Who is the audience for documentaries and where can these viewers be found? On 8 June, a panel discussion entitled “Brand-new Docs: The Audience Is There… Maybe” attempted to respond to this question during Bio to B - Industry Days, held within the Bologna Biografilm Festival. 

Fabio Mancini, commissioning editor and producer for RAI Documentari, spoke about his experience in the sector, whose public broadcasting company he was finally appointed to as ad hoc director in 2020, a result which had been long-awaited by independent producers and international broadcasters. It’s a springboard for documentary production “which helps us to recognise and respect the various iterations of audiovisual products, with all their many differences. Over the course of 5 years, we’ve tried many different approaches, from the traditional and more recognisable to actually driving research forwards on certain occasions. In 2024, we had discussions and finalised productions with over 60 different entities. Nothing’s off the table in the documentary production world. We’ve also worked with absolute newcomers. I believe this kind of plurality of discussion is good for everyone. RAI Documentari is a really important thermometer for understanding what kind of work we should do with different audience types”.

Mancini cites an example, the doc Pooh - Un attimo ancora, revolving around the historic Italian pop group of the same name, directed by Nicola Conversa and produced by One More Pictures and Toed Film in collaboration with Tamata and RAI Documentari. Another example given was Nino, written and directed by Walter Fasano and dedicated to the artistic universe of the master Nino Rota, who authored the music in Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard and Rocco and His Brothers and, naturally, in Federico Fellini’s films too (La Dolce Vita, 8 ½ and many others). He was also the first Italian to win the Oscar for Best Score by virtue of The Godfather II. “We’re witnessing growth which is part and parcel of a project revolving around our audience. It’s a different product which documentary audiences can now understand and really make the most of. It’s tied up with a great deal of our country’s history, but we’re dedicated to creating a product which goes beyond Italian borders. The collaboration agreement signed with France Télévisions brought La forza del destino to Milan’s Scala Theatre, a film directed by Anissa Bonnefont and produced by the independent firms Federation Studio and MDE Films together with our two national broadcasters”. Last but not least, the panel explored the relationship with RaiPlay, a platform which “is creating a very knowledgeable and curious audience and is no longer just a catch-up service for broadcast products. The data on documentaries is interesting: they’re sought out and watched, and they’re enjoying lengthy popularity on RaiPlay. So their compatibility with digital is increasing, and we’re also guaranteed a certain number of experimental films which we’re prepared to produce and oversee. It’s a kind of protected space in which to try new things. The hope is to regulate an internal co-production by the end of the year which appeals to both generalist and digital audiences.”

Andrea Romeo, who’s distributed documentaries by Werner Herzog, Patricio Guzmàn, Laura Poitras and Joshua Oppenheimer in Italy, via I Wonder, insisted that the landscape has changed. “The feeling is that we missed a trick years ago: the possibility of creating a relationship with the audience. And the documentary world in Italy - which really accelerated 15-20 years ago and became quite ambitious - was subsequently impeded by all kinds of factors. We haven’t seen many documentaries in Italian cinemas over the past year. To give an example, Fabio Mancini arrived at RAI Documentari just in time to stop Giulia Giapponesi’s Bella ciao [+lee también:
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entrevista: Giulia Giapponesi
ficha de la película] from being ‘killed off’. We weren’t successful in our aims. Nowadays, producers spend most of their time looking for funding rather than predominantly focusing on archive material, the film shoot, the cast, in-depth analysis, marketing, expressing themselves as authors and creating a dialogue with the public. There’s a lack of investment from public entities. We can’t lay all the blame at RAI’s feet when other TV networks don’t want to invest “to lose”. In other countries, the situation is more protected and investments are made for the good of the people and culture. The sector has frozen here, following the sizeable investments initially made by Netflix - which moved audiences from cinemas, which were doing well, to platforms - and then the arrival of all the others - Disney +, Amazon etc. – which we received funding for, for a time. Everything seemed to be off to a good start. And in big corporations, documentaries such as LOL [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] were managed as unscripted. Production directors are finding themselves comparing documentary viewer numbers with LOL’s, but they’re not the same, the product isn’t the same. Our platform IWonderFull [launched in 2021] and Top Doc [a channel which is part of the Prime Video Channel offering, presented in 2023] make it possible for us to keep on bringing international level documentaries, such as Orwell: 2+2=5”, to audiences.