is being held in a hybrid format from 26 February-6 March, offering an array of standout non-fiction titles and facilitating documentary co-productions

MiradasDoc gives non-fiction cinema a helping hand from the Canary Islands
Notturno by Gianfranco Rosi

In-person and online: like myriad other events, this is how the 14th edition of MiradasDoc. Guía de Isora International Documentary Film Festival and Market, on the Canary Island of Tenerife, will unspool. It is happening from 26 February-6 March 2021 – a year still, at least for the time being, largely conditioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 700 films and 200 projects were submitted to the festival’s various categories: the final selection is rich in social-reality and auteur films, with more than 40 physical screenings, which will of course be organised in accordance with the requisite health-and-safety guidelines.

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With 37 films in the official section this year, the MiradasDoc audience will be able to enjoy stories “from the point of view of an observer and with the intimacy afforded by small tales. We find films that talk about attributing new meaning: titles with which the directors are looking to give a different significance to and, in some way, reformulate what we have come to know as the established truth,” declared the head of the festival, David Baute.

This year’s Mirada Personal Award will be given to Italian helmer Gianfranco Rosi, whose most recent work, Notturno [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gianfranco Rosi
film profile
]
, will be screened as part of an exhibition dedicated to the filmmaker. This will be enriched by various special screenings, one of which is for Tehran Blues [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Javier Tolentino.

At this edition, the MiradasDoc Market (1-5 March and online) boasts its biggest panel of buyers yet: professionals hailing from TV channels and production outfits from all over the world will familiarise themselves with the projects that continue to take shape here, including RTVE, RAI, Filmin, RTP, Movistar Plus+, Canal Curta, Al Arabiya and YLE. In addition, representatives of distributors such as 3Boxmedia, Elamedia, Filmotor, Newdocs, Feel Sales and Sideways Films will be present, alongside festivals of the likes of CannesDoc, EDOC, FIDOCS, FICG, Visions du Réel, AfricaDoc, FIDMarseille and IDFA, among others.

Once again, African-Latin American co-productions are being supported from the Canaries, which are essentially a melting pot located between two continents. The Afrolatam co-production forum is clearly establishing itself as a benchmark event for professionals from Africa and Latin America who are trying to enable their documentary projects (currently in development) to connect with and reach out to the international market. Together with this programme, an alliance of festivals, distributors and TV channels has been created, with the ultimate aim of fostering the development of documentaries involving both regions, encouraging collaboration among its professionals and making it easier to gain access to new international markets.

Eight projects have been selected for Afrolatam Lab 2021: Gótico Tropical by Camila José Donoso (Chile/Peru), Purity by Susy Pena (Kenya/Sweden), Antes de último Voo by Natália Keiko and Marcela Coelho (Brazil/South Africa), Memorias perdidas y encontradas by Josephine Landertinger Forero (Lesotho/Colombia/Spain), The Berm by Agustín Domínguez (Spain/Algeria), Baba by Harry Paul Oglivie Valles (Panama/USA), and Debaixo do Imbondeiro by Valentina Homem (Brazil/Mozambique).

Other projects selected for the 2021 MiradasDoc Market are included in the DocSur (a documentary production workshop, structured around international projects in production, which broaches topics relating to Africa or Latin America – read more here) and AnidocsSur (a workshop for developing animated docs – read more here) strands.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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