14/02/2023 - The industry section of the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival is all set to unspool a dynamic programme of talks and master classes in March

The venue in the Port of Thessaloniki where Thessaloniki Agora Docs will take place

Running from 3-9 March at Warehouse C in the Port of Thessaloniki, the Agora Docs of the 25^th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (TiDF) is returning with more content and synergies than ever before. The leading film market in the region invites professionals to meet up, discover new cinema projects and enable them to come to fruition, as well as reach their audience. Agora’s success story is reflected in this year’s festival line-up, as 15 movies that previously went through the platform’s developmental programmes are now complete and ready to meet their audience. It is expected that 200 guests from 40 countries will attend the hybrid edition of Agora and the TiDF.

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First off, the Agora Doc Market will include more than 400 completed documentaries in its digital video library, continuing its collaboration with Cinando. It will be available online for accredited Agora Docs guests and journalists to use.

Furthermore, in the Agora Docs in Progress section (see the news), 11 films that are currently in post-production will be presented to industry professionals along with six Greek projects in the Agora Lab workshop. The co-production and co-financing platform for creative, television and new-media documentaries at the development stage, the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum (see the news), also features 14 projects in development from Southeastern Europe and the neighbouring regions.

As Agora Docs looks to the future, the market is shining the spotlight on emerging documentary filmmakers. This year, five talents from Moldova are participating in the Meet the Future section, with the support of the National Film Center of Moldova. The tutor for the presentation will be expert in the field Bonnie Williams (Speaking with Impact). The participating directors and their projects are as follows:

Pavel Braila - Odyssey MD
Ksenia Ciuvaseva - Hatchepsut and I
Ana Gurdiș - Between Two Worlds (working title)
Olga Lucovnicova - Last Letters From My Grandma
Ana-Felicia Scutelnicu - Father Sits in Chisinau and Feeds the Cats (working title)

Agora Docs is also carrying on with Doc Counselling, which will run from 4-11 March, and will provide an opportunity to have on-site and online meetings with the participating industry professionals. Topics will include festival strategies, documentary funding, distribution, MEDIA Desk help, TV purchases, social media and marketing, among other subjects.

As is the case every year, a series of Agora Talks and Masterclasses will be organised. On 8 March, Academy Award-winning producer and internationally acclaimed sales agent Philippa Kowarsky will lay out the current framework for producing documentary films, shedding light on today’s landscape during her master class “Untangling the Global Landscape, Filmmaking 2023”. During the talk “The Art of Networking – Caring Is Sharing”, a diverse panel of speakers will dive into the art of networking and networks from a market, training and producers’ perspective. Producers Christian Popp (Tag Film), Rea Apostolides and Yuri Averof (Anemon Productions) will focus on creative documentaries that can travel beyond TV slots and will explore the current changing documentary landscape.

During the talk “Quo Vadis Documentary Financing?”, a panel of experts will discuss and critically examine different financing models, ranging from public funds to private equity, and will dare to look to the future. Meanwhile, the talk “Equity and Entitlement in Documentary Storytelling – A Distant Dream?” will be focused on how producers, pitching forums and funds can demonstrate a conscious and consistent commitment to equity and accountability. Furthermore, the regional VR, AR, XR and immersive project community and the documentary industry sector will come together at the “A Brave New Virtual World” talk in order to examine the opportunities that are bound to arise from rapid technological advancement.